Jan

Website checklist for beginners

Starting out a website involves a few main ingredients that you need, as well as many optional pieces. In this article, we will discuss the essentials you need to at least be viewable on the internet. Main components are having a domain name and web hosting for your files, the actual physical files like HTML, that make up the design of the page and the option to secure your content against non encrypted attacks. Let’s take a look.

Domains Name Registration

When starting up your website, you need a domain name to help people remember how to get to your site. A memorable domain name is something like google.com, which everyone knows. Upon getting your initial site up and running, you could choose the route of a cheap domain name provider to help start your web business. These companies almost always provide similar features to the big companies and are a great alternative.

Web Hosting

You need a location to store your web site files. No matter what type of content you are displaying, including images or PDF files, they have to be accessible on a computer server that is always on. This is where you can look for a cheap domain hosting provider to help you. For a relatively inexpensive price of less than five to ten dollars a month you can get your web files hosted for others to see.

Web site contents

The web site is comprised of files, including HTML files, Image files, Videos or Flash. This has to be created by either a web designer or yourself. The better the skills of the person doing it, the better your site will look like. You can use tools like Dreamweaver or other web hosting sitebuilders to create your site. Again, quality is directly in relation to the tools used and skill level of the person doing it.

Secured Hosting Service (Optional)

Having your hosting secured is an optional practice for most sites as there is usually just static data. For those sites, that are collecting more precious information, especially credit card data, will want to buy ssl certificate to protect their users data. With collecting any credit card info or sensitive data, you must use a web certificate to make your site change from http to https. The transformation to an https site is what makes the site use the certificate to encrypt the transmitted data, so it is kept away from prying eyes. It is a necessity for these sites, but not for regular sites.

Those are four basics you need to start any web site and will get you started. You then need to decide what additional components you may need to also include in your web site package.