Generic Tips on Starting a Website

on Sat Jul 05 08:36:52 GMT 2008 in Webmaster Articles and viewed 2513 times

A few points that you could probably find anywhere else consolidated into one layout. Hence the name generic.


There are a lot of things to consider first when thinking about starting a website. First, what is it that the website is going to do? Are you going to compete with me, and do programming? Maybe just PHP? Or graphics? Or maybe it’s just going to be your dog’s day to day life. You have to figure this out first.

Next, there’s the idea of coding your site. Is it going to have a lot of graphics? Is it going to look all cool? Or are you just going to go with a layout coded completely in HTML and CSS? My recommendation would be for a beginning layout go with graphics. But after you get a bit better with CSS, HTML, and other things, go for the code. It’s more rewarding and is user-friendly. But of course there is also taking the easy way out and going with a CMS like PHP-Nuke or PHP-Fusion. I’ll cover these next.

1. Graphic Layouts There’s a lot of advantages to these. They look cool, attract visitors, and show off your skill. But there is one major drawback: Load time. Most graphic sites end up having large file sizes and that means loading slow. You want your site to load pretty fast for 56k users. What’s that you say? They should switch to DSL or Cable Modem? They should. But there’s a lot that haven’t. But I started out with a graphic layout, you can do them with Photoshop. Photoshop also has a slicing function that generates a site. Easy. I’ll cover making a site from Photoshop in a later tutorial.

2. CMS Site CMS sites are sooo easy. You have to do next to no work, and they’re easy to manage. You get full forum integration and a great management system most of the time. Plus there’s usually communities for making different styles. The CMS’s I’d recommend are PHP-Nuke, PHP-Fusion, or Mambo. Search for them on Google.

3. CSS Layouts Ah finally, the best of the best. CSS layouts are probably the best. Not only are they the most customizable, but they load fast and are search engine friendly. Coding a full site in CSS means no tables. None. I’ll cover this in a later article as well. But be assured, this is probably the hardest, because it means making a site look good without any easy little graphics programs.

Third, we have hosting. For a first time host I’d go with something easy like freewebs.com But if you’re really dedicated, and want to get a paid host, go for something along the lines of powweb.com or servage.net A good server will cost anywhere from $4-$20 a month. It all depends on what you want. But keep these features in mind:

  1. PHP
  2. MySQL
  3. Amount of Subdomains
  4. Amount of FTP

And last but not least: How are you going to advertise? You need to make sure to set META tags in your sites. That’ll get some search engines to come to you. Not all of them do. Google and some others rank on content. But META tags are always helpful. But advertising… Make sure to post on big forums with your link in your signature. Don’t go around spamming it. Build some kind of reputation. Have your link in your sig. And people will visit your site. Make sure to post on boards that actually are relevant to your site.

Also Site of the Week’s are good. They always drive traffic to your site.

So that’s about it. Have fun!