chapter14

Chapter Fourteen

How to Create a Website for your business

Step 1. Reserve Your Dot Com (Domain) Name

Step 2. Find a Web Hosting Company

Step 3. Create Your Web Pages

How to Register a Domain (Dot Com) Name

Decide on a name for your company and register it. To get a jumpstart I
recommend my quickcart.com since it is very affordable and offers a lot of
extra services.

Now if you're looking to create a long-term web site, the first thing you need
to do is reserve your own domain name (sometimes called a "dot com"
name). Also, if you want to be found in the major search engines and
directories, you may want to take some time to understand how a domain
name can benefit you when it comes to receiving traffic.

How to Choose the Best Domain Name

If being found in the search engines is extremely important to you, I highly
recommend you register a name that contains your major keywords instead
of your company name.

Think about it. The average surfer searches by subject, not by proper name.
So why it may seem neat and cool to have a dot com name like
TimothysToolTyme.com, you'll want to choose a name that includes
keywords that your target audience would likely use when they search.

So with that in mind, a name like Tool-Tips-for-Beginners.com would be
much better than TimothysToolTyme.com. Sure, you can still list your
company name on your web pages, but I believe it's more important to make
sure the domain name includes your important "search friendly" keywords.

And of course you can still list your company name on the web site, but your
domain name will include all the important keywords you'll want to be found
with.

Now of course there are exceptions.

If you are just creating a web site for your local business, getting traffic from
all over the web may not be as important to you. You may be trying to grow
your brand name in your area. If this is the case, then it makes more sense to
register your company name instead of trying to capitalize on major
keywords.

But if you want to receive traffic from all over the web via the search engines,
I strongly recommend you spend some thinking of a domain name that
represents what your site is about rather than using your name or a business
name (unless, of course, your business name already describes what your
site offers).

For example, if your business' name is Debt Free Days, then it makes more
sense to register debt-free-days.com because it includes two major
keywords that people probably search for: "debt" and "free".

However, if your business' name is something like J.W. Reed & Co., it's not
obvious what that you're selling by reading the name, therefore it may make
more sense to register a domain name that includes keywords instead of
just registering something like jwreedandco.com.

Keep in mind that the domain name is not the only factor weighed by search
engines when deciding your rank. The content on your web pages and your
site's popularity is very important too. However, it certainly doesn't hurt to
make sure your name is optimized for maximum results.

Here's another example of how to choose the best domain name...

Let's say you want to build a site to help people avoid getting scammed
when buying a used car. So in this case, your target audience is simply
going to be car buyers.

Now, put yourself in someone's shoes who is searching on Yahoo for this
kind of information. What kinds of keywords might they type in?

"car buying scams"
"avoiding car scams"
"buying a used car"
"used car scams"
"used car buying scams"
"car buying for beginners"

So you'll want to come up with a name that encompasses what your site is
about AND make sure it has the all important keywords you're trying to
target. This is very important if you plan to get listed with Yahoo because
when they add your site, the title that they use will generally be whatever
you've chosen for your domain name.

And if the name you want is taken, just add a word or two. I'm sure Car-
Buying-Scams.com is already taken so maybe you could try All-About-Car-
Buying-Scams.com. You've still got your major keywords in the domain
name.

Here are some more tips on choosing the best domain name:

1) Don't register domain names that are too long and have too many
syllables if you can help it.

You want your name to be easy to remember. Not everyone will bookmark
your page initially so try to think of something that can be easily remembered
-- although I realize this may be tricky since a lot of names are taken these
days.

2) Use hyphens if your name is more than 3 words long (unless your name
includes 3 short words). A name like carbuying.com doesn't really need a
hyphen because it's readable the way it is. However a name like used-car-
buying-scams.com looks better than usedcarbuyingscams.com since there
are so many words in the name.

3) Try to reserve a dot com name (instead of dot net, dot biz, etc.). People
are still way to accustomed to remembering "dot com" addresses. But of
course if there's a name you really want and the dot com version is taken but
dot net is still available, by all means reserve the name you want.

Step 2: Find a Website Hosting Company
After you register your domain name, you'll need a website hosting company
so you can start creating your web pages. Don't pay $50/month or
something ridiculous if you're just starting out. You can host your site with us
and save money: www.my quickcart .com

A "web host" provides you with the space, tools and support to create your
web pages. This is where all the action happens, so please read this page
carefully to ensure that you choose the most appropriate option.

