Wednesday, June 23, 2010

How to Make a Website:

There are many steps to get this done. It’s described as below

1. Web Design:
2. Domain Name Registration:
3. Web Hosting:
4. Site Promotion:
5. Site Maintenance:


1. Web Design: The process of designing web pages, web sites, web applications or multimedia for the Web may utilize multiple disciplines, such as animation, authoring, communication design, corporate identity, graphic design, human-computer interaction, information architecture, interaction design, marketing, photography, search engine optimization and typography.

The intent of web design is to create a web site—a collection of electronic documents and applications that reside on a web server/servers and present content and interactive features/interfaces to the end user in form of Web pages once requested. Such elements as text, bit-mapped images (GIFs, JPEGs) and forms can be placed on the page using HTML/XHTML/XML tags. Displaying more complex media (vector graphics, animations, videos, and sounds) requires plug-ins such as Adobe Flash, QuickTime, Java run-time environment, etc. Plugins are also embedded into web page by using HTML/XHTML tags.

Multiple technologies to be used for web designing as:

• Markup languages (such as HTML, XHTML and XML)
• Style sheet languages (such as CSS and XSL)
• Client-side scripting (such as JavaScript)
• Server-side scripting (such as PHP and ASP)
• Database technologies (such as MySQL and PostgreSQL)
• Multimedia technologies (such as Flash and Silverlight)

Web pages and web sites can be static pages, or can be programmed to be dynamic pages that automatically adapt content or visual appearance depending on a variety of factors, such as input from the end-user, input from the Webmaster or changes in the computing environment (such as the site's associated database having been modified).

For beginner /standard Level Users: Designing a web page was not so easy until I found some very nice stuff which I would like to mention.

There are 100s of free template based online tools with drag and drop features. With a few clicks you can build your own website with professional touch. I would like to mention few online tools like:

1. http://www.weebly.com
2. http://www.webs.com
3. http://www.wix.com
4. http://www.officelive.com/en-us/free-website
5. http://sites.google.com
And many more

The above companies also provides you the webhosting but with a term of using their name as sub-domain.

After creating your website using these online tools, the next step comes to give them the URL of your choice which is not a free affair but you have to spend a small amount for that. You need to register a domain for that of your choice.

For advanced users, who have knowledge of web designing, can create their WebPages and proceed to the next steps for their domain registration and website hosting.

2. Domain Name Registration: Domain registration is the process by which a company or individual can secure a website domain, such as www.yoursite.com. Once you have completed domain registration the domain becomes yours for the period of the contract, usually one year. Before registration expires it must be renewed, or the domain reverts back to being available to the general public.

The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) manages the international Domain Name Server (DNS) database. ICANN insures that all registered names are unique and map properly to a unique Internet Protocol (IP) address. The IP address is the numerical address of the website that tells other computers on the Internet where to find the server host and domain.

There are several domain registrar among which I would like to name few are:

1. www.godaddy.com
2. www.register.com
3. www.net4domains.com
4. www.domainregistrationindia.com
5. www.znetindia.com
6. www.netsol.com
7. www.dotster.com
And many more…

3. Web Hosting: A web hosting service is a type of Internet hosting service that allows individuals and organizations to make their own website accessible via the World Wide Web. Web hosts are companies that provide space on a server they own or lease for use by their clients as well as providing Internet connectivity, typically in a data center.

Many large companies who are not internet service providers also need a computer permanently connected to the web so they can send email, files, etc. to other sites. They may also use the computer as a website host so they can provide details of their goods and services to anyone interested. Additionally these people may decide to place online orders.

There are multiple hosting services available. Mainly among are-

• Free web hosting service: offered by different companies with limited services, sometimes supported by advertisements, and often limited when compared to pay hosting.

• Shared web hosting service: one's website is placed on the same server as many other sites, ranging from a few to hundreds or thousands. Typically, all domains may share a common pool of server resources, such as RAM and the CPU. The features available with this type of service can be quite extensive. A shared website may be hosted with a reseller.

