January 2004 General Meeting
Website Design Considerations
Begin with a plan
Define your target audience.
Is it a known entity (e.g., Intranet)? English speaking? Or should provision be made for other languages?
What is the content and who will provide it?
Write down your objective.
Will it be a personal home page, an on-line "business card," or a place to publish (calendar, contacts, resource material, etc.) for an organization?
Determine where site will be hosted
Investigate what you will require for server features.
Use the links I provide as a starting point for your research. There are so many potential hosting companies, I can only really address those with whom I have first-hand experience.
- First, BSD WebSolutions.com
- Host for the MHCUG site at no cost to our organization.
- Family run business located locally (City of Poughkeepsie).
- I recently moved my XPS.ORG site to BSD WebSolutions and can report outstanding, personalized, customer service at a very affordable cost.
- Another example is HostRocket.com
- Located in Clifton Park, NY
- Has promotional offer of free space that I took advantage of to host these pages. (This free offer does not include email or using your own domain name.)
Register a domain name
There are a number of registrars. Your hosting company usually can arrange domain name registration, or you can do it yourself. I use Dotster.com and am satisfied with price and service. See links for other possibilities.
Maintenance
Important to plan in advance. If others are to maintain the site, provision must be made in advance for training. Read more here.