Where to Start When You Decide You Want a Website

HTML, CSS, Java… huh? With all these computer languages and methods out there, it’s easy to think setting up a website is something you could never do yourself. But before you go out and spend a truckload of money having someone create a website for you, read this article from start to finish.

Putting up a web site does not have to be complicated or expensive. It is something you can do in an afternoon without any training or experience. Here’s how…

1. Register Your Domain Name

Before you can begin creating your site, you need to register a domain name. The domain name is the address of your site on the World Wide Web (example: www.google.com).

The domain name will convey to the viewer your identity on the Internet and so it’s important to choose your domain name wisely so that users will know the purpose behind the site and find it quickly using a search engine such as Google. If an Internet user types you topic on a search engine, you want your website to appear first or second in the search results. If not, they may never discover your website at all.

How do you encourage people to find your site? By using keywords in your domain name. Keywords are any words commonly associated with the topic of your site. For example, if your website is selling old Kung Fu movies, some keywords might be “karate movies,” or “martial arts films.”

When deciding on a domain name, it helps to brainstorm any keywords you can think of that related to your website. Once you’ve done this, go to http://www.google.com/adwords and click on the “Find Keywords” box to discover any other keywords you might have missed. This may require setting up a Google account, but this process is free and worth the effort.

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How Much Bandwidth Does My Website Need?

Before we get to that question, let’s tackle a more basic one: What is bandwidth? Simply put, bandwidth refers to the rate at which data flows across a network over a certain period of time. Think of it this way: bandwidth is like a pipe, and the water that flows through the pipe is the data. The bigger the pipe (bandwidth) is, the faster the water (data) can flow. Web hosting companies are charged each month (or year) for a specified amount of bandwidth, and then they pass on that cost to you, the consumer, in the form of a web hosting plan.

Ok, now that we know what bandwidth is, how do we figure out how much bandwidth we need? If you want to get technical, here’s a simple(ish) formula you can use to calculate your bandwidth needs:

Bandwidth Needed = (Average Page Views) x (Average Page Size) x (Average Daily Visitors) x (30) x (Redundant Factor)

• Average Page Views = Average number of pages viewed per visitor.
• Average Page Size = Average size of your web page.
• Average Daily Visitors = Total number of monthly visitors divided by 30.
• Redundant Factor = A safety factor ranged from 1.3 – 1.8.

If you have a website that allows downloads, here’s the formula for you:

Bandwidth needed = [(Average Page Views) x (Average Page Size) x (Average Daily Visitors) + (Average Downloads Per Day) x (Average File Size)] x (30) x (Redundant Factor)

• Average Page Views = Average number of pages viewed per visitor.
• Average Page Size = Average size of your web page.
• Average Daily Visitors = Total number of monthly visitors divided by 30.
• Redundant Factor = A safety factor ranged from 1.3 – 1.8.
• Average File Size = Total file size divided by the number of files.
• Average Downloads Per Day = Total number of downloads per month divided by 30.

Here’s a helpful hint: You can find most of this information from your analytics program. If you’re like me, though, and would prefer to stay away from formulas and calculations, don’t worry! There are other ways to determine how much bandwidth you need.

The biggest factor that will determine how much bandwidth your site needs is what you plan to do with the site. If you’re planning on serving lots of multimedia on your site (like videos, music, Flash animations, etc.) then you’ll need a lot more bandwidth than if your site only consists of text and a picture or two. If you’re going to let people download files from your site (like mp3s, PDFs, etc.), than you’ll need lots of bandwidth, even if you only get a small amount of traffic. For example, if you offer a 1MB PDF file for download, 1GB of bandwidth will only allow you to serve up about 1,000 downloads. And video files are even bigger. If you have a 200MB video file available for download, 1GB of bandwidth would only let you offer 5 downloads. That’s not going to work if you get thousands of visitors a day!

Most small to medium-sized websites do just fine with the amount of bandwidth included in a basic hosting package. If you notice that your site seems to be consistently slow, then it’s a good indicator that you need more bandwidth. If this happens often, then you might want to switch over to a dedicated hosting plan, which will allow you much more bandwidth than a shared hosting plan.