iProSites

How To Start a Website

admin — Thu, 10 Sep 2009 07:55:50 +0000

The first essential steps needed to get your site on the web

To successfully get a website online, you need 3 essential components:

A Domain Name
A Hosting Server
Website documents to serve

Let’s go through each of those one-by-one and explain the importance of each:

A Domain Name:

The domain name is much like owning the property to a house you want to build. Some domains are better than others. This domain name represents a single location that you can tell people where to visit your served website documents for their use. Domains are generally around $10 or less for a whole year. GoDaddy is a very recommended provider of domain names.

Hosting Server:

A hosting server is where the actual website files will be stored for public viewing. This is generally done using a service like HostGator, where you will upload your files. Your domain name (after purchase) will have to point to this hosting server so that the public will reach your hosted documents after typing in your domain name. Hosting packages have a variety of services, and range between $5 and more per month. Again, HostGator is a recommended hosting company to fit the majority of small business needs.

Website Documents:

These files represent the actual website that you wish to serve to the public. Generally, a professional web designer writes the HTML and additional code to format the page into an easy to view format. However, it is also possible to purchase a website template and edit it yourself. When the website documents are ready, they will have to be uploaded to your hosting server in your account’s Public Folder, and the documents should be ready for viewing.

To redirect your domain to point to your new hosting server, you will need to edit the DNS Records of the domain. Generally, it’s a matter of pointing your domain’s A-Record to the IP Address given to you by your hosting provider, or changing the Name Servers to those provided to you by your hosting provider. Technical support from either company on the domain or hosting side will be happy to walk you through the process if you get lost.

Please note that it can take anywhere from 15 minutes to 2 days for the domain to fully propagate across the internet, so you may wish to do this step first to avoid any down time.

Business Data Links

admin — Thu, 01 May 2008 08:04:48 +0000

The BDL website was written with a combination of technologies that aids in it’s slick appearance and functionality. Custom HTML template objects written in PHP made it a breeze to separate the content from the layout, and add additional functionality to each page as needed. This Object-Oriented approach will ensure quick content updates as needed in the future.
The very elegant and cross-browser compatible CSS provides a very pleasing user experience, with a sense of liveliness. In addition, the Prototype and Scriptaculous Javascript Frameworks provided smoothly fading widgets on the home page. The contact page is also coded to directly write records into the company’s existing vTiger CRM database (MySQL).

Buy Targeted Traffic

admin — Sun, 02 Mar 2008 05:47:18 +0000

Themed traffic website with content. Paypal transaction code and external API work, along with a backend admin panel for tracking and performing tasks on website traffic orders.

KSP Consulting Engineers

admin — Thu, 10 Jan 2008 05:22:17 +0000

Built on a PHP/MySQL foundation, KSP’s website delivers valuable information to prospective clients. The website includes many features such as Flash animation, a dynamic project listings, project photo galleries, and an easily updatable newsroom. This website has many assets, and is equipped to handle any facet of a prospective client’s needs, while maintaining administrative ease of use.

JRX Biotechnology, Inc.

admin — Wed, 10 Oct 2007 05:43:05 +0000

JRX Biotechnology is a specialty “large molecule” delivery system and biochemistry technology company. This website’s best features include an elegant color scheme and slow-rolling navigation menu. This website is highly Javascript-influenced, implementing the Prototype and Scriptaculous Frameworks to control the animations.

Ayala Class of 1997 Reunion

admin — Thu, 10 May 2007 05:44:05 +0000

The Official Ayala Class of 97 Reunion website has many web technologies working together in it’s design. Initial revenue initiatives included the addition of affiliate advertising to side columns of the layout. The website also included several different forms that were submitted to a PHP script, that stored information into the alumni database. Main page includes an aesthetic rotating image fader of old high school candids, as well as PHP/MySQL driven travel poll. RSVP submission, “offer resources” form, organization system to help find other alumni, multi-account managed online photo album, a complete PHPBB Forum, and PayPal online payment portal (that also accepts credit cards) are all necessary features that led to the success of making this website the beloved hub of the Ayala Reunion.

Com-Tec Telecommunications

admin — Sat, 10 Mar 2007 05:44:50 +0000

This website was designed primarily in Flash. Besides all of the common features that most websites have, com-tec.net was designed to give new and existing customers a common area to view the company’s product catalog, and to download manuals and spec sheets as needed. This catalog is PHP driven, and includes picture enlargement and a clean “tree node” navigation to all product sub-categories.

Structural Concepts Engineering, Inc.

admin — Wed, 10 Jan 2007 05:45:42 +0000

Structural Concepts Engineering, Inc. is an industry leader of the design engineering for steel material handling products. This website wins it’s points on the main page, which includes an asthetic rotating image fader of an array of warehouse products that they engineer. Other graphical elements include mirroring text and multi-shaded translucent image sections of a finished warehouse. Downloadable preliminary requests are also available in pdf format.

Zone 4 Material Handling Services

admin — Sun, 10 Dec 2006 05:46:26 +0000

Zone 4 is a first class provider of material handling solutions and has designed numerous warehouse solutions for commercial buildings throughout the western United States. Because of the many categories and sub-categories of material handling products, again, PHP/CSS became the languages of choice in order to provide Zone 4 with a dynamic website that their clients could easily navigate through categories without the need to create dozens of redundant pages. Another interesting point is that the one of the main focus of the web solution was to provide clients with a clean display of several images of a particular product. For this, CSS made it very easy to provide a slick bounding box for these enlarged images. CSS is responsible for the entire cleanliness of the website code in general. This helps to remove unnecessary information that web spiders could use to decide that the website is not as relavant as a clean page that focuses on content rather than cluttered HTML tags. This site is loaded with search engine optimized meta tags to help the website get picked up by popular search engine spiders, such as Google, Yahoo, and MSN.

Rack Submittal Services, Inc.

admin — Tue, 10 Oct 2006 05:47:08 +0000

Using PHP/MySQL technology, the RSS website was designed to provide existing clients of RSS with the ability to check the status of their projects online. The main goal was to give clients the information they need to call particular city departments to request jobs’ status directly, and also to provide the information online to them in a clean, professional format. One of the unique key features of this website is that not only is their entire job archive displayed to them with the status of each job, but also a link to a button that allows them to listen to their job status in mp3 audio format. Outside the scope of the friendly user interface, this website needs to be particularly noted for it’s administrative back end, where the owner (and even the users) can input all of their information and be absolutely confident that the website will validate all data for them without error. Security and data integrity are important facets of online data exchange. It is imperative that a website play more of a role of assuming responsibility for human errors whenever possible. It’s even more important for your website to be able to maintain user account security. The RSS website is an excellent representation of a website that maintains all of these important back-end issues that the user should not be responsible for knowing or even caring about.