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By: Paul S Cilwa |
Posted: 5/8/2007
Updated: 4/7/2010 |
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Page Views: 3,086 |
| Hashtags: #Blogging #WebsiteDesign |
| I explain how you can have a web presence of your own, even if you are not technically savvy. |
| Estimated reading time: 7 minute(s) (1652 words) |
In addition to offering a brand-new form of personal expression, web sites
are the Yellow Pages of the 21st Century. And this is a double-edged sword; on
the one hand, you have much more opportunity to inform your customers and
potential customers with up-to-the-minute news, product announcements, and more.
On the other hand, you have much more opportunity to mis-inform, or even
alienate your web site visitors, than you ever had with a 'phone book ad!
However, today's post is going to focus on individuals and personal
web sites.
You still want to be careful. How can you alienate visitors? To varying
degrees, it can be as simple a matter of mis-choosing colors or employing a poor
layout. See, when you create a public expression for yourself, you are, in
effect, creating a Me Magazine. And your "magazine" is on a rack with a
billion others, most of which are attractively designed. So, if yours isn't, you
create a poor impression.
The simplest way for an individual to establish a web presence is via a tool
such as MySpace. MySpace is a web site
that allows people like you to create a "page" with photos and personal
information. It allows you some choice of designs—already professionally
created—and even prompts you for information that users of MySpace have found
useful or interesting. Your MySpace page can declare your interests, and
displays any other MySpace user who has decided to be your "friend". As is
suggested by "world wide web" various MySpace pages link to each other depending
on topics and "friends".
Here's a
sample page (I don't know the guy; I selected it at random). My only
critique is that he typed his responses to the MySpace questions ALL IN
CAPITALS. All caps is hard to read and is considered to be "shouting". He also
has a few grammatical errors. All these things can be easily corrected. So,
unless you want people to think you're an uneducated buffoon, get a
friend to proofread your entries before posting them. (Even good spellers, like
myself, occasionally make mistakes. A friendly eye should always be
welcome.)
If your primary interest is in blogging, you might prefer a host like
Blogger or LiveJournal. These also
allow you to create a "profile" but the emphasis is on your daily entries—your
blog (short for web log).
The best part about these hosts is that they are free. You can
pay for an account; but the primary benefit to paying is that no advertising
appears on your page.
The primary disadvantage to a host like MySpace or Blogger is that it doesn't
directly support your own domain. To find you, a person who doesn't know
your address in advance must hunt for you. In web-speak, a "domain" is the
address people use to find you. My domain, for example, is the straightforward
paulcilwa.com. I've had people look up my site after meeting me, without my
having given them the address. Surely you've noticed by now that all the big
companies have "obvious" web addresses. There's no need to use Google to locate
And so on.
Now, you can get a domain name even if you plan to use MySpace (or
another, similar host). Thanks to a feature called domain forwarding, you
can buy JoeBlow.com and direct it to
http://profile.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=user.viewprofile&friendid=2366834
or whatever your MySpace address is. If you later decide to create a full-blown
web presence under that domain, it's easy to redirect your domain to your
dedicated site. (For that matter you could direct it to
CocaCola.com or ParisHilton.com,
although I can't imagine why you'd want to.)
Domain names are obtained through a registrar. I use
GoDaddy.com. It costs less than $9 a year; you can pay for one or more
years at a time, and your domain can be renewed for as long as you wish. (Don't
let it expire, though, or someone else will probably grab it in hopes of selling
it back to you for a small fortune.)
The original purpose of the .com domain extension was to indicate a
"commercial", that is, a business, site. I used it because I do business under
my own name. There are other extensions available, though. I also own
Cilwa.net (for the network of Cilwas that make up my family) and
OnaFoundation.org which is a non-profit organization. There are
also
.edu, .name, .info and .us extensions, among others. (And some
cost less to register than others.)
Suppose you want to do more than blog: You want to support a page for all
your grandchildren, or an obituary for your beloved dog, or a list of all your
78-rpm records, or whatever you wish to share with friends and strangers. Blog
entries are, by nature, ephemeral. Older entries get "pushed down" to make way
for newer ones. Even though the older entries are still there, they are
inherently less accessible. A potential reader has to look for them,
while the newer entries are right there on the main blog page. There might well
be topics that you feel are of more enduring interest; and that's what a
traditional web site is for.
Besides your domain, you will need a web host. It is possible to get
free web hosting (at the cost of advertising automatically placed at the top of
each page). But, frankly at the $4.95 a month GoDaddy charges (less if you pay
for a year at a time) I don't see what the deal is. And GoDaddy (honestly, I
don't own stock in it—though I should) has such helpful live support that it
seems well worth the cost to me.
Now, once you have your domain and host, you will need some way to actually
create your pages. GoDaddy has a product called
WebSite Tonight that, at an additional $5 a month, will allow you to create
a simple site with pre-defined templates that more or less guarantee you won't
embarrass yourself, design-wise. Other hosts have similar products. These
products have in common a web interface: You log into a site to create and
manage your pages and the navigation between them. (For an example of
navigation, note the buttons at the top of this page, both the top-level set and
the Previous/Up/Next buttons that show up as needed.) The more complex your
site, the more essential it is that you have thorough and well-thought-out
navigation—and the more likely it is that a simple solution like WebSite Tonight
will be inadequate to the task.
Your next step up is a web site designer. I use Microsoft FrontPage and love
it; but (as previously
noted) FrontPage is a discontinued product, and its replacement ain't cheap
(and I've never used it so I can't recommend it). That doesn't mean you can't
use it if you have (or can get) a copy. But FrontPage requires "FrontPage
Extensions" on your host, and who knows for how many more years hosts will make
that available? (My guess is at least two, maybe more.)
The most popular web site designer among professionals is arguably
Dreamweaver; but, again, at $400 it's a little pricey for someone who merely
wants to display baby pictures or his or her collection of original poetry.
Some other packages that I haven't tried so neither recommend nor
disparage are:
You can find many more on the Web (Google website design software).
Another option is the various tools in Microsoft Office. Microsoft Word,
Excel, PowerPoint and Publisher all have a limited ability to create web pages;
and what is a web site but a collection of pages plus navigation? Unfortunately,
the navigation issues are where the Office products fall short. Publisher has
the best-developed of the bunch, but it's still kind of clunky, in my opinion.
Web design software should be about as easy to use to create a web page, as
Microsoft Word is to create a business letter. If you haven't been able to
figure out Word, you may be wiser to stick to MySpace.
Okay. To recap:
- Free web presence (with ads and a tricky address) on MySpace, Blogger, LiveJournal, etc.
- More professional web presence, suitable for resumes, family pictures, etc. with
- Your own domain (about $9 a year)
- A host (from free with ads to about $5 a month)
- Web design software
- Some time to learn the software and design and create the site
(I suppose I would be remiss if I didn't mention that I
design websites for people. I'll do a one-page site for $200 and a
three-page site for $500 (additional pages $50 each). This includes
an original design, to your specifications, including your own logo
and content.)
A nice website is a commitment, no doubt about it. But when you're done, you
should have something to be proud of, something to show off. And, unlike most
other hobbies, your web site instantly has a potential audience of billions!
How many collectors of miniature plastic airplanes can boast that?