Are you an Author needing a Website? - Please Read

I'm not trying to sell anyone anything...I want folks to be careful. My company has been loosing $5,000 plus dollars a year because they didn't know anything about websites so they took a "good" offer from a "friend". I found this out today...let's just say the S hit the fan.

This isn't the first company I've worked for that has been getting fleeced. Please, please please consider the following if you want your own website.

What do you actually need?
Do you need a full blown website with forums, downloads, pages and pages of content or are you just looking for blog with minimal effort? Do you want to learn to design your own page or do you want to hire some one? What do your want your site to be capable of?

I just want a blog!
Great! It's free. Go to Blogger, Typepad, Wordpress, Livejournal or any of the many many other free websites. Sign up for an account and get typing. The site should have minimal invasion....usually something identifying it as an account one of these free sites such as a bar at the top or a badge on the side bar. You can choose a theme and even use widgets (both Blogger and Wordpress offer widgets)

I love my free site but I want a little more!
Lovely. Did you know a lot of blogging sites offer more features for a small feel...including your own domain name? This may incure extra fees offsite. You still get to use your free blogging account with more designs and extra features. This is the way to go for a lot of people.

I need my own web site and domain name.
Awesome. Here are some things you should know when shopping for a domain name and a webhost.

1. Friends don't let Friends GoDaddy - While GoDaddy appears cheap on the surfice that's really only for the Domain Name. Domain names (that www.whatyoucallit.com is a domain name) is not actually a website...it's a web address. If I had a dollar for every client who asked me to design a site and found out they had only paid for the domain name through GoDaddy and nothing else...I'd be richer than Midas. You see that ultra cheap 8.99 gets you a name and nothing else. When you see domain names cheaper than this you have pay for other services. That's the state of the web right now, December 5th 2008. After the 8.99 per year you have to pay a minimum 4.99 per month for a VERY basic web hosting package at GoDaddy. For what you get, you are geting hosed. Everything has to be done through ftp...they don't offer a control panel, and a lot of times you have to call them to see what you are actually paying for and how to get to it. I speak from experience, friends don't allow friends to Godaddy. If you need hold some domains...check your hosting company...they probabaly have a package that's compairable. If you need to hold some domains and don't need web hosting right now...Great, use godaddy...you can transfer them later.

2. Current webhosting rule of thumb - hosting and domain names should boil down to 10$ a month or LESS for AT LEAST the following:

Included domain name registration and renewal...IN YOUR NAME
At least 10gigs of space
A web control panel
At least 250gigs of bandwidth
At least 100 email address
At least 10 databases
Ftp access
php support
mysql support
Some form of SSL included at least one time.
CGI-Bin
File Manager
Web Stats
SSI
Spam Protection
Hotlink Protection
Various Scripts ready to install (such as wordpress, or a shopping cart)
Free backups
Free Tech Support
Subdomains
Domain Parking / Add ons

Friends if you are getting less, you may be getting screwed. There are many reasons you may be paying more (Green Powered Websites being one of them) but if you are not getting at least this...and really most sites such as blue host or 1 and 1 give you MUCH MUCH more.


K, I've got my hosting account and my domain name...but I want to pay a designer for a professional website/ or hirer a designer for my company to run our page in house.

That's a valid choice, in fact it's what I do for a day job. I'm not going to tell you want you should be paying a person, that varies...but there certain thing you should be getting for your money.

1. Require ITEMIZED invoices. I can't stress this enough. If you are paying some yahoo $90 an hour design you a website, make sure you get itemized invoices. Not just hours but what the hell the guy or gal did.

2. Require all passwords and logins to hosting, ftp, domain registrars, and web software be given to you. Really, you may love them dearly and want their children but they won't be your designer forever and you do want to be up S creek without a paddle.

3. Be clear. Do you want them to design and maintain your website, do you want just design with the abiliity maintain it yourself later?

4. Get a list of ACTIVE and INACTIVE sites they have done in the past. Pay attention to the design of the inactive sites and how the active ones actually work. Don't be afraid to contact companies of active sites and make sure they A) still use that person and b) they still like that person.

