So, You Want a Web Site...

This article will cover some of the basic things that you'll have to consider when building a web site.

In general, this is what you'll need if you're trying to get up a simple web site:

A domain name - for example, www.yourcompany.com
A place to host your web site
A program to edit your web site (FrontPage in this case)
A program to edit images for your web site (see our Graphics page)
If you want ecommerce and don't have thousands of dollars to spend on it, we recommend PayPal's shopping cart/button system - easy and cheap!

But before you even get to these things, you need to do some research and thinking.

What's the purpose of your web site? To sell? To provide information about your services? To persuade people to call you? If you can narrow down what you want your viewers to do when they're at your site, you can save yourself a lot of time by focusing your web site content.
Who is your audience going to be? If you already have marketing materials, you've probably already thought about this. For example, do you have a specific audience such as African-American women? If so, this will help you to choose relevant imagery.
What kind of technology is your audience using? Are most of them going to have high-speed internet access? If not, you may want to stay away from large image files or large animation files such as Flash movies.

The answers to these questions will help you to stay focused as you build your web site.