Tips For Building Your First (or Second) Website

Redesigning Your Website Can Be Easy

I was at a meeting of DIBS the other day, when some friends who own small businesses complained about all the hoops they are jumping through to revise their website. These tips can help make your life easier when you switch developers to redesign your website.

Own Your Domain

Many first time business owners are so busy, that they are happy when a web design shop says they will handle everything, including registering the domain. This is fine if they are doing it in your name, but you want to be the administrative contact and the registering organization. The design shop can be the technical contact. This way you own the domain but they can make changes.

Check out the whois information for zajon.com, you can see that Zajon, Inc. is the registering organization.

Many hosting services such as Godaddy.com or 1and1.com let you host websites somewhere else (such as with the design firm) and manage your domain through them.

To Reduce on Spam,  Consider Private Registration
This has nothing to do with redesigning your website, but to cut down on unwanted email I would suggest you also do a private registration. When you register a domain privately, anyone looking up information about your domain will see a forwarding address from the registrar instead of yours.  1and1, GoDaddy, and other hosts usually add a small fee for this service, but it can be worth it.

Register For More Than a Year
It should cost around $10 per year to register a .COM domain. I would suggest that you register your domain for three years or more.

How long your domain is registered for is thought to be a small factor Google uses to rank your site when people perform searches. A longer domain registration will give your site a slight bump over sites  not registered for a longer time.

Own Your Site

When you contract with a website design company you will want to own the website. As part of the contract ask for the website code, related files (Photoshop, Flash, Video...) and database (if any) to be turned over to you on CD when the site is launched.

Keep these things in mind:

1. Web developers reuse code, and they will not be willing to give you sole ownership of the components used to create your site (for example a photo gallery, or guest book). You own the entire site, but not the individual components that are used to build it.
2. If the developer is creating graphics, flash animations, videos or taking photographs understand what you are purchasing. Do you own those files outright for reuse in print and other media.
3. If your site uses stock photography or third party components (for example a photo upload and editing tool) their might be licenses for those items, of which you will need to be aware.

Backup Your Site

Have a backup of your current site. Keep a copy of your site on your computer's hard drive, so that it is backed up with your other files. If you update your site during the year make sure to include the updates on your drive.

Does your website have a database?
If so then make sure where ever it is hosted is backing up the database files and how long they are kept. Learn what is involved if you want to retrieve a backup. Is there an additional charge from the design shop or web host?

Remember these few things and you can have a smoother time when it is time to revise your website.