Frequently Asked Questions

Absolutely! Most web hosting services will also provide you with a certain number of e-mail addresses. pair Networks, for example, offers so many addresses on the most basic hosting plan that you're unlikely to ever need them all. If you desire, and you decide to use pair Networks, I will set up a few basic e-mail addresses for you at no cost as part of the web site setup.

Although I do encourage people to use pair Networks to host their web site, I am not employed by them. In the interest of full disclosure, you should know that I do, however, receive fairly small compensation for each new customer I refer.

Monetary compensation is not the reason I recommend pair Networks, though. It's a nice perk for someone who brings them business, but I'd recommend them anyway. I've been using them to host sites since the late 1990s. In that time, customer service has always been extremely helpful and the service has been extraordinarily reliable. You may be able to find cheaper web hosting, but you won't find many with the record of service that pair Networks has.

Finally, I encourage my own customers to use pair Networks because I am familiar with the way the services work. I can quickly and efficiently get things working with pair Networks, and as a result will offer cheaper setup and some other perks to my customers who choose to use pair Networks.

Before you make a judgement as to whether you can afford a web site, I encourage you to contact me for a quote. It can be hard for the layman to get an accurate idea of the total cost just by looking at the average prices listed on my services page. My pricing and policies are carefully structured to put my services in reach of most small businesses.

In addition, note that I will work with you on a design that you can pay for over time if you don't have the budget for a one-time payment. I am happy to bill separately as I finish specific portions of the site, on your schedule. This will allow you to get a basic site up and running quickly at low cost and spend money on improvements and additions over time.

As with most things, there are cheaper alternatives if you truly cannot afford to pay a designer like myself. One choice would be to create your own site. This will take a lot of time and effort, but can be very rewarding if you enjoy learning new skills. If you wish to take this route, I have provided some simple information in the section of this document titled "Making your own site."

Another choice would be to use a service like Intuit Websites, where you choose a site template and then add your own text and logo (if you have a logo already). Such a service would be cheaper, but would give you a less unique look. Other sites will be using the same template and graphics, customization options will be extremely limited and you will not be able to integrate your site's appearance with the rest of your marketing.

My son wanted a leopard gecko for a pet. We wanted to buy it from a reptile-specialty pet store, rather than buying one of the unhealthy-looking specimens from the local pet superstore. Five years ago, we probably would have spent some frustrating time perusing our local phone books, which are notoriously incomplete and cover fairly restricted portions of the local area, probably with little success.

Now, however, we went straight to the internet. A quick Google search turned up a small store, about 40 minutes from our home, owned by a reptile expert. The site was amateurish and only had one page, but that was enough to bring it to our attention and tell us that the shop had been in business since 1966. Without a site, we never would have found the place, and they would have lost our business.

Today, any business without a web site is probably constantly missing potential customers. An important part of every company's advertising should be a web site, even a very small one, with a good description of the company and its services.

There are three basic aspects of a web site that need to be set up:

Web Server

A web server is a computer connected to the internet with software that makes the site (or sites) on that computer available on the web. That computer must have what is called a "static IP address," which is geek-speak for a known location on the internet that does not change. The average home or office computer does not fit the bill, as its IP address is not constant. Most people pay a web hosting service for space on a web server, though some people run their own servers. Either way, you must have space on some kind of web server to have a web site.

Domain Name

An IP address consists of four numbers, with up to three digits each, separated by periods, such as 216.92.72.106. This is not a very nice thing for humans to remember. A domain name is something more human-readable, such as "www.reedcorner.net" that means the same thing. (Try copying the IP address above and paste it into your browser's address bar, then press return and see what happens!) You don't strictly need a domain name to have a web site, but from a practical point of view, you won't go far without one.

Web Page Files

A web server and a domain name don't make a web site any more than a plate and a fork make a meal. In order to have a web site, you need some files on the web server. The basic building blocks of a web site are HTML files, though there are many other kinds of files involved in creating a successful site.