• Reseller web hosting: allows clients to become web hosts themselves. Resellers could function, for individual domains, under any combination of these listed types of hosting, depending on who they are affiliated with as a provider. Resellers' accounts may vary tremendously in size: they may have their own virtual dedicated server to a collocated server. Many resellers provide a nearly identical service to their provider's shared hosting plan and provide the technical support themselves.

• Virtual Dedicated Server: also known as a Virtual Private Server (VPS) divides server resources into virtual servers, where resources can be allocated in a way that does not directly reflect the underlying hardware. VPS will often be allocated resources based on a one server to many VPSs relationship, however virtualization may be done for a number of reasons, including the ability to move a VPS container between servers. The users may have root access to their own virtual space. Customers are sometimes responsible for patching and maintaining the server.

• Dedicated hosting service: the user gets his or her own Web server and gains full control over it (root access for Linux/administrator access for Windows); however, the user typically does not own the server. Another type of dedicated hosting is Self-Managed or Unmanaged. This is usually the least expensive for dedicated plans. The user has full administrative access to the box, which means the client is responsible for the security and maintenance of his own dedicated box.

• Managed hosting service: the user gets his or her own Web server but is not allowed full control over it (root access for Linux/administrator access for Windows); however, they are allowed to manage their data via FTP or other remote management tools. The user is disallowed full control so that the provider can guarantee quality of service by not allowing the user to modify the server or potentially create configuration problems. The user typically does not own the server. The server is leased to the client...


4. Site Promotion: Website promotion can be defined as the continuing process to promote a website to bring more visitors to the website. SEO, Link Popularity, Website marketing through social networking, blogging and RSS feeds are mainly the techniques that are used to increase the traffic to a site.

• SEO (Search Engine Optimization): Search engine optimization (SEO) is the process of improving the volume or quality of traffic to a web site or a web page (such as a blog) from search engines via "natural" or un-paid ("organic" or "algorithmic") search results. As an Internet marketing strategy, SEO considers how search engines work and what people search for. Optimizing a website primarily involves editing its content and HTML and associated coding to both increase its relevance to specific keywords and to remove barriers to the indexing activities of search engines.

• Link Popularity: For website promotion the most important technique is to get inbound links, search engines rely on backlinks to see how popular a web site is, it’s thought that if one web site links to another, the webmaster must have thought the website promotion offered something useful to their visitors. When other people put a link to your site on their site, you get free website promotion. You also get a shot at a better search engine ranking for your page. All of the big three search engines (Google, Yahoo, and MSN) use inbound links as an important part of the formula that determines a page's rank.

• Website marketing through social networking: A social network service focuses on building and reflecting of social networks or social relations among people, e.g., who share interests and/or activities. A social network service essentially consists of a representation of each user (often a profile), his/her social links, and a variety of additional services. Marketing through social networking site is also very important nowadays.

• Blogging: Blogging is a social activity. Writing articles for website promotion is the cheapest form of advertising that is available – it only takes your time. It is also one of the most effective forms of online advertising that exists today. The best blogs are the ones that are about something, yet have a unique twist on that something.

• RSS feeds: A feed is a web document ending in .rss or .xml file extension. It comes as a link to any website content update – be it a blog or an article, or anything that worth sharing with your audience. Web feeds help in better content syndication and keeps your audience up to date with the latest changes/ updates/ appends corresponding to your website.


5. Site Maintenance: Web maintenance is an often over-looked detail in a Webster's lifecycle. Making the most of an Internet investment also requires an investment in time to periodically update the site, ensuring that the content remains fresh and inviting. Whether it's a monthly newsletter or a new product offering, visitors will be more inclined to return to your site if you're constantly providing them with new material to view. To ensure an error free, dynamic site it is important for a website to be maintained by technical experts, content builders and web marketing experts. Maintenance ensures regular performance appraisal of the website.

Hope this article will be useful to all.

-Om
http://www.opdubey.info/
http://techtips.opdubey.info/

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