Basics of Creating a Web Site

The advice, "Don't put the cart before the horse," definitely applies to the process of creating a Web site. If you envision Web-site creation as editing a page of images, text and other content elements, you are guilty of putting the cart ahead of the horse. Web-site creation requires that you emphasize planning and conceptualizing, stages many people dismiss as mere preliminaries.

Planning Your Web Site

Unless you have a clear idea of what you want to achieve before you start designing your site, your final product will not be focused. You need to decide first what you want your Web site to do. You may want to sell a product, showcase a hobby or provide information about a particular topic. Your goal influences the design choices you will make later.

Outlining Your Web Site

After establishing your goal, create an outline that shows how you will develop your Web site to achieve that goal. If you have decided, for example, that the goal of your site is to sell shoes, then include a catalog of all the shoes your company stocks and a means of transmitting customer orders. You will also want to provide information about your company.

Choosing a Web-Site Host

By outlining your site first, you will also become aware of particular needs that your hosting company must meet. For your shoe-company site, for instance, you must find a host that allows direct transmission of orders and whether you will be allowed to use a personalized domain name or continue your site under a previously established one. Look carefully at the support services the host provides, too. You should evaluate the offerings of several host companies before making a selection.

Acquiring Authoring Software

An important factor to consider as you evaluate Web site hosts is the type of software required to create and edit your site. Some hosts offer on-line editing tools that may limit your design choices. Others provide offline authoring programs that work only with that particular host. If you have a preferred authoring program of your own, you need to know if it works with the host you choose. You also want your software to allow you to easily publish your completed pages to your website without the need for additional FTP tools.

Designing Your Web Site

Having selected your host and software means you are ready to design your Web site. You can simplify the design process by using templates included in most authoring programs, or you can start from scratch. Focus on creating your Web site's home page first, and then design each page linked to it as a separate file.

Editing and Publishing Your Web Site

Editing allows you to refine the site you have just designed. If you have used templates you can change template elements to make them more appropriate to your Web site's purpose. Check the result of your editing by viewing your site with several different browsers. A site viewed with Internet Explorer will look different than the same site seen on Mozilla Firefox. Once you are satisfied with the result of your efforts you can publish your site to your host's server.

Maintaining Your Web Site

Your work is not over when you publish your site---you still need to ensure that people can find it. Advertising it includes getting it indexed in appropriate search engines, and you will also need to routinely update its contents. Though Web-site maintenance is a continuous effort, careful planning and development in advance of its launch greatly simplifies your work.