Here are a couple of questions you should ponder before you ever start the process of opening your own website.

Why do you need a Web presence?

• Do you want to build a personal website, are you starting your own Blog?
• Do you want to promote your business?

There are as many reasons as there are websites.

You need to focus on exactly what you want your website to be about. This first step should be thought out with much care.

If you can’t define the purpose of your Website in a simple short sentence, then you need to go back to the drawing board.

What is your reach going to be?

• Do you expect a World Wide audience?
• Are you going to provide information in multiple languages?
• Are you a local service provider?

This is important as your choices will determine the type of domain name you might need, the type of server and the structure of the project. We have produced websites that have an International reach, and others are so narrow in focus as to only serve a small community. We have designed parallel websites that require multiple languages.

What is your budget for communications?

This is not going to be a multiple-choice question for obvious reasons.

We all want to do things are efficiently as possible, without cumulating high costs, but like everything in life, the best is expensive and the simplest solutions are sometimes surprisingly affordable.

All aspects of a website have a cost, and you need to know right away the basic costs you will encounter.

• Your Domain Name
• Your Hosting Server
• CMS or Flat File

Your Domain Name

A domain name is the starting point. This is going to be your www.yourname.domain.

Think of the domain name as your personalized license place.

Costs will vary on the type of required domain, are we talking about a .com (pronounced dot-com)? .net? .org?

Or are we looking at a country specific domain (.ca, .co.uk, .de, .fr)? Considering a .info or .biz? Why would that be a bad choice?

Your Server

The next step is your server space. Think of your server space as the car, the vehicle for your message.

The server costs will vary widely – just like a car – on the accessories you require.

Need a secure server (for transactions, privacy)?

Need to have multiple domains?

CMS or Flat Files?

Now that you have thought about the domain name and the server, we need to discuss the method of publication.

Websites can be made with simple text files (html), or can be made dynamic though a CMS (Content Management System).

The differences are important:

• A simple text website is built by hand, with design tools. This kind of website is labor intensive. Each change to content or images will have to be done by your Webmaster.Depending on the number of updates you intend on having, this could be the most affordable solution. This is for websites that don’t need any more than 10 pages, with a couple of changes per year …

• A dynamic CMS system is more labor intensive in the short term, thus more expensive to setup initially.But once the website is up, all you have to do is login to your administrative panel and change the content as you please.This is the current evolution of the web, popularly called the Web 2.0. We constantly test dozens of software packages available from many providers and we know which system is best for you and your needs.

What is your commitment to the Web?

This may come as a surprising question, but it is important for you to know what your commitment is going to be.

How many hours are you going to spend on content, management, user services, monitoring?

Getting a new Website, is a little, and pardon the expression, like getting a new pet…

Now that you’ve learned the basics, are you ready to make a commitment?