Types of Web Hosting
Depending on the kind of web site you need, there are different web hosting
options. Not everyone needs a large web site with lots of pages, so there's
no point in paying monthly for a small web site. Some ideal situations for
creating a one page web site would be:

1) Announcing an up and coming business (overview)
2) An "About Me" homepage
3) Online resume
4) Wedding announcement & details page
5) A place to list your available auctions (ebay, etc).

If you decide to expand your site at a later date, you can always switch to a
larger package.

Step 3: Create Web Pages
You can either create your pages by writing HTML or using an HTML editor
like Microsoft FrontPage. Are you a beginner? If so, you may not care to
learn HTML to create your pages. There are web hosters out there that
provide user-friendly web site creation software so all you have to do is point
and click your mouse to create your web pages. If this interests you, I highly
recommend using webhosting.yahoo.com.

On the other hand, if you're feeling a bit adventurous and want to dive right
into HTML, good for you! Read below to learn more about HTML.

Basic Text & Font Tags

Before I get started, you should know that HTML code almost always uses
beginning and ending tags. These tags surround the text that will be affected
by the code. A beginning tag is generally a word surrounded by brackets.
The closure tag is surrounded by the same brackets but with a forward slash
right after the opening bracket.

For example, if you want to bold a portion of a sentence, then you would use
 for the opening tag and for the closing.

Let’s say you want to bold the word "Hello!" in the sentence below. Then your
HTML code would look like this:

Hello! My name is Carla.

The output would be:

Hello! My name is Carla.

Only the word "Hello!" is bolded because the tags surround that word. If you
wanted to bold the entire sentence, then you would have put the closure tag,
, after the word "Carla". Be sure to always include your closing tag
because if you forget, your entire page will be affected by the tag.

You can apply this same concept to many other HTML codes. Here are
several of the basics...

Basic Text & Font Tags

New Paragraph: Starts a new paragraph and creates a blank line
between your new paragraph and the one above it.

The closing tag is but is not mandatory.

Line Break: This will break your text to the next line. Two tags is
equivalent to one tag. There's no closing tag needed for this one.

Bold: Closing tag is 

Underline: Closing tag is 

Italics: Closing tag is 

Centering text: <center> Closing tag is </center>

Left aligning text: Just use for the closing tag

Right aligning text: Just use for the closing tag

Change text color: 

The ending for any font tag is 

Changing font face: 

Change font size: (choose between 1 and 7)

Blinking Text: <blink> </blink> (only works in Netscape)

Scrolling Text: <marquee> </marquee> (only works in Internet Explorer)
Here is an example of web page written in HTML:

<html>

<head>

<title>Title that is displayed at the top of your web browser and also
used as the title by many search engines</title>

<meta name="description" content="10-15 word description of your
site read by some search engines">

<meta name="keywords" content="main keywords of your site
separated by commas. Read by some search engines">

</head>

<body>



This is my new web page. I hope you like it. Please come back and
visit again. If you need help creating your web site visit <a href="http:
//www.myfashionguru.com">2 Myfashionguru.com</a>.



</body>

</html>

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

The <html> tag just tells the browser where the HTML starts. It is not
necessary to include this tag to get your page to show.

The <title> tells your browser the title of the page and you’ll see this text at
the very top of your web browser. This is also used by most search engines
when indexing your page. Whatever text you have here will be title of your
site when displayed in the search engines.

The <meta name> information is also somewhat useful for some search
engines. They may use whatever is in your "description" tag to describe your
site. Others may randomly take an excerpt of the <body> of your page for a
description of your site. The keyword tag may also be helpful with your
ranking in some engines. Insert 3 or 4 of your main keywords or keyword
phrases separated by commas here.

A few years ago, the <meta name> information was quite crucial in getting a
top listing with the search engines. However, things have changed drastically
with the explosion of so many new sites and the fact that many people
abused it. I would still recommend using these tags but don’t expect to get a
top ranking because of them.

The body of your site should be included inside the <body> tags.

Inserting Hyperlinks

Hyperlinks are links that take you to another page or web site. You create
them by using the code below:

<a href="http://www.thepage.com">Name of link</a>

The link would appear as, Name of link

Open Links in a New Browser Window

If you don’t want people to leave your site completely when they click on links
to other sites, you can set the link to open up a new window. The "target"
attribute allows you to do this:

<a href="http://www…… "target="_blank">

Absolute vs Relative URLs

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

URL is another name for a web site address and stands for Uniform
Resource Locator.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

There are two different types of URLs you can use to link to various pages,
absolute and relative.

