The Fatsofa Web Designer

Chapter 1 - Getting Started

THE IDEA - Yes, you need to start with an idea, a hobby, favorite celebrity, your home town, or even saving an endangered species. Whatever, it doesn't matter and you can change your mind as you go. If you want to see what ideas are the most popular right now check out the Cool Site of the Day or the Web 1000. For some great ideas on internet businesses check out 121 Internet Businesses You can Start from Home from Amazon books.

WHERE ARE YOU NOW - If you're reading this you have internet access of some sort, do they provide any web space? Check it out and get some answers to these questions:

• How much space is available? Can it be expanded later if necessary? Once you have these answers check our chart to see how it fits with your plans so far...
  

  <2 megs	A good 10 pages with some pictures.
  2-5 megs	More pages, better graphics, sound, very short videos and a small database.
  6-10 megs	More of everything, longer videos, file downloads, shopping type facilities.
  11+ megs	Needed for large graphic databases and sites heavy with audio and video.

• Are there restrictions on the content and are they compatible with your IDEA? Adult content is a different matter altogether and you can get more information in Chapter 7.
• Is the traffic metered? Fewer hosts have unlimited traffic now, if everything is acceptable worry the least about this one and just move to a different host once your site becomes wildly popular.
• How do you create your page? Can you upload files (FTP), do you need to use their page design program? If you really are a newbie, a click-on-me and voila, here's your web page may be appealing now, but be warned if that's your only method for working on your site you may have trouble adding advanced features or using third party design programs.

MY OWN DOMAIN NAME - This is a tough question. Yes, a good domain name is gold, it's easy to remember, easier to promote and you can take it with you to whatever host you want (ok, even a bad domain name can do that). Problem is most of the good ones under .com, .org and .net are pretty much gone. So if you can find something that works now, get it, otherwise you may want to wait until the new names are available. Just remember, if you start promoting your site under http://www.someoneelsescomputer.com/~yoursite that's what's going to be listed in all the search engines etc. If you get a domain name later or move your site someplace else you have to start promoting and submitting your new name from scratch.

 

HOW MUCH WILL IT COST - You can spend $0 or $100,000, it is entirely up to you. If you have internet access but don't have any web space you can use services like Geocities or Tripod. They both offer up to 11 megs of free web space. Unlike a pay service, when someone access your site, however, they have a window that pops up with their own ads. You also needs to evaluate your IDEA as they do have a fair amount of restrictions and a few of the money making opportunities we'll talk about later won't work on their sites.

You may want more features like CGI-BIN access (for scripts like our 'TV Buddy' survey), Microsoft Front Page extensions (so you can design your site with the MS Front Page program) and a virtual site manager you can access from anywhere on the web.

Be very wary of low end hosting services (those usually charging $5 -$10 per month), they seem like a great deal but the one rule of the net you can't argue w