Your Step-by-Step
Website Planning Guide
Step
1: Buy A Domain Name
The very first step in starting
up a website is to determine if you need a domain name for your
site. You could host your website on a free server. However, if
you plan to operate a real website and increase your revenue using
it, chances are that you do need to purchase a domain name that
can be easily identified with your business, and not some long name
that is used with the free services. Actually, most FREE
web hosting services are just using your website as an
advertising medium for themselves. Few things in life are really
"free" and this is no exception.
Having your own domain name helps to lend credibility to your business
if you have at the very minimum, a company email address that reflects
your unique company and one web page that describes your company and
includes basic contact information. It also shows that you are serious
about your company. Today, the cost of owning a domain name is cheap,
so there is no reason not to buy one.
We can assist you in selecting a
name and guide you through the registration process. Our prices
are well below what you could pay with some other registrars. For
example, Network Solutions charges $35/year for .com, .net and .org
extensions. We can offer the exact same service to our customers
for $25/year.
| Ready
to reserve your domain name? Great!
Click on the Graphic to the right to visit ATexasDomain.com.
All you need is some domain names in mind and a major credit
card to process your purchase on our secure server. If you
have never purchased anything on the web before, or you are
feeling a little nervous, Relax - go through the tutorial
and payment screen shots first. |
|
Step
2: Pick A Hosting Plan
Now that you have decided to purchase
a domain name, you will need a place to "host"
your web pages. A host is a computer that is connected to the internet
24 hours a day and stands by just waiting for a web user to request
your pages via a search engine or link from another site or by typing
in your domain name in a browser. You are actually just leasing
a specified amount of disk & transfer space from the hosting
computer.
It is a good idea to do some advance
planning to determine what level of hosting will be required to
host the kind of site that you want to produce. You should lease
a hosting plan that allows room for growth, and the ability to take
you to the next level. Here are the hosting plans offered by VR
Barnett Web Services.
| Hosting Plans use the Ensim
control panel and include file upload and download
tools, email user interface, webmail, webalizer, FrontPage Extensions,
FTPaccounts, member helpdesk, online tutorials and MORE! |
|
| S-100
Starter Hosting
$15.95 |
B-200
Basic Hosting
$29.95 |
P-500
Plus Hosting
$39.95 |
P-800
Pro Hosting
$54.00 |
| 
100 MB Disk Space
2 GB Bandwidth
75 Email Users
|
200 MB Disk Space
5 GB Bandwidth
100 Email Users
1 Sub Domain
1 Ensim Power Tool
|
500 MB Disk Space
10 GB Bandwidth
150 Email Users
5 Sub Domains
3 Ensim Power Tools |
800 MB Disk Space
15 GB Bandwidth
200 Email Users
5 Sub Domains
All Ensim Power Tools |
Ensim
Power Tools
What? You Have No Techical
Knowledge? Just purchase a plan that includes Ensim Power
Tools integration. These tools provide easy installation and configuration
of the following popular Web Applications. Take
it easy on yourself and use our push button installations.
| |
Portals and Content Management
- PHPNuke and PostNuke make
it easy to build Web portals and communities. They manage news
articles, discussion groups, blogs and more. -
Learn More Here: http://phpnuke.org/ or http://noc.postnuke.com/
|
| |
make it easy to add a powerful discussion group or forum to
your Web site. You can have an unlimited number of forums and
categories with full user management, search and moderator capabilities.
Learn More Here: http://www.phpbb.com/ or
http://www.invisionboard.com/ |
| |
Chat - PHPOpenChat
lets you add a fully functional live chat system to your Web
site. Use it for customer support or just to chat with others
on the Web! -
Learn More Here:http://phpopenchat.org/ |
| |
Photo Albums- With Gallery,
you can easily manage and display your collections of images
on your Web site. You can organize your pictures into albums,
add captions, and create thumbnails. Gallery automatically keeps
track of which pictures are most popular, and even lets viewers
leave comments! -
Learn More Here: http://gallery.menalto.com |
| |
Web Form Management- Receive results
of visitor requests in your inbox. FormMail
allows visitors to fill out information in your on-line form
and delivers the information to you via email. Just post your
form to FormMail and itl takes care of the rest! -
Learn More Here: http://www.dtheatre.com/scripts/formmail
|
| |
E-commerce- Implement your own shopping
cart using OSCommerce. makes it easy
to build profitable Web-based storefronts. Manage product catalogs,
prices, customer accounts, orders and shipping. Integrated customer
product reviews and recommendations are included in this powerful
"more than a shopping cart" software. - Learn More
Here: http://www.oscommerce.org |
Choosing The Right Hosting Plan
The hosting plan that you choose will be based largely
upon the type of files, programs and activity required by
your site. Most hosting plans are priced by amenities that
they offer. Things to consider include:
- Disk Space Capacity - The amount of space
required to store your files , programs and graphics
- Expected Bandwidth Usage - Number of
hits and visitors your site expects
- Additional Scripts and Programs
- Guestbooks
- Interactive Forums or Bulletin Boards
- Web Forms
- Picture Galleries
- Site Search and Site Indexing Programs
- Content Management Programs
- Data Base Integration (Mysql)
- Shopping Carts
Remember: Graphic image files and .pdf
files take up more space (in bytes) than HTML or text
files. The more options, files, programs and features
you need, the more advanced hosting plan you will need.
- Website Marketing - Warning:
Developing an online
marketing plan or strategy for your website
will cause growth and increased website traffic!
You will quickly discover new purposes for your site. Plan
ahead by choosing a hosting plan that allows room to grow
if you plan to actively market your site.
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