5. Regardless of what you want your site to look like and what colors you want you're web person should be able to provide the following: A standards compliant website with Cascading Style Sheets with ability for me to provide dymanic content. Got that? Memorize that sentence. Now, go tell it to your web designer. Do they look at you cross eyed or try to talk you out of it. RUN AWAY. You can do this all by yourself with a free download of wordpress and their 1 click installation. If they can't they are cheeting you. They HAVE to beable to provide more thant this.

I have a website and a designer...how do I know if I'm getting fleeced?

1. Are you paying more than $10 a month for JUST web hosting and your domain name? And if you are...are you sure you're web host is providing the MORE than the list above AND has the domain name in your name? If not you are probably getting fleeced.

2. For those that use a designer: Open your browser and go to your web site. Go to View and Page Source. Is your ENTIRE website littered with things that say Table, TR, and TD? Is there anything near the top that says some thing along the lines of .css? Do you have all the passwords and log in information to your website? Can you go in and change text by yourself? What about blog? WHY THE HELL NOT? Are you being charged for mistakes of the designer? Are you paying for flash, various web services such as ecommerce and don't know what your are using? IF any of this is true...you're probably getting fleeced.

Who are you and why are telling us this?

I'm a web designer and I've been doing it since 1995 for everything from schools, to non-profits to large companies. EVERY single company I've worked for and places I've volunteered for have been cheated in some way. The first mistake they make is not knowing who is in charge of their website. The answer should always be the company or person who commisioned the website in the first place. But it rarely is.

Finally one last piece of advice. Make aboslutly sure that you don't pay any random company that sends you a bill with the words web site on it. You can loose your website this way and pay for the privilage. You shouldn't have to pay for an RSS feed. Web Hosts will send a bill that say the name of your web host. My own sister nearly lost her website this way. The last company I worked for payed a random bill that came in and LOST their domain name. The company I worked for now payed a random web bill that came in with out asking me....they paid $300 for the privilage to look at a web site. The website in question is available to the public for free.

I hope this helps you. I really do. The web isn't that scary. I promise.

Like I said I wish I could say it was isolated...but a lot of folks are getting screwed.

I wanted to mention something about Unlimited. It's not so secret dirty secret in the industry that Unlimited (usually in the forum of bandwidth and or hosting space) isn't really unlimited. If you go over those amounts you will be charged for the extra space or bandwidth. Anyone who threatens you that with this (along the lines of "I give you unlimited Bandwidth and the other guy is lying") is probably lying as well.

Why? Bandwidth and Hosting space are limited by the Hardware that the host has or in the case of bandwidth is allowed access to. This is why unlimited really isn't...there is always going to be an upper limit.

Now that upper limit is so high that unless you run a Super Bowl commercial (World Cup for the rest of the world) or so something silly like become just as famous as Stephan King then offer your book for free on your website, or get a popular Digg, Fark or Boing Boing...you will never hit that upper limit.

Blue Host's unlimited bandwidth is about 300 gigs. Let's put that in perspective: The website for the company I work for gets about 600-800 hits a day and about 300-500 on weekends. We use about 1 gig of bandwidth per month...that's only gone up to 3 gigs because the board members discovered Youtube over the last three months. The total size of our site which has about 300 pages: 600 megs....we use a lot of photos.

Really, even though you may cry at the extra bill if you break the bandwidth limit...you should be celebrating. It means they love (or hate) you, really really love (or hate) you.

MarkEsq said:

This is good information, thanks so much for caring enough to post!

Now, what would you say to someone, say, oh, a "friend" of mine who was thinking about getting a website but barely knew how to use a crayon on paper let alone design etc something. Step-by-step info out there anywhere?!

Thanks again!

Click to expand...

Start with a free site. Either a blog such as Wordpress.com or Blogger (livejournal isn't really conducive to learning web design on any level but they are free too). Later on you can move any posts you make to your own domain if you want to.

If you want a website to do with what you wish, to play with...start with some thing on Geocities. I know it sucks but better than paying money when you're not sure.

