THE PROCESS
What is the process of getting a website?
DOMAIN NAME
Some people compare a domain name on the web to a house address in real life, however it isn’t exactly like that. You see, if you have an address in real life then you have at least land (or maybe an apartment space) where you can build something. A domain name doesn’t come with any real estate. With a domain name you get a unique address where people will be able to find you, but you don’t get any space to build a website. You have to buy or rent some space and then you can ‘point’ your domain name to this space. This space is what we refer to as webhosting, or “the place where you will host your website”. A domain name is an on-going cost paid annually, although paying multiple years in advance is also possible. You can find out more about domain names here.
WEBHOSTING
Just as in real life you can build any size homes, such as a 23-room mansion or a small one-bedroom house, the same concept applies to webhosting. If you wish to build a website that has 350,000 products to show on your website, along with videos and the ability for visitors to purchase those products, you’ll need more space and resources (software) than someone who just wants a 2-page website showing who they are and how to get in contact. For the 2-pager, you don’t need to get the webhosting size that you’d need for 350,000 products.
With webhosting you also need to take into account the traffic (data transfer) you expect. Sending text information from a 2-page website to the browsers of 1,000 visitors takes much less data-transfer than needing to send video-files and high-resolution photos to the same number of visitors. Again, the 2-pager doesn’t need the large data-transfer limit size of a 350,000-product website. Webhosting is charged according to these factors such as disk space and monthly data transfer limits. You usually pay for a year in advance for the webhosting space, although paying multiple years in advance is also possible. You can find out more about web-hosting here.
WEBSITE DESIGN & CREATION
Then lastly, we have website design and creation. We help you plan out a map of how the website will display the information you wish to put online; help you decide how the website will look; and also help you decide how you wish clients to navigate through this information. Once you have signed off on a design that you are absolutely happy with, we code it to files and upload those files to your webhosting (non-geek-speak = we make your website). Then once you see the actual site in place, we tweak it further if you’d like to make more changes.
We purposely keep website design and creation as a one-off cost so you can budget and not worry about hidden fees. However, if clients want us to keep oversight of their website and make periodic changes e.g. regularly uploading new material, then of course we are happy to do this at a separate fee. Note though that you have the option to have us design your website using software called “WordPress”. WordPress is special software which we can hand-off to your staff (with training) so that you can internally update the website whenever you want. Our client Sharovon chose this option. You can find more details about the design and creation process here.
