with Created Expression

Here are the steps in putting up your own website: (1) acquiring a domain name, (2) contracting with a web host, (3) choosing your web site's software base and (4) working out the design of your site. Depending on your choices, this implicates more or less work at the beginning. To learn more, please read on.

1. Register a domain name.

The very first thing to do is to choose and purchase a domain name. Domain names are always in the form domainname.tld (i.e. yourdomain.com, yourdomain.ca, yourdomain.org) and they are usually available for periods of one, two, five or ten years. Notably, most domain registries (the place where you registered/purchased the right to use whichever domain name) will let you decide whether or not to auto-renew your domain. Setting this option as "on" allows to you let your domain go when you choose and ensures that it remains yours otherwise.

Go to a domain name registry

Domain registries are everywhere. You can do a google on "domain registration" and you will find lists and lists of places that sell domain names. GoDaddy.com usually has the lowest prices for ".com". enom.com is definitely competitively priced. In Canada, I use DomainsAtCost.ca. The choice is yours including letting us register your domain for you (The Collective Edge has a retail domain reseller account with enom.com.)

Search your domain name

The first thing to do is to see whether or not the name you are considering is available. To do this simply enter the domain name you are considering into the domain search box on any domain registry site. Most search boxes will show you which tld's (Top Level Domain, the extension part of the domain name) are available so don't worry about choosing ".com" or ".ca" or ".org" yet. Simply find out if the domain name you are considering is available. If it is, then decide which extension you would like for your name and if it isn't, keep going in your search. Many registries suggest other names related to the one you entered so looking through these is always an idea. And one of the most inspiring searches I've found is to use something like the thinkmap visual thesaurus. It is surprising how many people have the same original idea as we do, so finding your name can sometimes take a while.

Register your domain

Once you have a domain name that you are happy with (and that is available :o), the next step is to actually register it in your name. Although some sites can make this feel complicated, it really isn't. There are seven basic pieces of information that are necessary for the registration process...

1. Domain name, including the TLD (extension).
2. Period of registration (i.e. one year, two years,...)
3. Owner name, address and contact information.
4. Administrator name, address and contact information.
5. Technical Support name, address and contact information.
6. Host information.
7. Payment information.

2. Contract a web host.

Think of a web host as a company who has taken it upon themselves to make their computers (and disk space) open and available to the web world. Good web hosts have also taken it upon themselves to be secure and reliable in this same world but web hosts really do "serve up" files to the web. That's it. That's their business in its most basic form. In its most complex form, their business depends largely on how easy and pleasant they make the file hosting part for the clients whose files are served up. So, that written... unless you are considering making your computer a web host, you will need the services of a web hosting company for your web site.

The cost of disk space has fallen dramatically recently. With this the cost of hosting has fallen dramatically in most circles. The (sometimes still big) price differential is usually in the additional services offered to clients whose files are being hosted. But... this part of it has also changed dramatically over this past year "for real" but it has been building since blogs came into existence and the desire (plus tools) to "self manage" grew.

Many web hosting companies invested in providing web software solutions for their hosting clients. With the successful proliferation of content management systems, with PayPal establishing its validity in the seller/buyer market (courtesy of eBay but way beyond eBay now), with file repositories like YouTube making it easy to share big media, with most Internet Service Providers also providing personal web space and web site builders, with incredibly affordable huge amounts of disk space being made available, a bunch of hosting companies are, well, "stuck" with a panopoly of sometimes-very-good-but-now-almost-obsolete "solutions". A couple of years ago it was standard to expect to pay about $30 per month for 250MB of just disk space. E-commerce hosting solutions easily ran $100 per month (and this limiting the number of products made available). Well... this has all changed.

Most web hosts are now simply "web hosts" providing a couple of industry standard "control panels" to their hosting customers. These control panels allow the client (no longer the host company) relatively easy management of their web "environment" including installing and uninstalling blogs and content management systems. And, it is the latter that has moved (continues to move) much of the web world away from need to "build" web sites or buy into the leasing of "solutions".

