Domain Registration:
- I use GoDaddy.com for my domain registration. The prices are good, and they have really good DNS services that come for free with your domain registration to allow you to set up your hosts. If this seems a bit daunting, don't let it, most hosting packages (including Google Apps will take care of this for you
Site Hosting: The cost of hosting your own site has dropped significantly in recent years. In addition, there are some good free hosting services.
- Google Apps is a great free service from Google. It provides GMail accounts (you@yourdomain.com), IM services, Calendar, Google Docs for collaboration, Web pages with a simple page designer and templates, and Google Sites (a collaboration space similar to Sharepoint). All this for free. (I use Google Apps for www.timalosi.com )
- Microsoft OfficeLive Small Business is another free service. Similar to Google Apps, OfficeLive provides Web pages with an easy editor (and as a nice, advanced, feature, allows you to upload your own pages), email, and spaces (a collaboration tool similar to Sharepoint). In addition, OfficeLive will give you your first year of domain name registration for free. (I use OfficeLive for www.controldoctors.com)
- IXWebHosting.com is a paid, full service hosting service (for as little as $4.95 per month) that provides unlimited web site space, and unlimited transfer of data. They provide at least one free domain registration and a ton of included scripts and the use of databases for data driven websites. If you are looking to do commercial web hosting (selling on the internet), this is a great hosting site. I recently helped set up two new sites on IXWebHosting: IsolatedGraphics.com and PointBMovie.com ).
- Blogger.Com is a free service to host your blog (like this one: fivebytes.blogspot.com ). A blog is a good choice for a web presence if you wish to write content for the web, share your thoughts, and talk about different topics.
- Wordpress.com is another free service to host a blog. Both Blogger and Wordpress are very functional and easy to use.
Getting Listed in Search Engines: Ok, now that you have your site, you want people to find you. Many search engines continuously search the internet for new sites, and if you are using some of Google's services (Google Apps or Blogger), google will likely pick up your site automatically. But you may want to submit your site to ensure it is indexed (although you need to be patient, as it takes time.
Web Master Tools: If you want to see how the different search engines are treating your site, and what search queries your site is appearing in, you should sign up for the web master tools at each of the major search engines. Signup is free.
One item that these Webmaster tools recommend is a Sitemap. Either a simple page with links to all the pages on your site, or an XML file that contains links all the pages (or at least the most important). There are online sites that will generate the XML file in the correct format.
The one that I use is http://www.xml-sitemaps.com.
Analyze Site Traffic: In order to check how many visitors came to your site, what pages they looked at and other interesting statics, you need a (free) service like Google Analytics. To use Google Analytics, you need to embed some simple javascript onto your web pages (it is pretty easy and there are lots of tutorials on the web). The amount of statistics you can get are impressive, and you can watch your site flourish.
Making your Site look great: If you are looking for some good images for your site, an often inexpensive (and sometimes free) approach is to use a stock photo service. Often the images are very inexpensive. Here is a list of stock photo sites. (Note: Just be careful to ensure that you have the right to use the photo. It is worthwhile to double check!)
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