We are starting a series of write ups on what has become one of the most important manifestation’s of a company’s identity – its website. In today’s virtual world, your website has become your visiting card that is up for view 24X7.
Many prospective clients and investors are forming their first impressions about you and your company by that. Just as you would like to look good before meeting anyone, the same applies for your website. We decided to put down our learnings from creating our website and we hope this will help you when you get down to making yours.
1. Hosting your site
Hosting basically means parking your site on a server. So whenever someone types your site address, that person is taken to that place. So, as the term suggests, your first step would be to buy hosting space for your website.
There are several Indian (Ours was Webwerks) and International vendors available from where you can buy out space. But we have noticed that buying from American vendors directly turns out to be far cheaper. The disadvantage being that you may not get the prompt service levels that your neighbourhood vendor would be able to provide.
There are also several packages available depending upon the amount and duration for which the space is required. It would be safe option to initially go for one year option and if satisfied with the vendor services, you could then extend it for whatever period of like. Know what you would want to put on site first as that will allow you to estimate the amount of space you will require for it. Accordingly, you can select a package from the vendor.
The most critical aspect is to understand the terms and conditions of all the packages of the vendors. Do not rush into this.
2. Domain registration of website
If you are a startup, then don’t be surprised if the name of your firm is dictated by what domain names are available for registration. Your hosting vendor will tell you whether the name you require is available or not. Thankfully there are alternate domain name extensions available besides ‘.com’ – you also have ‘.net’ or you are from India then ‘.co.in’ or ‘.in’
Registration costs of ‘.com’ are marginally higher than ‘.co.in’ or ‘.in’ Buy your domain name for longer period irrespective of whether you continue to use the same hosting vendor.
3. Email Ids
Once you have registered your domain name, you can start creating your email IDs. Your email ids will read like ‘yourname@yourcompanyname.com’ There can be restrictions on the number of IDs that a vendor might provide depending on the package you select. Again, estimate your requirement before signing the deal.
4. Website SiteMap
Sitemap is the most critical document of a website. It’s the blue print which highlights to the search engine about the pages that are available for crawling on your site. It is more like a tree – you start off with root which is the landing page and then move on to the branches which would be other pages that you direct your users to. Prepare a sitemap yourself as you would best have an idea of what you would like to host on your site.
Don’t be surprised if you have make several revisions. We made 6 drafts before we eventually zeroed on the current structure. After you have listed out everything, go through it with your website designer – as that person will definitely be able to value add from a technical perspective.
Hope you are with us till this stage. Move on the next part of Essentials of a Website. Remember website development is very different from that of a blog!!
Comments
Tags: domain registration, essentials of a startup, Hosting, sitemap, startup, Website 1.0 & 2.0
[…] Do write in your comments if you wold like to add more or have any queries. Do read our series on Essentials of a Website Possibly related posts: (automatically generated)freebies, freebies! « with a […]
[…] will continue with this series of blog posts on essential of our website. Do read our previous post […]
[…] of a website continues to share with you our learnings of developing our website. Do read the first and second […]
[…] No Comments This is the concluding post of the series on essentials of a website. Do read the first, second and third segments of […]
Interesting stuff.. This is one ifo you dont get at one place & by the time we realise seems too rlate to rectify …. Great thing Kudos !!… Can u ad some dope if you have on Deep linking in Flash based Website to facilitate SEO.
Cheers !!
Thank you Abhi for your kind words. I will try to cover the topic you have mentioned
[…] from you. Having got the terms in place, it would be good idea to read Essentials of a Blog and Essentials of a Website series of […]
[…] on what are the essentials of a website and essentials of a blog before you start promoting […]
Pretty good blog. I myself regularly post blogs with helpful information for building websites and marketing your websites to drive customers to it at http://axsyshosting.blogspot.com. I wanted to add to what you were saying about SiteMaps.
First of all, the term sitemap is used in two different context related to websites. The first is what is described above, whereby you produce a page that contains links to all of the other important pages on your website. This has a great advantage of allowing customers to quickly find what they are looking for, but sometimes more importantly, search engines to follow the paths to other pages in order to properly rank your page in terms of keywords, content, etc.
There is another type of sitemap, which is actually an XML file that can be utilized by search engines when you register your website directly with them. This type of sitemap is simply a text file formatted using XML to describe the pages, their order, the expiration timeframe, and other pieces of important information that can be used by the search engine to properly search through your website. It is the preferred method for registering your website with most search engines.
Regarding your comment about the disadvantage of using an American hosting company, I’m not sure what you meant. However, speaking for my company, our customers are provided with an account manager that is at the direct dial of our customers. If our customers have a problem, they simply pick up the phone, speak to their account manager, and the manager handles the rest to get their problem resolved. It allows our customers to go about their business and do what they do best, while allowing us to do what we do best. I like to think that it is what separates our company from other hosting companies. We do the same for our website design and development customers as well.
One last comment. Be careful when using disk space, bandwidth, etc. to compare hosting companies. It is a gimmick used by most hosting companies to try and gain an edge over their competition. The idea is to over sell the space and overlap it physically since most customers never really use the space and bandwidth allocated. Think of it as virtual space that grows in your account as the need arises. Most average websites never go beyond 5 – 10 megs of space in reality, unless they become successful, and if they do become successful, it gets to the point that they want their own dedicated server very quickly.
It’s best to select a hosting company that offers quality 24/7 support, whereby if you ever have a problem or request, they handle it within 1 – 2 hours. You want a company that you can see yourself growing with for the long term. Both in terms of hosting and website design/development.
Secondly, try to choose a hosting company that has staffed members intimately familiar with the development technologies that you’ll be using for your website or web application.
Hope this information helps others.
Thank you Ken for reading our posts and giving out your suggestions. They were very useful. Regarding the hosting, not many companies give out good technical and service support and hence I recommended that get your site hosted from someone closer home so that issues can get resolved faster and efficiently
great post. Another very essential item of any web site is to have video. A plane web site nowadays is almost naked without video. Even in this volitile economy internet video is a very afforadable marketing tool and can really make any web site pop.
just my 2 cents.
You are correct with mentioning that Ursula. In fact our second part of this essentials of website talks about adding photos and videos in your site.
[…] is very common to see companies scrambling to get their website up. In few cases, some basic essentials of website itself are missing, but in most the marketers have no clear agenda on why they are building one. […]
[…] are the pictures which highlight the places that can be used to guide your friends and fans to your brand website or […]