Creating a website
Useful resources for planning, designing and creating your own website.
If you've got any suggestions for other links or resources, email us at itguide@community.net.nz.
- Website Hosting
- Planning a Website
- Training
- Design and maintenance tools
- How to be Found
Hosting
Find a Host early in the process. The services they offer and any specific requirements they might have (such as naming conventions) can affect how you create your website. You may also have specific requirements, according to the type of Web site you're making and how you intend to update it.
There are a number of ways to have your website hosted, ranging from free, through supported by advertising to commercial.
Local Hosting
Many Internet Service Providers allow you to have free personal web pages. Often the ISPs have templates to make it easy for you to design a basic website.
Community based ISPs offer free sites for community organisations in an area, or according to the type of work that groups do.
Converge offer Community Groups and NGOs their own free (up to 2 megabytes of storage) web directory and ftp login. Participation is open to NGO or community not-for-profit members of ANGOA, CID and / or ECO, and to any other organisation that fits ANGOA, CID and/or ECO criteria. Apply online.
Wellington Community Net (WCN) is an electronic community network that provides access, content, support and training to community groups and people in the Wellington region. WCN provides free website hosting to nonprofit Wellington organisations. A template website builder is available.
Free sites
This option requires careful thought as there may be hidden drawbacks or restrictions. Some free sites force you to include a banner or annoying pop-up ads.
WordPress.com gives you a free world-class blog. It's very easy to use, and reliable. See WordPress 2 Visual Quickstart Guide in this IT & Internet guide for information on a book about WordPress.
Mac users can sign up for a low cost .Mac account with Apple. Easy web page templates are available or write your own pages and use them. The Homepage service ties in easily with free software included on all Macs such as iPhoto. .Mac also gives you storage space for backups, email and many other benefits.
Geocities free web hosting gives you 15 megabytes of space, subdirectories to help organise your files, a free PageBuilder and PageWizard and online help. This free service is supported by ads on your pages.
Fortune City offers 25 MB of storage and a secure FTP access to share your hobby with the world. Also available is a free Blog. This free service is supported by ads on your pages and pop-up windows.
Commercial hosts
Specialist hosting companies charge a monthly or annual fee to host your site. They should offer a comprehensive range of options, a good helpdesk, reliability, and a Control Panel which helps you manage your site and check visitor statistics.
For an idea of charges check out HostMe whose charges start at NZ$5 per month.
Planning for a Website
Once your website goes live it might be used by millions of people from all around the world. They will visit it with graphical browsers such as Firefox, Safari, Internet Explorer, Opera or Netscape, using Windows, Mac OS, Unix, Linux, Palm OS and other operating systems. They will view it on a tiny Palm screen or cellphone, a small black and white screen, a huge colour screen or in a variety of other ways.
They will listen to it with speech readers, read it in Braille, enlarge the text to be able to see it, print it off. They will use a mouse and keyboard, or a voice input device, or a touch screen, or maybe even a puffer switch to get around the pages.
Your planning and page creation need to take this flexibility into account.
There are recognised standards for making Web sites including standards for the HTML coding, Cascading Style Sheets, Accessibility, Usability and even the wording you use and the way visitors navigate around the site. You should aim to make a Web site which meets the standards as far as possible. Meeting those standards will also go a long way towards making it easy for search engines to list your Web site thus making it easier for visitors to find you.
In New Zealand we should be aware of the Government Web Guidelines http://www.e.govt.nz/standards/web-guidelines/.
Coding
Your Web site is built on HTML. You use HTML to determine the structure of your documents: headings, paragraphs and lists, for example. This language has rules and you can check that your pages don't break the rules by validating the HTML. Pages which break the rules may cause problems for some visitors.
Layout and display
The current standard for determining how your pages will look is to use Cascading Style Sheets (CSS). There are rules for this too, and again you should validate your stylesheets. Breaking the rules may cause your pages to display strangely. You can also create stylesheets to allow pages to print well.
Allowing visitors to get at your information
Accessibility refers specifically to whether or not people with disabilities can access your information. There are different levels of accessibility, from the most basic rule of ensuring that any image has an alternative text equivalent, through to quite sophisticated techniques. The principle of universality is about making sure that everyone can access your information regardless of the equipment they are using, which may range from very old to the latest technology. Again, there are rules and techniques you can follow and tools to help you check whether your Web site is accessible.
Useful are HiSoftware's Cynthia Says and Watchfire's WebXact.
To make your site as user-friendly as possible you need to consider who will be likely to use your website and what their expectations and requirements are. Make sure pages aren't too long, use good headings and plain language. Make it easy for visitors to find the information they're looking for. Avoid annoying your visitors — turn off pop-ups and music, let visitors know if they are about to download a file which needs Microsoft Word or other software they might not have.
There is a lot of useful information at Rachel McAlpine's Quality Web Content site.
Useful references
- Coyote Web Development and Maintenance for Mission-based Organizations
- Tip sheets covering planning, standards, writing styles, security, maintenance, marketing and more.
- Making the Net Work Toolbox - Planning a Web Site
- An article on what to do before you start creating a website.
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- At W3 Schools
- you will find all the Web-building tutorials you need, from basic HTML and XHTML to advanced XML, Multimedia and WAP.
- Registering your website with Search Engines
- Wellington Community Net (2020) links on announcing your website to the world.
- Coyote Guide to Marketing Your Organization's Web Site
- "If you build it, they will come" does not apply to Web marketing. Marketing your Web site is as important as designing it — how will you get people to visit your marvelous information if they don't know about it?