Don’t you think its time you made that website?
Isn’t it about time you made your mark on the internet? There’s probably a website for most relevant things, but you’re not looking for that. You are looking to make your mark. This post is for you, the creatives looking for a canvas, the entrepreneur ready to commercialise their idea with the world and the photographers, ready to open their gallery. With the importance of the internet in the modern world, web design and coding (in my humble opinion) should be part of the GCSE curriculum for IT. My generation was lucky, we had Piczo and Myspace. We were exposed to HTML (Hypertext Markup Language) as we boldly tried to outdo each other with who could embed the wildest things on their site. But as we step into 2017, the web development scene has changed.
Your domain should be the first thing you consider when thinking about starting your website. This will be your identity on the internet and as of 2011, you aren’t just limited to .com/.co.uk. It’s worth noting that once you have secured your domain, the internet is now aware that this name has value, so ensuring you set up your renewal plans is crucial. If your domain was to expire, it’s not uncommon for someone to buy your name and then try sell it back to you at an extortionate price(Its called CyberSquatting). If your website will have a commercial element and you will be processing payments, ensure the domain you have will have an SSL Certificate. This will encrypt all payment information and will help when it comes to Google Search rankings. Search Engine Optimisation(SEO) is how search engines crawl and find your website.
Its possible to buy domains from 3rd parties such as GoDaddy, Google Domains. These can then be added onto services such as Wordpress, Squarespace & Wix. Domains are covered in more detail here.
If you are building a complex website where you may need to link it to a database to store/extract data. If you are building a site such as JustEat, it best to go for a bespoke website, where you work with the developers to determine the requirements, the functionality and more importantly the API. Services such as Squarespace, Wordpress & Wix will offer enterprise security against attacks such as Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attacks as they take care of the back-end side for you. In terms of creative direction however, a bespoke website made for you by a developer will offer the most freedom depending on the skill set of the development team. The developer should also be able to recommend the right back-end setup by either helping you set up a server and organise a hosting solution or just using a platform such as Zoho or GoDaddy to host.With certain websites that offer templates, you might struggle to get what you want. But that’s not to say some templates aren’t good though! Wordpress and Squarespace have templates which can be amended by JavaScript or PHP code to add more functionality. If this is your first website, it might be best to start off with a template and then add functionality as your skill set improves.
For blogging, Wordpress offers the best solution as it is primarily a blogging platform and it works well in this aspect. Should you wish to add products to commercialise this blog in the future however, this is where you could face difficulty as it is not designed to be a commercial portal. However, Wordpress can be a tad bit complex when it comes to adding features it doesn't currently offer as standard. Expect to watch a few YouTube tutorials to help you on your way, a little self development never hurt right? Blogger (formerly Blogspot) which is now owned by Google (Trading as Alphabet) currently offers a free platform, it's without a doubt the simplest to setup and maintain. Squarespace offers the best of both worlds, and for students with an ac.uk email its half price for the 1st year. Whilst Wordpress offers a free service, Squarespace does not, the trial ends after two weeks. This is however enough time to try things out and see if it's the right choice for you. Before committing to a platform, we recommended you try things out first.