Make Your Own Website Free?

You Can Do It. Maybe.

A lot of people first consider hiring a web designer after they have already struggled a bit trying to get their own website designed. Or hosted. Or found on a search engine.

Some people try because they figure that it can’t be all that hard. And really, it isn’t.

We think the thing that most people fail to realize that the greatest enemy against their potential success is time. Look at the resources affecting all projects from all walks of life: money, people, knowledge, and time.

Money

There is certainly nothing prohibitively expensive about creating your own website. Technically, you could even do it for free. There are free website editors available (and some pretty good ones) and even a lot of the know-how is available for free on the internet.

Although we’ve spent over $3500 to have some of the best software and tools to make our jobs easier, you don’t have to do this. We started off working with free, or very nearly free software tools.

People

If you need help, who do you turn to? Most of us have a “computer guru” in our lives somewhere – for better or worse. But just because a guy knows about the PCI versus PCI-E interface specifications, doesn’t mean he has experience in standards-based web design. Most techies and engineers are naturally “can do” types. They tackle projects head-on in an attempt to prove that they are dominant over the technology.

But there is a vast world of difference in creating, say, a treehouse, and being a treehouse builder. All of us could build our treehouse probably. And it would probably be functional and maybe even safe and reliable. But have you ever seen a professional treehouse? At one glance, we recognize that we couldn’t build that. Certainly not on our first try. Or maybe even our fifth.

But that’s okay. It really is. That’s the way the world is supposed to work. Hobby projects are supposed to look like hobby projects and professional projects are supposed to look (and function) like professional projects. Neither should tread on the other.

The beautiful thing about the web is that anyone can build a website. The secret lies in knowing if you should. Tinker with a blog? Absolutely. Put your own listing on e-Bay? Give it a try!

However, if you run a business, maybe the secret to your success will lie in surrounding yourself with professionals who can advise you and handle all the various details so that you can concentrate on what you do best – your own business.

To do that, you have to have find good people. For web design, you need to know what you are looking for. Here are the main categories of what you might need.

Web Designer

A Web Designer is a person who, well, designs, website. You might think that is all you need. You could be very wrong. A Web Designer, ideally, should have a strong understanding of project organization, content flow, and usability.

Usability is the understanding of “function over form” – putting yourself in the visitor’s shoes, so to speak. Huge volumes of studies are conducted every year on usability. In our opinion, this one area is the “kiss of death” for so many otherwise good websites. Be sure to consult as many authorities on usability. Chances are that your initial “cool idea” about your website may be not such a great idea.

Simple example? Okay. As “uncreative” as it might seem, weI strongly recommend using a simple link called “Contact” where visitors can find your business address, telephone numbers, directions, and so forth. “Contact Us” is also okay (but possibly pretentious if you are really just 1 or 2 people). Can you guess how many potential clients we meet that want to either exclude this information (“I only want to give people an email address.”) or want to call it something overly creative? Lots. Although a visitor might eventually figure out (or stumble upon) a link called “More Info”, “Company Contact Center”, or “ Destination Hotline” (yes, we actually had someone suggest this), you are wasting their time. Visitors aren’t interested in your creative ideas – they are there to try and do business with you.

Having said that, a Web Designer needs to be creative. Hiring a web designer is a way of saying that “I don’t want my website to look like a template”. Any of us can take out a napkin and pencil a standard website sketch. Navigation on the left, header on top, footer on the bottom, and so forth. It takes a web designer years to become genuinely creative, while keeping inline with common usability expectations. We are always learning and every new project is an opportunity to expand and learn more. The last thing we would want for a client is for them to buy some cookie-cutter template online and just fill in the blanks. It might be necessary when you first start your business if money is tight, but as soon as you can, replace it with a professional website.

Web Developer

You might be thinking “Aren’t web designers and web developers pretty much one in the same?”. We hope not. Although many of their skills overlap, a designer should focus more on the design and flow of the site (What is it? What is it supposed to do?) and a developer should focus more on the underlying functionality of the site (How is it supposed to work? How do we keep this inline with upcoming standards and browsers?). In some larger firms, a designer will design the site with visual mockups and flowcharts and then turn the project over to a developer.

In short, a developer is a “code” guy. He’s the guy (or gal) who reads those lovely books you always walk past in the library with all the strange acronyms. A Developer will actually enjoy reading them. Web Developers are, in other words, programmers (and many of them have programming backgrounds) who concentrate on web-based technologies (such as Perl, Javascript, AJAX, .Net, PHP, ASP, and even database functionality) whereas traditional developers might spend more time in C++, Cobol, or Java).

You might think, “Hey, I just need some HTML pages”. And you might be right. HTML isn’t that hard. Most people can get a general feel for how it works in a few hours, and can even master it in a month or so. A simple single web page or 3-page site might only need HTML.

But you might want a feature where a picture changes each time someone visits the page. Or you might want a simple blog feature that you or your employees can update. Or you might want to let visitors login and post photos of them using your products. Or you might want to have the latest headlines in your industry appear on your page. You don’t absolutely have to hire a Web Developer for this, but you’ll have to start dabbling in the world of scripts, XML, and dynamic server languages (or Javascript) to accomplish this. Again, it isn’t difficult, but your first time out could be time-consuming.

