Many of my readers will already have or will be thinking about getting a website of their own so recent readers question seemed like a good opportunity to take a fresh look at a subject I have discussed in the past.

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Many of my readers will already have or will be thinking about getting a website of their own so recent readers question seemed like a good opportunity to take a fresh look at a subject I have discussed in the past.

I’m looking for some help with setting up a website and whilst I believe I’ll be okay with the construction of the site how do I choose who to use as the host? As I see it there are several choices; either going for an aggressive advertiser like 1&1 or Fasthosts or going with someone like Bravenet and living with the pop-up adverts? I am finding it difficult establishing whether some of these names are little better than cowboys and likely to crash & burn in the near future.

There is so much information that amateurs like me feel overwhelmed; I am after all only making this site for a relatively small social organisation.

I already own the required domain name which I purchased from a company called ‘LoCostNames’ and so I was wondering if hosting companies charge extra or give discounts if you join their service with the domain name already registered? What are things like ASP & Perl and would I need a degree in computer science to operate a site effectively?

Finally, who hosts your www.refreshcartridges.co.uk site and are they satisfactory? I’m sorry to ask what are probably really thick questions but information overload can sometimes make you feel very inadequate!

Pat Chimes, via E-mail

Pat asked a number of good questions which I hope that I will be able to resolve. To cover the basics for those who aren’t quite up to speed I should explain that when creating a website you are required to have your domain name registered (i.e. www.microsoft.com) along with arranging for a company to host the files that will be viewed by your guests. The alternative is to use the free webspace that most ISP’s (Internet Service Providers) will offer you but this is extremely unprofessional and should be avoided by all but the smallest & stingiest sites.

The question regarding which host to go for is unfortunately a little too generic as obviously different people have different needs and so there isn’t really any one answer that I can give here. I would strongly advise against going for a host that supports a free service by exposing your visitors to pop-ups as this is EXTREMELY annoying for those browsing your site.

I have always found that if running a website on a shoe-string then a company called Freeola (www.freeola.com) is definitely worth a look since it is free of charge, fast and reliable. On the downside, it is missing some of the more advanced functions that the paid hosting companies provide and you have to dial a local call rate number to upload files rather than using your standard ISP connection; for a free service however, this is perfectly acceptable.

If you are considering a paid host then it may be worth your while to type their name followed by the word ‘review’ into your favourite search engine as if the company is practising cowboy tactics then you will usually find quite a few people slating them. I don’t feel qualified enough to recommend a particular paid hosting company as my website, www.refreshcartridges.co.uk is hosted by RedStation and whilst they are more than acceptable I don’t rate them particularly well so we will be changing when our year contract has expired.

With regards to getting a discount since you have already registered your domain name, unfortunately most hosting providers will actually charge you more to bring it with you as the majority of them have introductory offers to encourage users to register a domain name at a subsidised price with free hosting thrown in to the package. They then rely on the theory that once your first year worth of free hosting has expired that you will then start paying their standard rates for years to come.

Finally we come to the subject of Perl and ASP; you probably won’t have to worry about them for a simple site as these are established programming languages that can be used to support features such as mailing lists and guestbooks. If you find that you require additional features in the future than your current host provider can support then do bear in mind that you can always change at some point down the line.

Search engines are fickle beasts but ultimately you’re going to want to learn how to tame them if you have a website that you want people to be able to find. There are plenty of people out there with fantastic sites but unfortunately if they’re not listed in the search [...]]]>

Search engines are fickle beasts but ultimately you’re going to want to learn how to tame them if you have a website that you want people to be able to find. There are plenty of people out there with fantastic sites but unfortunately if they’re not listed in the search engines then even the best sites will more than likely remain undiscovered. Refresh Cartridges enjoyed a surge of hits recently when Google, the worlds most popular search engine placed our site at the top of their lists when a user searched for the word ‘cartridge’ – it stayed this way for 2 weeks before someone else knocked us off but I know that we’ll be back.

Having spent the last year running a Internet mail order business I know a few things about getting a site listed in the search engines and for any of you reading that have a site then please take heed as my top tips follow below. This week we will be discussing how to prepare your site for your sites to be added and we’ll follow on next week with the actual submission to the search engines.

- Use a sensible domain name. Many search engines will see a site such as www.refreshcartridges.co.uk as a much more likely match when someone searches for the word cartridges than www.rc.co.uk, as will potential visitors. Make sure your domain name is descriptive of your company or your companies activities.

- Title all your pages. Using your HTML editor make sure that you add descriptive titles to all your web pages as this will allow a search engine to more easily recognise relevant pages.