My primary focus, as a web designer, is the creation of the web page files that are the core of the site. However, I can also take care of starting web hosting service with a service provider and getting a domain name registered.

Although you can buy a server and a dedicated internet connection for it, and run the web server yourself, this probably isn't ideal for the average web site. This would cost more than other options, and there are administrative headaches to deal with. Are you going to know when your server goes down at 2 AM? Are you going to be able to get it restarted quickly? What if a hard drive fails... are you going to be able to get a replacement installed and data restored without having your site inaccessible for several days?

For this reason, among others, I prefer to leave the hosting to someone else. I "rent space" on a web server, paying a monthly fee for my site. I pay less and someone else does the work of being "on-call" to take care of server problems. So where do you find someone to do the hosting?

You may already have server space somewhere. For example, your internet service provider may give you some amount of web site space for free, if you just ask. Of course, such a site is not designed for business use. I would only recommend it for a personal site.

One way to find a company to host your web site would be to just search for "web hosting services" on your favorite search engine (like Google). It's hard to know that the services you find are good ones or that reviews of services are unbiased, but that's not much different from trying to find good products or services in general. One site that can help, and as far as I can tell seems unbiased, is Web Hosting Jury.

Whatever web hosting service you choose, the first thing you need to know is: are they reliable? On a bad hosting service, your site might go down and not be fixed for days, or if the traffic gets too high people might get errors when visiting your site. That's obviously bad if you depend on your site for attracting customers or selling products. Of course, no site is going to advertise "We only crash once a month!" You'll need to rely on reviews and reports from people who have used the service, which can be hard to find.

You also need to know details about the service to be able to compare them. How much storage space do you get? What kind of limits are imposed on the amount of data downloaded per day/month? Is there a setup fee? Do the fees include the domain name? Do you get any e-mail addresses? These are only some of the questions you need to find answers to. Find lists of services provided and fees, read them carefully and compare. Make a chart to help.

Of course, after all my years of doing web design of some kind, I have my own recommendation. I like pair Networks. I have used them for a variety of sites since the late 90s and have had nothing but positive experiences. They offer multiple levels of service, from $6/month to $50/month, so you only need to pay for what you need. Customer service is very helpful and responsive. Best of all, though, is that I have never (as far as I know) had one of my sites hosted by pair go down. The service is extremely reliable. You will find hosts that offer more services at a lower price than pair Networks, but not many are as reliable, and you don't ever want to lose business because your site was down!

Although I'm not employed by pair Networks, I think it's only fair to admit that I do get small compensation from them if my recommendation leads to a new client. Of course, I recommended them for years before signing up for their referral program, and would still recommend them regardless. If you consider my recommendation to be biased, you can look at a list of sites that have been featured as Customer Sites of the Week by pair Networks. Although these sites were chosen by pair Netowrks, and might also be considered a biased list, there are a number of sites you will probably recognize on the list.

A domain name is something like apple.com, nasa.gov, w3.org or reedcorner.net. There are many different endings that a domain name can have, each appropriate for different uses. For example, .com is used on commercial sites, .gov for government sites, .org for non-profits.

Within a domain, there can be many different servers. For example, www.reedcorner.net refers to the web server in the reedcorner.net domain. Other companies may have many different web servers within their domains. For example, Apple has many sites, including www.apple.com, support.apple.com, discussions.apple.com, store.apple.com and developer.apple.com. There can also be other kinds of servers, such as mail or FTP servers.

Personal web sites provided by your internet service provider do not usually have their own domain name. For example, my old Earthlink web site from the early 90s had the address "www.earthlink.net/~thomasareed/". In order to get your own domain name, you need to have server space somewhere for that domain name to refer to and you need to buy the domain name. Fortunately, domain names are cheap... around $20/year, plus a small one-time setup fee.

