fjohn.com Succesful Website Creation

Free Web Space as opposed to Free Hosting….there is a difference. With Free Hosting you are responsible for the maintenance of your site with Free Space this responsibility is taken away.

With the increasing surge in social networking and blogging there are an increasing amount of websites catering to this demand for “Free Space”, it is something not be sniffed at as major stars and celebrities have jumped on this bandwagon adding even more impetus to the explosion.

So what is Free Space. Examples would be My Space, Bebo and Facebook amongst a host of others including the relatively new Twitter and the free blogging platform parented by Google called Blogger or also known as Blogspot. Video sharing also offers free space but with more emphasis on the videos than the organisation/person concerned examples would be You Tube, Meta Cafe, I Film and loads more. Your address at these “Free space” platforms would be for example http://myspace.com/yourname or at blogger it will be in the form of a sub domain such as http://yourname.blogspot.com.

Postives and Negatives of Free Space.

Postives:

1. Easy set up, design with standard templates with an easy to remember url
2. Free Messaging
3. On the social networking sites your “space” will get very good exposure and plenty of opportunities to network with other people who have “space” at the site.
4. On the Blogging platform blogger which is owned by google the search engine you get very good exposure with your blog posts.
5. No worries about hosting as this is down to the parent site and their responsibility.
6. No worries about space restrictions, as you will get way more than any free hosting provider will give you.
7. No worries about using up bandwidth with bandwidth hoggers such as videos.
8. A superb way to promote your own website address by using these social networking platforms which are used by large corporations, individuals and celebrities alike.

Negatives:
1. You are part of a larger site so your url is not 100% personal
2. Customisation is good but ultimately your space will still have a My Space or Facebook, Twitter, You Tube  look
3. Advertising will be on your “space” which you will have little control over.
4. Building up a social network can be time consuming, addictive and can take over your life if you are not careful!
5. Personal photos and videos are available for the world to see and there have been issues recently with the ability to delete this information if you decide to leave.
6. On Blogger from our experience if you close an account, the blog will be closed and all text and other content will be removed. The photos will NOT and by all accounts cannot be removed, so be careful what you post and bear this in mind when creating an account.
7. Be careful what you post on You Tube as most TV shows and Films plus Music are copyright, the major film and music companies do watch this site and you could land in some serious hot water if you are using copyrighted material without their knowledge, get their permission FIRST. This of course is not an issue with your own films or videos.
8. Restrictions on type of content but for most normal users this is not an issue.

It is out there, doesn’t cost a penny, but there is loads of free hosting available, it will be basic with limited features, and will in all probability be riddled with adverts and may come with a strange address with Yahoo Geocites and Lycos Angel Fire being prime examples. Not the best option but for a low priority personal website its the cheap way to go.

All these free hosting packages will allow you to host a website but with restrictions on space, bandwidth, scripting and software packages and of course most will feature heavy advertising which the hosters will make money from and not yourself!

Plus Points
1. Cheap as in FREE
2. Easy to set up and maintain.

Neg Points
1. Adverts, adverts and more adverts
2. Many directories do not accept free hosted websites.
3. There may be restrictions on type of site and content
4. Many free hosters will give yo a difficult to remember url made up of codes and numbers
5. A lot of free hosted sites have difficulty in finding indexing and ranking with the major search engines.

Our verdict, if you have a low traffic, low priority site and want to save a few pennies a day, because thats all it will amount to, are not worried about advertising ruining the look of your site, with severe bandwidth and space restrictions then this is the way to go! But there are other better free options,  but to get your site started for free it is an option and does get you out there.!

For a good selection of free hosting providers check out absolutely-free-hosting.com, a superb site that lists in directory format the free hosters out there and what you get with links to the associated free provider.

How to build, host and optimise a website with tips from a webmaster with 3 years experience that thought it would be a good idea to pass on this experience to new and established webmasters alike.

This website has been launched with the most basic and boring looking grey theme with no photo or video material and is powered by wordpress to prove a point that fancy looks and bells and whistles do not necessarily make a succesful website, information does!

The three main core issues that need to be looked at when deciding to launch a website are hosting, website design and website marketing, tackle these three in that order and you will be half way along the road to a successful website. The rest will follow with ease.

Hosting: The very foundation of your website, get this wrong and you can forget the other 2 below. There are a vast array of hosting companies available, some are superb, some are average and some are best avoided at all costs. Big doesn’t necessarily mean better, and small doesn’t always equate to better customer service, and even paying top dollar cannot guarantee superb hosting!

The main issue once your site becomes established will be site uptime and customer support. With many hosting companies promising 99.9% uptime, in practice this is not achieved,  and it is not uncommon for sites to be down for days or even weeks with bad hosters. Reliability is key and as your site grows and has an increasimg following, a site that is down for even just hours every week no matter how good it is will eventually lose its audience and they will go elsewhere. This site will delve a bit deeper to throw some light on the good and bad hosting companies out there, but eventually you do get what you pay for. Hosting facilities will probably rank a close second as in space allowed, bandwidth, the interface or control panel and what you can and cannot do with your hosting service but these are rendered useless if your site is constantly down.

Website Design. A critical part of your website is its looks and dynamics and in particular which platform will your site be run on, as most modern websites have moved over to what are called Content Management Systems or CMS, examples are Wordpress  such as this website(Recommended) and Joomla for those who have more complex requirements. A good website needs to combine the elements of looking good, grabbing a visitors attention, providing plenty of relevant content,  fast load times, easy navigation, and most importantly updates, updates and more updates.  Increasingly interactivity, or some form of social networking is the way to go to give your site more credibility and a people buzz.

All these factors are important but a superb looking website with masses of great content is not much good if nobody can find your website which brings us onto core point No3.

Website Marketing. This is the complete minefield where a lot of sites get it completely wrong and the 1st class hosting company, and amazing website with truly fantastic content is let down by the website marketing mix. Getting found on the major search engines is becoming an increasingly difficult task with millions of new websites coming online in a very short time frame, but with the right knowledge and basic Search Engine Optimisation or SEO as it is frequently known as, a website will gradually climb up the rankings and gain an increasing number of visitors. This site will delve deeper on how to increase your presence with Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) and basic tweeks that will put your website head and shoulders above the competition.

In summary creating a website can be remarkably quick with modern software, you can be up and running in a matter of hours, getting the site noticed and keeping regular visitors to keep them coming back time and again is a longer term excercise that can run into years.

A succesful website in summary is not one that “really looks the biz” but one that has a huge amount of daily visitors and that is a major authority in whatever it specialises in and carries a vast amount of respect with people and search engines alike!