First thank you in advance for your help... Since I am in the Big Sandbox I have found a need to start my own website but I haven't the slightest Idea on doing it ... I did a few google searches but the information was overwhelming... I am hoping someone here can point me in the right direction... Again thank you in advance
What kind of website are you looking to build? Do you already have a domain? Hosting? The more info you provide here, the more we can help. Chris
Yeah what Cris said What do you want your site to do? do you have any competition out there? can you provide some links to the sites that are related to your ideas? as you mentioned you're in a big sandbox, but more details are needed to get you started, and hopefully (reduce the sandbox's size) Regards, Greg
I have to agree with the others here. What do you exactly intend to do, and what resources do you already have?
Without knowing too much about what you're doing with the site, I'd say maybe install Wordpress on your domain hosted site. After a bit of learning involved it's a way alot of sites are built these days. I've seen many popular magazine's online sites use it.
I initially wanted to advertise my business - but now I will settle for just how to host and so on... Lets say I wanted to start a site focusing on sports...
I guess you don't want to give too much away about the specifics so I'd say the first thing to do is to look at the competition, see what their sites are like, what they say, look at who's the most popular and then see why you think that might be. Second, then, would be to look at the way their pages are put together. What sort of navigation they have, etc, etc. The most common setup would be a home page (index) about us, contact, location, services and links. Of course you can always change those pages to suit your needs. Third; will there be other pages besides the basic pages above? If so how will they be linked and from what pages. The best thing to do is to draw out a sort of directory tree or design a flow chart, which makes it much easier to get ones head around the site structure. Finally, you'll need to start thinking about what you want all your pages to say. Remember, as you do so, to consider your keywords, these are the words that you want Google and other search engines to pick up on so that when a person searches for these terms that (hopefully) they will find your site. All these things you can do yourself, you don't really need to know much about the web design side of things at all, but taking the time to research and design your site out on paper will save you time and money in the long run. (As otherwise you'll be paying the designer to do so - as most charge by the hour) Your best bet, therefore, is to plan out your page in as much detail and have all the text ready and any photos you need prepared then start to contact various web design companies looking at prices. If you need more ideas I have a page dedicated to people who are looking to plan their own web page at http://www.briongloid.net/planner/ You can also download our website planner document from there too, which can help you further in the initial design process. Hope that's a help.