Again, typing "web hosts" into Google will bring up an amazing number of sites and services. And, also different from a couple of years ago, many of these sites and services are probably housed on the same disks (the location of which likely being a mystery even to the "hosts" given that we are currently in a "resellers" world). So... things have switched around now. Before you would find a host and then choose or build or web solution. Now you pick the support system/community/context for your chosen web solution and ask that the web space sort of come along with that. Really.

3. Choose the base software structure of your site.

A couple of years ago, unless you paid for a "web solution" for your site, you needed to develop your own site. Tools like "Dreamweaver" or dynamic menu systems helped in this but it was very much a page by page "building". For sure there are still many (the majority probably) of sites out there that are created like this but I predict that very, very quickly web visitors will come to expect certain functionality on visiting a site that no individual can actually code up for themselves. Then the visitor push towards (accessible, self-manageable, doesn't-cost-an-arm-and-a-leg) content management systems will be stronger than the pull that is felt by some developers now.

Content Management Systems (CMS's) put another level of management between web hosts and visitors. Sort of analagous to eBay actually. Where eBay removed the intermediary between supplier and huge customer base, CMS's remove the intermediary between web site "owners" and incredibly functional web sites. Things are this direct with CMS's. And things are -- after an intial introduction -- as effective and, yes, the amount of work of eBay.

My last point means that it is possible to do all of this "stuff" directly, and/but if you choose to go this route you assume the responsibility of doing it. For many of us this means that rather than figuring out how to integrate PayPal into a Dreamweaver site, time is spent learning about Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) in order to match the aesthetics of a just-added-store-functionality to the rest of your site. Still lots of details but at a whole different level. Still independent but with the functionality of a whole community (bigger than a single development company "of old") at hand.

I write all of the above to say that you still have to decide how to develop and create your site. This still requires making a software choice. HTML is alive and well. So is Flash. You still have the option of creating your site from from the ground up but you can now choose to start from the base that is a CMS.

Having coded my sites from the ground up "always", I switched to Joomla! for my own stuff relatively recently. Joomla! is a content management system that is solid, flexible, well developed, well tested and well supported. You really do pick and choose functionality for your site as you go and as your site evolves. Currently much of the software is free but this is quickly changing and this is ultimately a good thing as it ensures a level of quality, response, future -- committment to providing professional support -- for the bits and pieces of our site that we absolutely count on. It is the software base I offer to develop from.

4. Decide on a design for your site.

Once you have a domain and a web host and have made your choice of software, the design of your site is next on your list of considerations. This is the fun part. The structural things to consider are menus (what kind? where?), number of sections to your site, what sort of functionality (a shop? a forum? registered users? or not?), what percentage of text to non-text. And your aesthethic choices should have a reason. By this I mean you should be able to describe the aesthetic that you're aiming for in a couple of descriptors and these descriptors should be your guides and decision-reference-points as you go.

With Joomla!, the design part is easier and harder given the ease. You start with a template (or two or a bunch) that you think could work for your site. And then you start playing around with them. Given that most templates available work with CSS, switching fonts and sizes and colours and backgrounds is done with a couple (or so :o) of edits to a file. So again, knowing what your descriptors are before starting into the doing part is incredibly helpful to keep you on the right track. Templates mean that the design is not hard-coded into your site. And, given that new templates are made available seemingly daily, you can always "start" with one and change/adapt/evolve the design as you go. But Joomla! or not, you still need to come up with your "design aesthetic" and, almost always, a few of your own graphics.

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So, those are the choices you have to make in order to get started...

1. a domain name
2. a web host
3. web software
4. web design

And, at with Created Expression we work hard to make making "good choices" in all of these areas easy and accessible right from the start...

You will learn more about the technicalities of the hosts and CMS's and Joomla! as you go but you don't need to know everything before starting. (There is a forum and there are tutorials and help pages to support you in your next steps if and when you're ready.)

For now, I highly recommend thinking about that domain name and visiting as many Joomla! sites as necessary to help you define your initial structural layout (menus and areas) and to clarify the descriptors for your site design. A great place to visit sites is starting at Joomla's site showcase, Rocket Theme's member sites, Rocket Theme's template demo and JoomlArt's templates. You can, of course, check out the very many free Joomla! templates by doing a search on "free Joomla templates". Google returned over 2 million results :o)

And, if you are considering working with Created Expression, please read on to learn about the next steps in that.