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F.A.Q. and Information
What you should know:
Domain Name - A domain name (www.yoursite.com) is the address or phone number to your webpage. There are no two exactly the same. There are hundreds of companies that will sell these to you. Find a company that you have heard positive feedback on and use them. 3D's Web Design uses godaddy.com and networksolutions.com.
Once you purchase your domain name, keep the record of the user name and password. Normally, you won't need to access this information more than once a year. But, you want to make sure that you can access the account management tools when you need to. This is the least expensive part of a website, but it's the most important part of branding your name. If you have spent three years marketing yourself under this name, and suddenly don't have control of it anymore, then you have to start over from scratch.
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Hosting Company - A hosting company is where your website information and files are stored and accessed on the World Wide Web. This is most expensive part of a website as you will pay annually for continued storage of your files. Again, you want to find a company that you have heard positive feedback from and use them. 3D's Web Design uses siteground.com.
Most domain name companies and hosting companies will sell you a package deal where you get the domain name AND the hosting for a discounted price. While, this IS cheaper, we don't recommend it. Once a company has control of your domain name AND your files, then you are at their mercy. If a domain name company's service becomes substandard, you can normally retrieve and move your name to another company for a relatively cheap cost. But, if the hosting company's service becomes substandard, then they can hold your $10 name hostage until you pay them ridiculous amounts of money to get control of your name again. (Note - A good webmaster will have your files backed up, so that a hosting company never has complete control of your content.)
If you are not interested in working with these companies, 3D's Web Design will handle your hosting and domain name as a third party for an annual fee of $150.
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Free Hosting - It is possible to get free hosting and domain names. To do this you need to use a hosting service like www.bravenet.com or angelfire.lycos.com. These companies will provide you with free service and if you are interested and have the time - free tools to build your own websites.
These services ARE free, but they do come with their advertising banners placed on your site and their functionality is limited. Your domain name may not be exactly what you want. You may not be able to get custom e-mail addresses, there will be limitations on file sizes and bandwidth, you may only be allowed specific file types, and they can delete your page at the drop of a hat. If your budget is tight and these issues are of no concern, then this solution may be the right one for you. 3D's Web Design will work with you on these solutions. (Note - If your Domain Name is not important to you, you can check with your internet service provider for free hosting. ISP's usually provide a free personal web hosting solution for their customers.)
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Web Design - Content is the key to a solid webpage. Ease of navigation is second. And appearance is third. If you have information that they want, they can find, and that looks appealing as opposed to offending, visitors will come back again and again. Keep the content current, the navigation simple and the layout aesthetically pleasing and your visitors will grow.
You can submit to all the search engines in the world, but if you have no information to share, you won't gain the hits you desire. Good content that can't be found is wasted. And overstated colors, multiple spinning graphics, lights, bells and whistles tend to annoy visitors more than you realize. No one likes to be surfing along and hit a page and have their speakers startle them with some "off the wall" sound or song playing from the page. Nor do they want to wait for multiple graphics to load.
The content is up to you. It's the information about what you want visitors to know. We can give you ideas, a place for them, direct the search engines to them, and make them visually pleasing. But, we can't create the content of your page. And ultimately, we feel that a webpage is only as good as its content.
If you can visualize it, and articulate it to us, chances are good that we can recreate your idea online for you. And if you are unsure of what you are looking for, you can see a portfolio of work that we have created, worked on, or sampled from.
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Research Your Web Designer - You've heard many times that the internet is still in its infancy. While that is still true, it's growing every day. Browsers in general are improving and you're being given more choices in which browser you want to use. (Internet Explorer, Netscape Navigator, Firefox, etc.) Each of these browsers read code a little differently from each other.
In the interests of building a better internet and improving the discrepancies of the way that these browsers read code, the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) has instituted a strict set of standards for coding. This allows web designers to write code in a specific way that will ensure that all visitors see the page exactly as it was intended to be seen. As with all purchases, you should make sure that you are getting what you are paying for and that it not only looks and functions well on your computer, but that it looks and functions well on everyone else's computer.
The W3C has a tool that you can use to validate web pages and/or your web designers' work. You can access it here. Just type in the address of the page you want to validate and it will tell you if it passes or fails. Now, realize that some pages are written with specific functionality that is required and the standards just aren't there for the functionality. A handful of errors can be acceptable, but if you are validating your future web designer, you want to make sure that the work you pay for is up to the future standards.
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At 3D's Web Design, all of your pages will pass W3C validation or you will be given a reason and information as to why it won't pass.
Understand that, with the web, we are only limited by our imagination and our financial resources.
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