Building a web site: Part 4
Summary of the process of creating a web site – continued
6. Build out the website
With the before-mentioned completed, you’re ready to actually start creating your web pages. So what you need to do is:
- Take the structure you developed in steps 1 to 5 to create your web pages.
- Link the web pages together.
Now is the time for you to practice a little and actually build a small web site! If you can’t think of something, create one on your favorite movie with a page for each main character.
Remember that you only get good at doing something by doing it!
7. Choose a domain name
Once your website is built, you will need to get it on the web – that means you need a domain name.
All websites need a domain name, and your choice of a domain name can impact on how many people find your website, so choose carefully! Here are some points to remember when considering your choice of a domain name:
- Domain names that tell you something about the web site are food for search engines and they help clue people in, too. If for example you were building a website for a hardware store, a domain name like ‘discountHardware.com’ is pretty good, it tells you everything about the web site immediately. If you called it ‘bigSteel.com’ instead, you can argue that we are not giving such a clear message of what the web site is about. Even if the hardware store was actually called ‘Big Steel Hardware’, I would go with ‘discountHardware.com’.
- Search engines such as Google will look at several elements of your web site to try and determine what your website is about. One of those key elements is the domain name; Google will look for keywords in the domain name that help the ‘Google bot’ (Google’s automated snooper software) to categorize your web site.
One question that is asked often enough is whether the domain name has to have the same name as the business it is representing – the answer is no.
Next!