- Use Meta Tags. These are used to add text to a page that it invisible to people viewing the site but is something that search engines can pick up to decide what a page is about. For example, in your Meta keywords you would pick a number of keywords that sum up the page such as ‘ink’, ‘paper’, ‘cartridge’ and ‘printer’ and then in your Meta description you would write a short description of the page in question. For more information on writing good meta tags, please visit http://www.grantasticdesigns.com/metatagtips.html

- Link all your pages. In a similar way that search engine spiders jump links to discover new sites on the Internet, they also use links to jump to all the pages on your website. If your pages are all linked together using something fancy like Flash or even drop down menus then it is unlikely that the search engines will be able to follow these links and if you have 200 pages on your site then you obviously want the search engine to be familiar with all of them and not just the first page. Therefore if you do use non standard linking mechanisms then be sure that you have a sitemap (just a single page that links to every page your website consists of) that the search engines can use to spider your entire site.

- Use ALT text on all images. All images on a webpage have the ability to have ALT text which is used whenever a user looks at your page and for one reason or another is unable to see the pictures; for example, a picture of a cat would be turned in to the word ‘cat’ if the page was designed by a savvy web designer. Search engines pick up on this alternative text so be sure that every image on your page has a relevant description as it will help the search engines pick up on relevant pages.

- Use descriptive text. Your actual website text should be worded in a way that means you mention the keywords that are relevant to your business at least several times. For example, I have made sure that the text on our front page contains the word ‘cartridge’ at least once.

- Don’t do the following.
Don’t spam keywords; for example repeating a word 30 times on the same text in the hope the search engines will consider you more relevant for that particular word.
Don’t use hidden text (using text that humans can’t see) as text on a similar coloured background is frowned upon by many search engines.
Don’t use non relevant keywords on your site; I’ve seen several CLEAN websites use text along the ‘Britney Spears Nude’ on their pages in a desperate attempt to drag visitors looking for porn on to their site by fooling the search engines. Not only is this likely to be frowned upon by many search engines but what is the point in attracting a visitor who is only going to leave after 2 seconds when he realises you’re not offering what he’s after?

Today, following on from the request of John Mills in Roselands Drive last week, I’m starting a multi-part series focusing on the basics of creating and uploading your own website.

Last week I asked you to register your own domain name on [...]]]>

Today, following on from the request of John Mills in Roselands Drive last week, I’m starting a multi-part series focusing on the basics of creating and uploading your own website.

Last week I asked you to register your own domain name on the Internet so that you would be ready to begin creating your website and I have a quick question from a reader to field regarding this:

You mentioned www.redstation.co.uk, in your latest article and that it would cost £9.40, I can't seem to find any thing for that price, has it changed or am I not looking hard enough?

Mike Cresser, via e-mail

The price of £9.40 that I mentioned was the inclusive of VAT price, if you click on ‘Domain Registration’ on the left hand side of the webpage, you’ll see the price of £8 + VAT. Just enter the name of the site that you would like to register in the box on the site and then select payment details. After this is complete you will be given the choice of setting up free hosting which I suggest you take advantage of.

To continue, the first step in creating a website is obviously to acquire some software that will allow you to create the pages that you will eventually upload onto the Internet and your options for this are almost endless. The one piece of software that is both easy to use and widely available would be Microsoft FrontPage which comes as part of many different Microsoft Office suites or FrontPage Express which comes as part of Internet Explorer. If you can’t find either version installed on your computer then run the Microsoft Office setup or download the latest version of Internet Explorer from www.microsoft.com.

This article is too short to cover the finer points of creating a website in Microsoft FrontPage as to do so would necessitate writing an entire book on the subject; however, there are a number of websites and books available to help you with this as well as the programs help file. Incidentally, if you missed last weeks article or happen miss any future articles, they will all be made available from the Herald Express website (www.thisissouthdevon.co.uk), this includes an article I did on compressing images which you may find useful as if you can make your website as small as possible then you decrease the time it takes for your readers to download it.

The interface for FrontPage is similar to Microsoft Word or Publisher in the way everything is laid out and so any of you with experience of either of these programs shouldn’t have too much difficulty creating a simple site. As a first step, if you create a page that you would like as your first page and then save it as ‘index.html’ then this ensures that whenever people go to load your site that this will be the first page that loads up by default. As you know, a website is a collection of a number of different pages (A hotel, for example would have a different page for their price list, brochure and contact information) and so to form links with your other pages, you should create something called a hyperlink which will allow the user to hop from page to page. To do this, select a piece of text that you want to use as the link and go to ‘Insert’ and ‘Hyperlink’. If you now select another page that you’ve created (such as a contacts page) then whenever someone browsing your website clicks on your link then this page will open. Please bear in mind that to keep things simple to begin with, all your files should be kept in the same folder and you should try to keep all your filenames in lowercase.

Of course, it is also possible to insert compressed pictures, tables, symbols etc. into your webpage as long as you ensure that everything is stored in the same folder.

Once again, this article is far too short to go through the finer points of creating your own webpage so I suggest that you experiment with FrontPage and look up some extra reading material on the subject before next week when we’ll talk about uploading your webpage. If you want to test your page before we prepare to upload it then click on ‘File’ and ‘Preview in browser’ where you will be able to get a better idea of how your site will appear to your readers.