Before you can start actually constructing your site, there are a few other things worth thinking about.

Choose a Domain Name

Your domain name is, simply put, part of the address that appears in the address bar at the top of your browser when people navigate to your page. For example, the Domainmonster.com domain name is "domainmonster.com". It’s important to choose a good one, because this is the very first impression that your visitors will get of your site, and what is more, the name you choose can also affect your search engine rankings. Whilst the most obvious thing to do seems to be to just pick your own name as a domain name (johnsmith.com), it’s unlikely that anyone will be searching for your name, unless you are extremely famous. Therefore it makes more sense to either choose a domain name that you can brand easily (so something rather random and unexpected) or, more practically, a domain name which includes keywords about the theme of your site.

A site like Domainmonster.com can help you to register a domain name. First you need to type your chosen name into the search box, to see if someone else is already using it. Once you’ve found an available name, you can register it for your chosen number of years. Don’t forget to renew your domain name when the time comes; Domain Monster and other registrars will remind you when it gets close to the time for re-registration.

Choose a Web Host

A web host is a company which has a server on which your website data can be held. You will need to get some hosting in order to put your website online. Free hosts are available if your site is non-commercial and you can cope with a horrible URL and hundreds of banners and pop-ups; otherwise, you will need to pay for shared hosting. There are many thousands of web hosts available and choosing one can seem daunting. A few key points:

- Avoid paying for more than a month at a time to begin with. You need to assess the service and features a host offers, and you do not want to be tied into a year’s lease if they turn out to be awful. Better still, find a hosting company which offers a free trial period or a no-questions-asked money-back guarantee. That way, there is no risk in trying them out and seeing how things go.

- Try to find a host with a very high standard of customer service. Forums and hosting directories can be good places to look for customer reviews and advice.

- Don’t buy more storage or data transfer than you need; if you think your site is likely to grow, just choose a host which makes it easy for you to upgrade your package when the time comes.

There’s lots more information on web hosting under the "Hosting" tag.

Build Your Site

There are several ways you can go about building your site. You can hire a professional; find a free template online, or buy one; or design it yourself, using Dreamweaver or another WYSIWYG site designer.

Professional web designers are not cheap, but they may be the best option, particularly if your site is for business purposes – it is essential that you put across a good image. A professional designer will also be able to advise you on any applications and scripts you might want on your site, for ecommerce or other purposes, and you will hopefully be left with a unique and stylish site that your visitors will want to return to. If you decide to go for a professional, make sure that is actually what you get. Nowadays, every Tom, Dick and Harry thinks he’s a web designer; do some research and check out your prospective designer’s credentials, have a look at some of their work, and ask lots of questions before you make a decision.

If professional web design is outside your budget, a pre-designed template might be a good idea. Both free and paid templates are available on the web, and most are easy to implement. It is worth bearing in mind, however, that you will have to share the design with several other websites, and free templates in particular can look unprofessional because they often feature links and logos of the template company. Templates are still a viable option for small businesses and personal sites.

Designing your site yourself is, on the surface, the cheapest option, but you will have to buy some professional site designing software such as Dreamweaver, which comes with quite a hefty price-tag. The benefit of designing it yourself is that you can have exactly what you want without having to pay for a professional designer, but unless you’re an exceptional designer yourself, extreme caution is advised. Site design is a complex art, involving a plethora of different factors that you will need to consider: search engine optimisation, page load speed, ease of navigation, general appearance, readability, and so on. If you decide to design your site yourself, do lots of research before you get started, do a few practice runs, and join some forums to read advice and ask questions. Also, look at the sites of others which are on a similar theme to yours, and decide what they’ve done right and what they’ve got wrong. Use your observations to inform your own decisions. Some hints to start with:

- Avoid using too many colours or fonts. Clean, consistent design looks more professional than hundreds of ideas crammed onto a page. Generally speaking, dark text on a light, uncluttered background is the easiest to read.

- Make sure you only use web fonts (which all your visitors will have installed on their computers). If you want to use other fonts, make images of them and insert these into your page.

- Believe it or not, some of your visitors will still be using 56Kbps modems. Make sure that your pages will not take them three minutes to load! As a rule of thumb, try to keep all your web pages below 30KB each, with an absolute maximum of 60KB. Although lots of images and graphics are attractive the first time round, returning visitors would rather get to the information they came for than wait for large files to load.

There is a vast resource of online information and advice on web design available, so if you are going to design your own site, take it seriously and do your research. I cannot stress this enough.

By Natalie Catchpole