Throughout this article there are many links pointing to external resources. Some links point to software programmes that are absolutely necessary to your online business and other links point to programmes that might simply ease the load. There is no getting around doing the work but it surely helps to know what’s our there that make life easier. I have had personal experience with most of the resources that I recommend. With this in mind, feel free to hand around for any new programme or resource that works for you.
Why do it all yourself?
OK, you could go to website designer and have him build a site for you. He or she may well do a wonderful job. Chances are that your web designer knows nothing about the art of search engine optimization so you will have to take your finished website to a professional optimizer and expect to have much of it changed to get it to respond well in search engines. This could cost several thousand dollars. Now, on the other hand what if you invested a little time and hard work and learned both of these very attainable procedures yourself?
The upside to learning yourself is this: low cost and the ability to maintain your site regularly as and when you need to, without having to make phone calls to your webmaster hounding them to get a site updated. The incentive is all yours to learn and I strongly recommend you do so. you can buy html authoring software at a reasonable price. I personally use Dreamweaver, as it is considered the professional’s choice. I would recommend you learn to write html code at least to a basic level. There are many software programmes that incorporate WYSIWYG (what you see is what you get). Web pages are generated by a very simple code and when these WYSIWYG programmes mess up (something that happens quite often), the only way to fix it is to go into the source code and repair it by hand. That is my experience anyway. I am sure there are arguments against this as there are plenty of successful webmasters who have not learned html but speaking personally, there is never a problem I can’t fix now regarding html code, simply because I know how it works.
I would recommend buying Dreamweaver because you can split the screen so you can view page design at the bottom half of the page and source code at the top half of the page. This is also a great way to learn html as you can see exactly how adding elements to you design generates code and vice versa.
Another html programme I used sometime ago was CoffeeCup HTML Editor(www.coffeecup.com). This is another first class software company who, like Dreamweaver; tends to stay ahead of the curve, It is also considerably cheaper. Personally I would go for Dreamweaver every time as I think it is the best on the market. But hey that’s just me.
There are many books you can buy and you might consider picking one up to have at hand. Here’s one: Learn HTML in a Weekend by Steve Callihan. (you can find this by searching on www.amazon.com. Honestly, I never bought a html ‘how to’ book but instead looked up anything what I didn’t understand on the Internet. Trail and error is always best. Dreamweaver has a built in html help file, which was a help to me back when I started.
Hire a Web Designer
…then of course feel free to hire someone to make your website for you. Many folks just don’t have the time or the inclination. However, there is something you simply must understand: it is one thing to design a nice looking website, but it is quite another to design it and optimize it so it will perform well from a marketing and promotional standpoint. If you decide to outsource your web design, it is critical that you work alongside your designer so that he or she understands everything discussed in this handbook. The role of a search engine optimizer and Internet Marketer is quite different from a web designer.
FTP software
You will need to get some FTP software. FTP stands for File Transfer Protocol. Essentially it is a very simple programme that enables you to upload your website files to your server space. I use Cute FTP