So you think you need a website but are not sure where to start.

The First thing you need to do is to choose and register what is called a “domain name” or a “URL”. This is the text that appears in between the ‘www’ and the ‘.com’ or ‘co.uk’ e.g. www.mywebsite.com. It is most common to use the name of your company, or a catchy shortened version. Once you have come up with this name, you need to check that no-one else is already using it, and then you have to ‘register’ it. This means that you have to buy the rights to this address (like a postal address) and register your details with the company that maintains all of this information. In the UK this is a company called Nominet. For more details see our section under “Registering a URL.”

Secondly you need to decide who is going to ‘host’ your website. The best way to think of this is to consider that somewhere in the world a pc/server (host) needs to be permanently on and contain all of the information about your website so that when someone goes to your website address their pc effectively talks to the host to get the information. For most people it is better to pay someone else to do this for you, as maintaining a dedicated pc/server, constantly connected to the Internet with no service interruptions whatsoever,  unlimited bandwidth and fast upload speeds would be too expensive and complicated to do yourself. These companies usually have huge warehouses full of server pcs that just host websites, and the price you will pay depends on whether or not you have a pc dedicated to you, or share access to one, and how many guarantees they provide about the availability and speed of your website. For most websites it is sufficient to share access. We have provided more details about choosing a ‘host’ in our section under “Hosting your Website”

The Third thing, and probably the most important, is designing your website. There are two stages to this process; firstly deciding how you want your site to look, and secondly re-creating that vision in a format that works on the Internet. It is possible to buy templates on the Internet where you can just change the text and headings to suit your needs, but these become very inflexible if you need to make bigger changes. It is also possible to create a simplistic one page in a word processor and save the file as an ‘.html’ document, but getting a format that works once it is published on the Internet can be very time consuming. A website design company such as ourselves can help with creating the initial design as well as ensuring that it looks good and works effectively once published on the Internet.

It is also worth thinking about what advanced functions you want to add to your website, from customised search engines, calendars, blogs and notice boards to secure payment facilities, and restricted content.

AletAl Website Design provides the full suite of services, from registering a domain name, right through to designing and publishing your site. All at an affordable price