Starting your first website and some things to consider

Starting your first website can be tricky, there are numerous points to consider, and numerous factors within those points. Let’s consider starting up first, I’ve covered hosting in a couple of posts in my time, but I will reiterate now.

Hosting

Unless you’re certain that your site or business is going to receive a massive quantity of traffic immediately, it’s not of great importance to start with an outstanding host; most blogs, band websites, small shops etc. Therefore, I recommend 000webhost.com as your starting package; it’s free, supports databases should you need them, and certainly supports all the basics functions of a starter website, (html, php etc).

WordPress / Drupal

I would not recommend using these platforms to start your first website; they’re superb for security, for contemporary design, and for effeciency. However, there is a vast amount of hard coding involved if you wish to create a bespoke design of your own. Aside from that there are a great range of templates available and should you wish to follow a set of instructions for installation, I recommend WordPress.

Photoshop / Dreamweaver

If you want to design a bespoke website, one that you can use as a playground, testing small projects and client reactions, you can use photoshop and dreamweaver; 2 very reputable Adobe tools that have an abundance of tutorials all over the web. From there you can come up with your own design, with the freedom to install simple php functions and get off the mark.

Branding, awareness and exposure

Your website branding needs to be unique, I believe that’s a fairly reasonable statement. Coming up with a unique logo or tagline can be one of the most difficult hurdles to cross, and infact, from experience, I’ve found that simple text logos are best, with a tagline that states exactly what you intend to do. Jumping too far ahead or trying to be too creative can backfire and look amatuer.

Search Engine Optimization

Research into Search Engine Optimisation is crucial, with Google often changing their methods to incorporate more fair, and content-based searches, your content and structuring is crucial. Take your time with content, don’t try and fill pages with text that has the message repeated over and over, without having any real depth. It’s recommended to construct your files into clear, easy to follow folders, with page names that you expect. For example: ‘websitename.com/tutorials/tutorial1.

The User

It’s crucial to only think about the user’s experience. Imagine you are the audience for your own website, don’t clog your mind with information you’re entering, take 10 minute breaks to look away from your product, look back and read the text from an outside perspective, and look over other people’s work to gain ideas of how to structure your own. It’s not plagurism, it’s inspiration.