Absolute URLs

Absolute URLs include the complete path to the file’s location, including the
names of all the directories and subdirectories.

Let’s say you have a folder inside your web site's root directory called
"music" and you want to link to a page inside the "music" folder called
brahms.html.

The absolute URL is:

<a href="http://www.yoursite.com/music/brahms.html">Brahms</a>

Relative URLs

If you don’t want to ever have to worry about going back and editing your
hyperlinks if your site structure changes then relative URLs are the way to go.

Relative URLs are more or less like shorthand that tells the browser to go
backward one or more directories to find the file.

Let's say you're on the page we referenced above, brahms.html (located in
the "music" folder) and you want to link back to the home page: (http://www.
yoursite.com/index.html)

Using a relative URL, you would tell the browser to go back 1 directory by
using the dot-slash method.

<a href="../index.html">Home</a>

The two dots followed by a slash instructs the browser to go up 1 more level
to get to the main (root) directory.

Creating Email Links

Creating email links are just as simple. All you need is the "mailto" function
to get this to work properly:

<a href="mailto:youraddress@email.com">Email Me</a>

So now you have the tools to create a very simplistic HTML page. Next, you’ll
discover how to do a few more advanced techniques to spice up your page.

Anchor Links

If you want to create a link that will take the visitor to another section of the
page rather than a new page or site, then you need to create an anchor link.
There are two steps to this process:

1) First, go to the place in your HTML code where you want the anchor to go.
This is the spot on the page that the browser will move to when a person
clicks on the anchor link.

Insert the code <a name="name1">Title</a> "name1" is just the name of the
anchor I chose. You can all it anything you want. Let's say you were setting
up a glossary and the A section starts here. You could name the anchor <a
name="A">Title</a>. Remember this part is not visible to the visitor.

2) Now to link to that section of the page, use the hyperlink code:

<a href="#name1">click here</a>

Now when your visitors click on that link, they will be taken to that section of
the page.

Inserting Images

Once you have the image you want to use you can insert it into your web
page.

Next you’ll need to do is upload the graphic to your web server. Your web
hoster will either provide the environment for you to upload your images or
you'll have to use an FTP program.

If you need help with FTP, click here.

When you upload the graphic, make sure you pay attention to what folder you’
re putting it into because that will affect how you write the HTML.

Let’s say you upload the graphic called "apple.gif" to your "images" folder on
your web server. The image folder is located inside your "root" directory.

Your HTML code will look like this:

<img src="images/apple.gif">

Now let’s say you have uploaded the graphic to the "fruit" folder/directory that
is located inside of the images folder then the code would appear as:

<img src="images/fruit/apple.gif">

The Alt Tag

If you want text to pop up when you run the mouse over the graphic, then you
need to add the alt tag.

<img src="images/apple.gif" alt="This is my apple">

Specify Height and Width

If you want to adjust the height and width of the image then you need to use
the height and width tags:

<img src="images/apple.gif" alt="This is my apple" height="100" width="
150">

It is recommended that you always include the height and width of your
images because it makes your pages load faster.

Creating a Clickable Image

Linking images is helpful if you have buttons or banners on your site and you
want the visitor to be taken to another web page or site when they click on
the image. To accomplish this, use the following code:

<a href="http://www.the_linked_site.com"><img src="images/apple.gif"
border="0"></a>

The first part of the code tells the browser which site to go to and the second
part, of course, tells it where the image is located.

Indenting Text

To indent your text about an inch to the right, simply use the open and closing
<blockquote> tag around the text you want to indent.

<blockquote> This text will be indented indented </blockquote>

See how the code makes the text in the paragraph below behave:

sample text sample text sample text sample text sample text sample text
sample text sample text sample text sample text sample text sample text
sample text sample text sample text sample text sample text sample text
sample text sample text sample text

This text will be indented indented
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Special Characters

Code Symbol Description

™ ™ Trademark
& & Ampersand
® ® Registered trademark
© © Copyright
&dagger; † Dagger
» » Right pointing double angle quotation mark

« « Left pointing double angle quotation mark
 — Em-dash
° 30° Degree
¼ ¼ Quarter
½ ½ Half
¾ ¾ Three quarters
· · Middle dot
¡ ¡ Inverted exclamation mark

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