In this post, I talk about the options one has if they want to own some space on the internet. This post will be of use to you weather you are creating your own personal website or you are presenting a business idea or are actually working towards a project! Read on..
Blogging:
Simplest and most reliable way of having your space online is opening an account with blogging service providers like www.blogger.com (Google), www.wordpress.com, home.spaces.live.com (MSN) or www.myyblog.com (yahoo). The service is a lot more stable than what you can have if you were to host it yourself and the best is that it comes for free to start with. You can post any content onto the blog – pictures, videos, text etc. However the shortcomings of using blogging sites is that the amount of customization in terms of the site templates is limited and also you need to stick to the page structure that gets generated automatically. The result is that if you want a custom URL for your post/page, the chances of you being able to get it are bleak (or you need to switch to advanced settings). If you want to simply keep log of your activities, maintain your own dairy or have a passion for writing or presenting some technical or useful content to the world blogging is for you.
You are also allowed to use your own domain name for your blog that is hosted with these service providers, so you don’t have to compromise on using the sub-domain name that is given by the blogging service provider. You can also opt for templates other than the standard ones supplied with your blog. You can either find templates on several sites on the web or you can build your own. This website you are seeing here is a blog that is using a non-standard template. You can also get feedback or comments when you go with blogging. Finally, if you have a lot of visitors on your blog, and like doing this, you can run advertisements that can get you some dollars.
Building 5 page websites:
If you need more than what is offered by these blogs, you can create your own website. Being as creative as possible while maintaining simplicity is the key to success here. If you tend to use too many graphics or flash in them, the search engine bots will not be able to get to the content you serve and you might suffer visitor losses. For creating these websites, you need to know HTML well while knowledge of some multimedia can be helpful. To learn more about HTML, you can use this tutorial: http://www.w3schools.com/htmL/ . There is also a certification option from W3 schools on this technology which is free and showcases your skills.
If you do not have the time or expertise to create these pages all by yourself, there are a plenty of websites that offer various website templates for free and for a fee. You might want to simply pick one and customize it. There are also tools like Dreamweaver that are available in the market today that can help in building/modifying these websites very quickly and with little knowledge of HTML.
Once you have built your website, you need a place to run/host it. For this, you have several webhosting service providers. There are a lot of webhosting providers who offer you a lot of stuff for free, but their quality of service (page rendering, availability) is generally poor or they place ads on your website and can’t generally provide you with custom error pages which can become quite an issue when your website is gaining popularity. From my experience, I can recommend www.000webhost.com. Then, when you have enough budget and can afford webhosting paying about 5 or 10 $ a month, you can get excellent service.
Using auto installer scripts:
Now in your website, if you want a guest book or a contact us tab with a form to reach you, you will also need a place to store data and write some code to validate what is being put into the fields. This is not possible using plain HTML. You might want to use some other web programming language like JSP or PHP that would write to either the file system, or to send an e-mail or to write to a database like MySQL. To be able to do this involves a database, scripting languages and SMTP facilities. Using these webhosting often simplifies creation of your websites that are to be run as “Content Management Systems” aka forums, or custom blogs where you can store data and grant access permissions to registered users. The simplification is by using auto installer scripts that install the related open source framework.
By opting for these web hosting service providers, you also get to have e-mail ids that use your domain name. This is very essential according to me if you were to present your micro business professionally.
-Pavan Pendyala
Blogging:
Simplest and most reliable way of having your space online is opening an account with blogging service providers like www.blogger.com (Google), www.wordpress.com, home.spaces.live.com (MSN) or www.myyblog.com (yahoo). The service is a lot more stable than what you can have if you were to host it yourself and the best is that it comes for free to start with. You can post any content onto the blog – pictures, videos, text etc. However the shortcomings of using blogging sites is that the amount of customization in terms of the site templates is limited and also you need to stick to the page structure that gets generated automatically. The result is that if you want a custom URL for your post/page, the chances of you being able to get it are bleak (or you need to switch to advanced settings). If you want to simply keep log of your activities, maintain your own dairy or have a passion for writing or presenting some technical or useful content to the world blogging is for you.
You are also allowed to use your own domain name for your blog that is hosted with these service providers, so you don’t have to compromise on using the sub-domain name that is given by the blogging service provider. You can also opt for templates other than the standard ones supplied with your blog. You can either find templates on several sites on the web or you can build your own. This website you are seeing here is a blog that is using a non-standard template. You can also get feedback or comments when you go with blogging. Finally, if you have a lot of visitors on your blog, and like doing this, you can run advertisements that can get you some dollars.
Building 5 page websites:
If you need more than what is offered by these blogs, you can create your own website. Being as creative as possible while maintaining simplicity is the key to success here. If you tend to use too many graphics or flash in them, the search engine bots will not be able to get to the content you serve and you might suffer visitor losses. For creating these websites, you need to know HTML well while knowledge of some multimedia can be helpful. To learn more about HTML, you can use this tutorial: http://www.w3schools.com/htmL/ . There is also a certification option from W3 schools on this technology which is free and showcases your skills.
If you do not have the time or expertise to create these pages all by yourself, there are a plenty of websites that offer various website templates for free and for a fee. You might want to simply pick one and customize it. There are also tools like Dreamweaver that are available in the market today that can help in building/modifying these websites very quickly and with little knowledge of HTML.
Once you have built your website, you need a place to run/host it. For this, you have several webhosting service providers. There are a lot of webhosting providers who offer you a lot of stuff for free, but their quality of service (page rendering, availability) is generally poor or they place ads on your website and can’t generally provide you with custom error pages which can become quite an issue when your website is gaining popularity. From my experience, I can recommend www.000webhost.com. Then, when you have enough budget and can afford webhosting paying about 5 or 10 $ a month, you can get excellent service.
Using auto installer scripts:
Now in your website, if you want a guest book or a contact us tab with a form to reach you, you will also need a place to store data and write some code to validate what is being put into the fields. This is not possible using plain HTML. You might want to use some other web programming language like JSP or PHP that would write to either the file system, or to send an e-mail or to write to a database like MySQL. To be able to do this involves a database, scripting languages and SMTP facilities. Using these webhosting often simplifies creation of your websites that are to be run as “Content Management Systems” aka forums, or custom blogs where you can store data and grant access permissions to registered users. The simplification is by using auto installer scripts that install the related open source framework.
By opting for these web hosting service providers, you also get to have e-mail ids that use your domain name. This is very essential according to me if you were to present your micro business professionally.
-Pavan Pendyala
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