These days, it can be difficult to get the domain name you want. If the name of your business is not a particularly unique one, chances are good a company with the same name might already have the name registered. In such a case, there may not be anything you can do about it. Certainly, the only likely way to get that name would be through a lawsuit, and you'd have to prove that you had a trademark on the name before the offending site was set up.

A more frustrating problem is what is called "cyber-squatting." Named for the practice of "squatting," or living in a house uncontested long enough that it legally becomes yours, cyber-squatting involves someone buying up domain names that use words or phrases that are likely to be desired by someone, at some point. Then, these cyber-squatters demand ridiculous amounts of money to vacate the space.

For example, my wife started a business called KidsLink Neurobehavioral Center. Naturally, we wanted www.kidslink.com as the site name. However, there is a cyber-squatter sitting on the kidslink.com domain, demanding $50,000 for it. Her business couldn't spend that kind of money, so we chose to buy a different domain, kidslinkohio.com.

For this reason, if you are starting up a business and don't have a name set in stone yet, I strongly advise testing potential domain names. For example, if you want to name your business "Super Cool Gizmos", type "www.supercoolgizmos.com" into your web browser and see what comes up. If the domain name hasn't been registered yet, grab it ASAP. If it has, the easiest choice might be to pick a different name.

Whatever you do, don't create a site with a domain name too similar to another site. Not only could you potentially lose customers when they visit the other site instead of yours, but you could find yourself on the other end of a cyber-squatting lawsuit. Consider the case years ago of Mike Rowe (not the Discovery channel Mike Rowe), who set up a site at www.mikerowesoft.com... which led to being sued by Microsoft!

Unfortunately, with the exception of a few extremely common fonts, this may not be possible in the way that you would like. Everyone has different fonts on their computer. People who use a Mac will have different fonts than people who have a Windows or Linux PC. People who use Microsoft Word will have different fonts than people who use WordPerfect or Apple's Pages. To make things even more confusing, even people with the same system and the same word processor will have different fonts if they have different versions of those things!

To make things more confusing, you have to think about people's individual tastes. For example, suppose you feel that your page looks best with a particular font at a specific size. To someone else, however, that combination may be hard to read or unattractive. Consider especially the case of someone with serious vision problems. The web is designed to be flexible and to allow individuals to have a say in how your web page is displayed for them.

Thus, you can request a particular font, but if the user does not have that font or forces their browser to use a different one, your request will be overridden. It is important that your page be flexible enough to handle such a situation gracefully, by specifying alternate fonts. The only way to guarantee that a specific font is used is to put it into a graphic, such as a logo.

There are many different ways to get started. For those who have the time and the budget, check with your local community colleges, as some may offer classes in web design. There are also countless books on the subject. Just be sure you look for one that suits your interests... if you don't have the budget for tools like Dreamweaver and Photoshop, don't buy a book that focuses on the use of those tools!

For those who prefer free online resources, there are many, just a Google search away!

It's a common problem: you've created your site, submitted it to the various search engines, like Google, and then you try a simple search that ought to find your site. And you show up on page 3 of the search results, where nobody ever looks, while one of your competitors appears on page 1!

There are many people out there who will claim to help you get your page moved to the top of search engines' results. While it certainly is possible to improve your ranking, there is no single person or company that can actually guarantee you a top spot. Here are some things that can help move you up the list, though.

Use key words in the title

The title of a web site is the text that appears in the title bar of the browser window when the page is displayed. Words used in the title are considered more important by many search engines. Be sure your site designer knows what words you want used in the title!

Use key words in headings

The same that is true of page titles is also true of headings. Sometimes, it's difficult for anyone but the web site developer to tell what the headings are on a page, since you can make text on a web page large and bold without marking the text as a heading. Be sure your site designer is using important key words in headings.

Use key words in the page text

This one seems self-explanatory. The more key words you use in the text on the page, the higher that page will be ranked when searching for those words. However, note that most engines will penalize you if you use tricks like repeating hidden key words (by putting them in tiny white text on a white background at the bottom of your site, or something similar). Just be sure to write clear text that uses your key words without sounding artificial.

