Capital Professional Services

For the purpose of this example, we are going to use Google Sites.

Navigate to http://sites.google.com with your browser. You will need a Google account to create a free site. If you use any of Google’s services, such as Google Mail, you already have account. Click on Create site. Read the rest of this entry »

“Build it and they will come” — at least, that’s what you’ve probably heard from a lot of web design firms wanting your dollars but not caring if your web site is a success. We’ll cover how to attract visitors on another page. Once you’ve got them, however, you’ve got to keep them interested. If your navigation isn’t easy to understand and consistent across all the pages of your site.

The components that make up the navigational structure of a web site are known as navigational elements. The first thing to consider is your domain or company name. If your company name is well branded, potential visitors may enter it into their browser’s address bar or a search engine. So although your name isn’t normally considered a navigational element, it becomes one when used to locate your web site. If this is a possibility for your site, keep your web site name short, don’t use punctuation or unusual spelling. You should also keep your subfolder names short, too, and for best search engine rankings, use keywords. Read the rest of this entry »

To view pages published on the World Wide Web you need a web browser. Internet Explorer, Mozilla Firefox, and Safari are the most popular. The pages that you see on the Internet have been created by publishers such as yourself using a special markup language called HTML (HyperText Markup Language). This language provides the instructions to the browser on how to display the page.

The simplest form of HTML pages, also called static HTML, can be created by anyone with a text editor. For example, Windows users could use the built-in Windows Notepad application to create web pages. Although you could use this application, there are other HTML editors available which are much easier to use. Notepad2 is a free, lightweight editor that includes syntax highlighting for a number of programming languages including HTML. A more comprehensive editor is Arachnophilia, which is built using Java so that it will work on a number of different operating systems.

Most word processing applications, like Microsoft Word and OpenOffice provide a way to save regular documents as HTML documents but they usually contain a lot of extra code to support the formatting you have used. Read the rest of this entry »

With so many choices, how do you make the “right” decision? Capital Professional Services can assist you in that very important decision.

The first decision that you will need to make is what operating system you would like your web site hosted upon: Windows or Linux. (There is a third choice but as it is rarely used or requested, I will not discuss it here.) Most people are familiar with Windows even if they are Mac users. You may have heard of Linux or Unix before but never used it or known of anyone but “big business” to use these operating systems. Some hosting companies support both types of servers but one will definitely be favored over the other. This can usually be determined by the amount of features and add-ons that they offer for their favored operating system.

Personally, I prefer Linux over Windows primarily because of all the free applications available. In my opinion, add-on applications and the control panel used to manage your web site(s) are usually easier to use on the Windows operating system. So if you are a newbie and not interested in all of the free extra features, go with Windows. On the other hand, if you want to implement a lot of extra features like discussion boards, blogs, chat, classifieds, content management systems, customer relationship management packages, image galleries, and lots more, then go with Linux operating systems. They also tend to be less expensive.

Once you have decided which operating system you wish to have your web site hosted, you need to compare storage space, bandwidth limits and features. My favorite Linux host is Host Gator. See the chart below for their current offerings: Read the rest of this entry »

There are hundreds, if not thousands, of web hosting providers in the United States. How do you know which one to use — which ones are the “good ones”? They offer different packages and features. Which ones do you need? Let’s look at a few options.

One of the best ways to keep costs down is to use a free hosting service. Most free hosting services do not provide you with a domain name. You use the service provider’s name with your choice of web site name added before theirs or in a folder listed after theirs, eg., http://company.comcast.net or http://www.comcast.net/~company. This probably would be okay if you were building a personal web site, but for a company this would be very unprofessional and probably would not do well in the search engines either.

There are also free hosting providers who will let you use your own domain name. This sometimes requires a one-time setup fee. Most of these providers will have bandwidth restrictions and a smaller amount of storage space for your files. This limits what you can put on your web site and how many people can visit your site either at the same time or over a period of time — sometimes a combination of these. There a few who don’t have these limitations but they may lack the more advanced features like database and scripting support. You may also have limited access to your site. Some only let you publish your files through a proprietary interface or through their site-building tools. Read the rest of this entry »