PhotogeniquE IPA

One or two folks have asked me about how they can get their own website up and running. As I designed my own site (photogenique) and know a little bit about the ‘mechanics’ of getting a website going, I thought I would expand those answers and BLOG it for everyone.

If you want a web site you need these three basic things:

A - someone to design it (the Techy bit)

B - a domain name (ie. www.mygreatpics.com).

C - a company who you pay to allow you to keep your website on their ‘host’ computer. It’s called hosting the website.

Bearing all this in mind there are two routes to go to achieve this.

ROUTE 1 – (THE FREEBY ROUTE) – the easiest and cheapest route is build a website via one of the freeby on-line options. To give you an idea of what this involves, have a look at FREEWEBS.COM. It is an online system for creating your own website using ready made templates. It is an excellent way of getting a good website up and running without worrying about technicalities. If you can use the WWW, you can build a website.

additional Bubbler comments and notes…........

– Can I recommend NameCheap.com for domains and Site5.com for hosting? I’ve been using both for years and years and they both have a very stable service ~ Faizan Qureshi.

– You can also do it on a mac with its own built in software ~ Charlene Aycock.

– I really recommend squarespace.com for those who are reasonably good with computers but can’t be bothered spending a lot of time building a website and want to be able to udpate it quickly ~ Natalie Manuel

The Freeby route will achieve A,B & C above fairly painlessly, and importantly, cheaply.

HOWEVER – I do not know any of these freeby routes which will give you a fancy website domain name like www.mygreatpics.com. Usually, the web address would end up being something like: http://www.freewebs.com/mygreatpics

Not bad, not fancy – but very functional.

If you do want your own fancy domain name like, www.mygreatpics.com, you may need to go down….....

ROUTE-2 – (THE SLIGHTLY MORE PROFESSIONAL ROUTE)

A - designing your website can be a bit more difficult. You either do it yourself, or get someone to do it for you, which can be expensive.

If you want to DIY it, then there are a number of software options (web editors) which allow you to create a website without knowing HTML (Hyper Text Markup Language) code. Two of the most popular are MicroSoft’s Frontpage or Adobe Dreamweaver (Goggle “Web authoring software” for lots more). It’s a similar process to the freeby option above, just not on-line.

Alternatively you can learn HTML – it’s not ‘real’ programming, more like putting a set of fairly straightforward instructions together – and create websites that way. It’s the way I do it. There are lots of very good on-line HTML Tutors, and lots of good books you can get from the library.

B & C - Hosting is relatively cheap and hosting companies can often take care of the domain registration as well, which is quite convenient. To find out whether someone already has bought the Domain Name you would like, you can go to a number of websites to check. Here’s one: http://www.skymarket.co.uk

On their HomePage, on the left hand side, where it says DOMAIN SEARCH, you type in the name you want (ie – mygreatpics) and it will tell you which variations (.com .net .co.uk etc.) are taken and which are available. Although Skymarket is a UK company, it searches globally, and there will be similar companies in other countries and a quick GOOGLE should reveal them.

Shop around for hosting prices as there will be large variations depending upon how much webspace (in MegaBytes) that you need, and if it is going to be a photographic website, you are likely going to need quite a few MegaBytes. But there is no rush as you don’t have a website yet!

Whether you choose ROUTE-1 or ROUTE-2, you will need to think about how you want your website to look and what you want to achieve with it. One advantage of being in Red Bubble, is that you can use your website to market your art, and use RB as your ‘shop’ by directing potential customers to RB if they want to buy anything. See my photogenique Shop Page to see what I mean.

I hope this is useful, and if anyone has anything to add, or useful tips, or spots any errors above, please let me know and I’ll add them to this Blog so it becomes a useful resource for everyone.

If you have a question, or if something is not clear, let me know. Either BubbleMail or my email address is: davepeddie@googlemail.com

cheers

Dave