How to Design, Setup and Host a Pub
Website.
In this feature we'll set you on the road to
cyber-space with the know-how necessary to create a simple but elegant website.
By the time you've finished reading this you should have a much clearer idea of
all the processes involved and the online services available to help you. And
the good news is that it doesn't have to cost you a penny.
There are free website building and hosting services that will let you create
your website entirely online so there's no software to buy or learn how to use,
and will provide you with a web address and space to store your website.
However, 'paid for' website design and hosting can offer advantages for the
potential webmaster. The question is do you need these extras?
1. Free Design
& Hosting
These services
usually provide templates to help you put a website together and are a great
option for building a site quickly and cheaply. The disadvantage of such free
services is that they lack flexibility (they won't let you tinker with page
layout), but for the novice site designer this isn't a problem - it simplifies
the design process. Additionally such free services might enforce banner and
pop-up advertising. But by reading about the different options, and choosing
wisely, you can find a free hosting provider without any intrusive advertising.
Free hosting and online website design applications include;
l
'Free Virtual Servers'; www.freevirtualservers.com
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'Microsoft Office Live';
http://office.microsoft.com/en-gb/office_live (free domain name registration,
free email addresses)
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'Google Page Creator'; https://pages.google.com
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'Free Website Hosting'; http://www.freewebsitehosting.com/
(banner advertising),
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'SiteKreator'; http://sitekreator.com/sitekreator/index.html
2. Paid For Design & Hosting
A more conventional
method of creating a website involves choosing and purchasing a domain name,
signing up to a web hosting service to store the website, designing the site on
your pc with a website design application, and transferring it from your PC
onto the web once it's finished. For example, you might decide to call your site www.mypub.co.uk, therefore your domain is called 'mypub.co.uk'. To register this (and ensure
someone else doesn't already own it), go to a registrar site (such as
www.123-reg.co.uk, www.domaindirect.com, etc) and register it in
your name. To show the website to the public you need to host the site
somewhere. Often the registrar site can also supply paid hosting.
Alternatively, if you already use broadband in your pub you will very likely
already have webspace as part of your broadband deal.
Whether you designed
your site with an online template driven application, or used a standalone
design application on your PC, you can upload your finished design to this
webspace.
3. Creating your Masterpiece
With a name for your
site and somewhere to store it ticked off the checklist, it's time to get down
to the business of actually creating the site.
People tend to get
hung up on the idea that they must include flash, video, audio, webcams, etc to
their site. However, as a site designer, you need to decide if these items will
add to the usability of your site, or just confuse the user. Remember, the key
here is to consolidate information for the potential punter, to show off your
wares, and to make the design process simple for the novice website designer.
There is nothing wrong with using 'just' text and pictures to describe and
advertise your pub and its services. Inspiration can be found by looking at
other sites on the web, whether they're pub sites or not.
You have an idea of
what you want to put on your site, now you need to create it. You can use an
online template driven application (as shown above) or a standalone
application.
You can expect to pay a couple of hundred pounds for
comprehensive web-creation suites such as Microsoft FrontPage, Macromedia
Dreamweaver or NetObjects Fusion, and these require quite a bit of practice to
use.
However, a free application, comparable to these is
NVU (www.nvu.com). This will also take some time to master,
but it is a powerful design tool and is worth the time invested to learn its
intricacies. You might even already have a simple website design application.
Microsoft Word will let you create a very basic web page. Microsoft Publisher,
which is included in Microsoft Office depending on the package you bought, is
an easy to use but powerful design application.
4. Show Time
Once your virtual masterpiece is finished it's time to think about publishing
it online. If you've used an online web creation service to put your site
together, this will be a matter of simply clicking a few buttons.
If you've used a
separate application to design the site yourself the next step is to transfer
your creation from the computer to your web space, which involves using a File
Transfer Protocol (FTP) application (CuteFTP, FileZilla, etc). This enables you
to transfer large files to your web hosting service or ISP quickly and easily.
Website creation programs such as Dreamweaver or FrontPage include FTP functions, so you
won't need separate software.
To upload your site
via FTP you'll need to know your webspace access details. For starters, the web
address you have acquired for your site is required to transfer files. You'll
also have a user name and password for your web space, so only you can transfer
and remove files. All of these details can be obtained from your web hosting
service provider.
Creating your own website can be as simple or as complex as you want it to be,
and there's no doubt that putting a website together and keeping it up to date
is a hobby all in itself. You can start by creating a very basic website and
then keep adding more to it at a later date as your confidence increases.
Top Tips.
Images can take some
time to download. To speed things up ensure you compress your images. There are
lots of compression formats out there, but as a starting point, use jpeg for
photos, and giff for maps and cartoons.
It can be a good
idea to use ‘meta tags’. These are simply keywords hidden in the page - the
web-design software will allow you to insert these.
Search Engines such
as Google are phasing out the use of meta tags to rank a site. Instead they
scan the textual content of your site to build up a page ranking. In this case
ensure your text is accurate, descriptive, and if possible, unique. The more
novel your text is, while at the same time using keywords/phrases that reflect
what it's about, the higher Google will rank it.
Search Engine Submission.
How do you get
people to look at your site when no one knows its there? You need to ensure
search engines (Google, AltaVista, Yahoo, etc) find your site. This can happen
in 2 ways, the first is that these search engines use 'bots' to trawl the web
following every link so a directory can be built, But if you have no links to
your site how can they find it? Simple, you submit your site to those search
engines you want to be aware of your site. For each search engine site, look
for a section similar to 'Add URL', add yours, and the search engine will look
for and rank your site over the following few days.