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The 6 Steps
to Building
a Website
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1 |
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| The Outline |
| Put on paper a rough storyboard of what you want your new website to look like. |
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Look at other websites to get ideas. |
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Focus on content for your exact target audience |
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| Decide on the number of pages and generally what is going to go on each page. |
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Home, Products, Services, Testimonials, Contact, Etc. |
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| Keeping it simple. |
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Moving graphics and surprise sounds can be distracting and annoying. |
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Shopping carts and Databases can be expensive to set up and very time consuming in the long run. |
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2 |
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| Create the Content |
| Write the titles, headlines and paragraphs for all pages then save in a text format. |
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Again, focus on your target audience in your geographic area |
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| Consider Search Engine Optimization when writing all text. |
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Key words should be peppered throughout the site. |
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| Decide on and acquire the photos, graphics and logos that are going to be used. |
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3 |
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| Prepare the Components |
| Scan, manipulate and size the photos, graphics and logos. |
| Save each component in a .png or .jpg format |
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Use ‘Save for Web’ option in your graphics program. |
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4 |
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| Establish the Layout |
| Pick the fonts and background color or a graphic to be used as a background. |
| Have a single piece of paper for each page. |
| Sketch where you want the pictures, text, logos and link buttons. |
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There are many major browsers out there and they all look at websites a little differently.
What might look perfect in Internet Explorer 7 will probably look a little different (or very different) in Safari.
Most of the differences will be the result of the versions of the user’s software and their settings. The website builder might have to make some adjustments to the original design so that the webiste will look good in most browsers. Some things we have very little control over. |
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5 |
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| Build the Website |
| With all of the photos, graphics, logos and text ready in a digital file folder you can begin building the website. |
| The easiest way is to pass off this information to your web developer and wait. |
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6 |
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Set up the Internet Components
(The web developer usually takes care of this stuff) |
| Find a URL (www.yourwebsite.com) that is available. (Available URL, Network Solutions, GoDaddy, etc.) |
| Purchase this URL from a Registrar - $10-35/year |
| Contract with a server to host your site (there are thousands of local and national servers and most registrars will host websites) $5-25/mo |
| Upload your new site from your computer to the Internet server. |
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Visitors will then be able to view your website. |
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| Register with Google, Yahoo, Bing and DMOZ to speed up being listed in these search engines |
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These search engines share their results with the other, smaller search engines. |
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