Graphic Designer

A Graphic Designer might not even work for a web firm. Some people find graphic designers at their local print shop. Some hire a professional marketing and advertising firm (that usually employ graphic designers in-house). Graphics people are essentially “digital artists”. In other words, they take your ideas (“uh, I want a bald eagle carrying some arrows and looking mighty fierce”) and create them. Typically, they use state-of-the-art software like Adobe Photoshop and Adobe Illustrator. Some of this software is expensive. The computing power required to run them costs even more. However, if you must do it yourself, there are some handy freeware and shareware utilities that can help. After they are done, graphic designers provide you, the client, with print and digital versions of their creation for your use on a website, a billboard, a magazine ad, etc.

Website Hosting

Lastly, you’ll need a web host to actually host your new creation. You can get very affordable web hosting from a lot of places, but mostly you’ll be dealing with a distant large company (like GoDaddy or Network Solutions) who sell hosting packages to the consuming public. There is nothing wrong with using these providers. Many of my clients still have their hosting with companies like these and for many websites, it isn’t a problem. But you will want to take the time to learn how to manage your website. At the least, you’ll need to understand creating and modifying email addresses, setting up forwards or automatic replies, learning and using FTP, and web statistics. If you dabbled in any dynamic features (putting on your Web Developer hat), you’ll also need to understand database setup, SQL permissions, DSN’s, scripts, and executable folders. You’ll also need to start learning some basic concepts of your hosting server (whether it be Windows Server or Apache) so that you can make your new functions work correctly – and not get banned from your host for using too much processing power on your server.

These are the Big 4 in website creation and maintenance. You may also come across SEO (Search Engine Optimization) experts, Internet Marketers that will help your website get exposure, and Bloggers or Blog Consultants. In a perfect world, we’d all like to have a team that were full-time experts in these areas helping us. Unfortunately, they can cost money – and a lot of it.

Knowledge

As you can see, gaining all this knowledge can be time-consuming. Hopefully, we’ve given you a bit of a head start and pointed you in the right direction. Book knowledge (or head knowledge) can be obtained free, but we’ve found that the $1000’s we’ve spent on books to be well worth the investment. We read a lot of great stuff about web design on the internet – constantly – and we’d be happy to recommend and share any of it with you. But comprehensive learning (in-depth absorption) is pretty rare on the internet. The internet is showered with short articles, tips and tricks, code examples, free scripts, and the like. All wonderful stuff – really! But, in our opinion, there is no substitute for a solid read from a good book written by a master on the subject.

To give you an idea, here’s one of our bookshelves that sits nearby a work area. The soldier is there to guard the books because they are so expensive. If you are interested, you can click on the picture to see a larger version so you can read the titles. Of course, we don’t necessarily recommend all these books (a lot of trial and error is involved) but these are some we use frequently.

Of course, that is just head knowledge. The most valuable knowledge comes from experience. Reading about how, for instance, a JavaScript works on a website, copying the script, and plugging it into your site… well, that doesn’t take much effort. We all do it. And it will hopefully work. But when it doesn’t? The person who has been doing it for years will likely instantly know why. Not even necessarily because he’s ever had the same problem. But he understands the fundamentals – how the script works, and by extension, what it can not do.

Time

As you can see by now, the resources above can be had (or emulated in the case of People) for free or at fairly low cost. Thus, it will come as no surprise to you to realize that the biggest investment you make in developing a quality website (like any quality project – restoring a used car, training children in sports, learning to be a good husband, running a business) is your time. And unlike money, which you can always make more of should you make some mistakes along the way, you can never recover your time. We can all gain both the head knowledge and experience knowledge, but it takes time.

We don’t subscribe to the theory that web design is some mystical black art. Anyone can do it and we constantly encourage people to try. What we do believe, however, is that you can’t just jump in, slap together your website, and jump out, not investing the time — all the while expecting your website to have the same or better results than your competition.

A lot of potential clients always ask us, “Why are so-and-so better ranked than me?”, or “How can I beat such-and-such company in Google?”, which, to us at least, betrays their lack of understanding about the issue. Certainly, if there was some quick and dirty explanation we could give in 10 or 15 minutes, don’t you think everyone on the internet would be doing it? In our mind, the real answer tends to be, “Because they hired a professional and paid them well”, which is the only honest answer we could give in a 15 minute time frame. Beyond that, the question indicates that they feel there are just a “few tricks” out there that, if they could learn them, they would be “pro’s”. Nothing could be further than the truth.

Conclusion

As long as you don’t take yourself seriously, or your website, we encourage you to try putting together your very own website. Maybe you’ll do pretty good. If not, you can always hire a web firm like Brevard Web Hosting to clean up some of your “boo boo’s”. We don’t pass judgment on early efforts. In fact, we applaud them! Maybe your site won’t be as expensive as starting from scratch. On the other hand, depending on things, it might cost a bit more. However, at the very least, you’ll get an appreciation for those who do it full time and realize that even though you could learn it, you’d rather spend that time on a quality project in your own field of expertise. And growing your business.