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Setting Up Your Own WebsiteSetting Up a Website the easy way |
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Setting Up Your Own WebsiteSetting Up a Website the easy way |
If you want a website in order to tell people about yourself or your company, answer frequently asked questions, share information among members of an organization or in other ways communicate without actually selling anything, there are several website hosting companies that offer complete packages and good phone support. They will help you register a name for your website, provide you with tools to create your pages in a What-You-See-Is-What-You-Get tool that doesn't require any knowledge of web programming or HTML, and then provide a safe web server to "serve" your pages to the public without your having to get into the business of setting up your own machinery or software.
You can have a do-it-yourself website for from $15 to $200 a year. There are a number of companies that cater to people who want just one site and who are not particularly interested in learning the technical aspects of setting up a website. These companies differ from regular web hosting companies in that their emphasis is on providing:
The thing to be careful about is to choose a reputable company that offers
good tools for building
your website, a choice of graphic designs and templates, and good customer
support.
Yahoo! Web Hosting
offers a set of easy to use online tools.
www.GoDaddy.com
provides excellent support and a variety of site building tools, as does Web.com
.
Homestead
also specializes in serving the beginning website builder.
You will have a choice of several pre-designed pages, called templates. Most of the page building tools only allow you to edit certain parts of each page. You will, however, be able to add your own text and, usually, insert some of your own graphics.
If you're not sure you want to try this approach, these companies all offer
a free trial period where you can try out the tools and see if this avenue
is for you. Homestead . for example, offer a free 30-Day trial.
A forum can be either a whole site or part of a larger site. It's a good way for people to share ideas and discuss issues. Most web hosting companies, such as Lunarpages Web Hosting, offer one click install of phpBB, a free forum package. There's also phpWiki, which allows you to build your own knowledge sharing site. Great for people working together on a project!
Families, organizations or interest groups can communicate with each other, post ideas, comments, likes and dislikes on their own specialized Facebook-like site using pre-built software such as Ning.com. Ning is an online service, hosted by Ning. It's considered the easiest to get started with, but there are several others, like Elgg and FamilyCMS if you are willing to read the manual.
If you need to ask your website visitors to supply you with information, for example, in surveys, contact forms, feedback forms, forms with calculations, online polls or a customized form with detailed information about a proposed project, there are services and software such as Form Pro or Survey Monkey that allow you to build your own forms. has a neat and really easy-to-use Flash form builder. Just ask your web host first whether they support "sendmail." They'll know what you're talking about.
If you need custom programming or artwork,
you can get a professionally designed website with Yola Premier.. Besides offering domain and web hosting, they'll create a custom design for you.