Don't put key words in graphics

Some people like to make page headings in a custom font by creating them as graphics. This can be very attractive, but the words found in that graphic are not seen by the search engines. A workaround is to be sure your site designer provides alternate text (which he/she should be anyway) for those images. Of course, this text won't be considered as important by search engines as a heading would have been.

Be willing to wait!

Don't expect your site to appear on a search engine the same day - or even the same week - that it is submitted. When you make changes to your site, don't expect those changes to be detected by search engines the same day - or week. Be patient! It takes time for the search engines to do what they need to do. They can't look at every page on millions of sites every day.

Get linked

Google does not only consider the text on your pages when indexing your site. It also includes information about links to your site from other sites. For example, if someone else creates a link to my site as: "the best site in the world," then Google will recognize an association between my site and the text "the best site in the world." The more sites that link to your site the better, and if they use meaningful text the results will be better still.

Before I answer, let me advise that you not put too much stock in my answer. Everyone works differently and everyone considers different things to be important. Those who will benefit most from my answer to this question are those who 1) want to get their hands dirty dealing with the HTML code, 2) like to use tools that are cheap or free when possible and 3) use a Mac. That said, here's my list:

TextWrangler

TextWrangler is a great free text editor for the Mac. It is extremely powerful and works very well for creating HTML files (the basis of all web sites). Its "big brother," BBEdit, is even more powerful, with more tools for editing HTML. While others couldn't live without those tools, I find I prefer the simplicity of TextWrangler and don't need the extra features of BBEdit.

Safari

Apple's web browser is my favorite, including a neat Web Inspector window that I've found to be a big help with debugging problems while designing. Regardless of which browser you prefer, though, you must test your pages with this browser.

Firefox

Firefox has some neat tools, including some quick tools for validating your pages (to make sure the code you've written is correct). Again, it is also very important to test your pages with this browser.

Darwine and ies4osx

Darwine is required for ies4osx, and once you have these installed, you'll have a version of MS Internet Explorer 6 for Windows - yes, you read that right - on your Mac. This is great for testing, since IE 6 is still in some use... but looking at pages with it makes you really wonder why. Unfortunately, testing with the more-recent and more-prevalent versions of IE requires using Windows...

Adobe Photoshop Elements

I don't do enough to justify spending on the full-blown version of Photoshop, especially since the cheaper Photoshop Elements does just fine for what I need. I use it extensively, though not exclusively, for creating web graphics.

Intaglio

I also can't justify a copy of Adobe Illustrator, but sometimes I need that kind of functionality. Instead, I use the much cheaper Intaglio, which does the same kind of drawing that Illustrator does, though it's far less powerful and has some annoying limitations. Still, it does a nice job with what I use it for... I used it to create the Reed Corner Design logo and the navigation buttons at the top of this page.

Transmit

For uploading web page files to the server, I am using Transmit. It's a very nice FTP program, and has some very good synchronization options, which I use extensively. Trust me, you don't want to try to upload web page files manually on a regular basis... you'd have to remember which files you modified! Inevitably, you'll forget some and break something on your site.

Integrity

Integrity does a very nice job of checking broken links on the copy of the site on my computer, so that I can find any problems before I upload. Very easy to use.

Web designers have an acronym for something that irritates them greatly: IDWIMIE. What does this stand for, you ask? It means "It Doesn't Work In Microsoft Internet Explorer."

The reason behind this phrase is that Internet Explorer has a tendency to lag behind the other browsers in supporting the standards set forth by the World Wide Web Consortium, and also tends to make up its own way of doing things. For this reason, there is a long list of things that don't work in Internet Explorer, especially older versions, which means more work for web designers to make their pages work with IE. As much as we would like to just ignore that IE even exists, this is not a realistic solution, given that it is the browser with the highest distribution.