Web Design Related Resources
- ARTICLE: The Importance Of Sound Website Design & Search Engine Spiders
- Need a photographer to photograph your products and/or employees? I have one in-house! Contact me for more details.
- Need a Merchant Account? Take a look at Free Authorize.net Gateway and Merchant Account or RBS Lynk.
- The Green Address Bar: Is your shopping cart REALLY secure and if it is, how do you prove it to your customers? Extended Validation SSL’s (commonly referred to as “the green address bar”) are a way for website owners to show the visitors on their site that they are an authentic and legitimate company and not a phishing site. Check out the site for more information.
- Need a logo or print marketing services? Take a look at this site: http://www.greenpeardesign.com. Diana Nickels does amazing work!
Domain Name Registration and Hosting Recommendations:
Have no idea where to start on this one? Here are my recommendations and instructions for registering (buying) your domain name & signing up for hosting (needed to make your website accessible via the World Wide Web/Internet).
Decide on a website name and see if it's available (you'll be able to check availability at godaddy.com where I recommend you register your domain). Your domain name does NOT have to be your business name. It can (and should) be a keyword phrase that best describes your business. Search engines need to determine what a site is about in order to rank it properly in their listings. By having WHAT you do or what you offer in your domain name, you're giving the search engines a solid clue to what your site is about (it's only part of the search engine optimization process by the way). Example: You have a bakery in Berkeley, California. A solid website name would be http://www.berkeleybakery.com. It tells the search engines that your site is about a bakery in Berkeley. It's also easy to remember and easy to tell people (you REALLY don't want to be spelling out your web site name to people on the phone; that will grow old on you very quickly, I promise you).
I recommend you purchase your domain name through http://www.godaddy.com. As their name implies they're the 'big daddy' of the domain registration sites out there. You'll want to register/buy your domain name for 1 or 2 years and you'll want to purchase private registration*. I recommend 2 years for a number of reasons especially because it's so inexpensive but if you can only do one year that's fine to start. You should purchase the .com extension. I personally wouldn't buy a domain name if only the .net (or other less common extension) was the only thing available. NOTE: If you're a non-profit you should buy the .org extension.
You do not need to purchase "business registration"! Make sure to remove it from your shopping cart.
* What is Private Registration?
Privacy is essential in this SPAM laden world and a must for website security. Registering for a domain name requires an individual or business to submit private information that can be easily accessible. Anyone doing a WHOIS search (www.whois.com) can access this information. Enter the name of a website that already exists. The site will inform you that the name is already taken. It will also list the registrant info: the admin contact, the technical contact and even the name servers and IP addresses where their site is located. ANY domain registrar allows users to run this WHOIS information.
Hosting: For most small businesses, the hosting that Go Daddy offers will be perfect for your needs. When your ordering your domain name, add their basic LINUX (not Windows) hosting to your order. For more complex sites (those requiring a shopping cart, databases, etc.) please check out Westhost.com.