IF you want to jump into html right away...get a for dummies book. I am so serious. I started learning web design in 1995 when the place I worked got an Intranet (interal internet) and needed an internal and external website. I got oppointed the task, so I picked up a for dummies book.

I'm entirely self taught, I make a living at this now. 90% of what web offers is free to learn. Type html and css tutorials on google you'll get a lot of info.

If you are getting a domain, make sure you are paying for linux hosting NOT windows hosting. Windows hosting costs more and doesn't play well with a lot things such as php. You have control with linux you just don't have with windows. And ASP(Windows only web language) is one of those things that costs money to learn...and generally web designers who use ASP charge a lot of money (talking 1000$s here).

But really any monkey with a wordprocessor can create a website.

Open a text editor.

Save the file as index.html

Type:


Upload that file to your website. Congrats you have the beginnings of a webpage.

scriptor said:

I was wondering about the MS Office Live website? It is free and seems to have most of the things ya'll were talking about here. The great thing I like about it is that its free.

Also is there a website or something that as a writer, I can go and learn webdesign? There is no way that I can afford a designer, even at the lowest charge.

Thanks

Click to expand...

An MS Live website is only partially free...in that you'll have adds and be limited to what you can post and you must have Office 2007. You won't really learn web design because you'll be doing everything through office. You might want to look at a geocities account if you just want to play with basic web design. You'll still have ads and very basic web pages, but then you have your own sandbox.

Having said that there is nothing wrong with starting there. Learning web design is easy. You can actually learn from the source for free.

http://www.w3schools.com/

Every time you see something that you want to use google it. Example: rounded corners. Do a search for rounded corners css and you'll get all kinds of examples, free code and tutorials.

The most important thing to remember is that all webpages, no matter how fancy, are just text documents. In every browser you can go up to the view menu, choose view then view source to see all the code that makes up the page. This is really a great way to learn.

ATP said:

Ninety dollars/month for webhosting...? Wasn't it PT Barnum that said "a fool & his money are often parted?"

Maybe it's me, & I tend to err on the side of great caution, but don't people spend time researching these things thoroughly?

A website represents an integral part of your marketing & pr toolkit-such decisions concerning it--and the ensuing
expenditure-- need to be given careful consideration.

Click to expand...

Bolding mine.

Yes it does. However it's not something people can hold. There are still a lot of people still can't grasp the importance of the web and marketing. Even at big companies the web is the LAST thing they think of when they want to "get something out there".

Obviously with the closing of print companies, this is changing (We just had a 100 year old printer close it's doors last week. They were the biggest in town). But every day, I talk to people who just don't think of having a webpage as "important" or "to be bothered with", even when they spend a lot of money on it.

The mind boggles.

jennontheisland said:

Buying a domain name (so you have it) and redirecting it to a free site is also an option. That way you have your domain, and you aren't paying for any hosting.

Click to expand...

Yes that is an option. Lots of folks do this with blogger and wordpress (since then they won't have ads).

Now some research on this. This is probably the only place GoDaddy is worth anything....just domain parking.

1) Make sure you have control to move the domain if needed. If you buy a domain and can't move it if you eventually decide to get hosting...make sure it's not locked. Private Domain Registration locks it automatically and it's an ordeal to get it moved. Make sure that when you register you have control over it.

2) Private Domain Registration really isn't...think hard before you spend the extra money on it. Also as I said above, this locks your domain to the registrar. Even with PDR I can track you down VIA domain whois. Nothing on the web is truly secret if you let others see it.

3)What is having control: You should be able to move the domain from host to host. You should have control over Name Servers (this what actually points the domain around), you should be able to change all contact info. You should have control over forwarding. GoDaddy WITHOUT PDR does all of this.

4) Really make sure this is what you want. Domain registration is included with hosting. Usually if you already have a registered domain, you can transfer it to that account. No biggy. However don't spend the extra money to register a domain THEN go get hosting and have it transferred. Your just losing money for no reason. If you already have a domain and hosting check with your host to see what packages they have for parked domains (domains without hosting). You may get a deal and then you can manage everything in one place.

veinglory said:

I also think a recurring character feature might interest people.

Click to expand...

Ala web comics? That's a good idea!