What you need to know before creating a website? - basics

Of course, a simple solution is to hire an employee who will be responsible for the entire technical part of the company's website, but not everyone can afford it because of the cost.

And I'm not even talking about what exactly the employee should do for you on the site. He or she will only need to manage it.

If you are starting a business and are already thinking about building a website, there are a few important things to know before you outsource it.

Such knowledge will help you save your time and the time of the developer, which will lead to a decrease in the final cost of the project. Moreover, the developer will have a completely different conversation with you than with a client who knows absolutely nothing.

What do you need to know before creating a website?

Here are 5 basic principles.

1. Domain and hosting are pitfalls

Choosing a suitable domain name is not a problem, but choosing the place of its registration and hosting where the site will "live" is much more difficult.

Why?

A simple example. At the very beginning, you choose a domain name, and then you come across a great offer "domain for one zloty" or "free domain for the first year". You are an aspiring entrepreneur, so you count every penny.

You buy such a domain, for example, with the ".pl" suffix, but here a trap awaits you.

What is it?

I'll explain everything now.

After you have bought a domain, it's time to decide on hosting. Again, on the first pages you will get hosting offers worth around £70 - £100 per year. Here you will find another trap.

Which one?

In 99% of cases, a domain that cost PLN or was just free will cost more than £100 next year (usually you buy the right to a domain for a year, especially if it costs little or nothing at all).

If you pay for a domain on sites where ".pl" domains cost around £30-£40, in later years they will cost just as little and you won't be dragging further costs.

In the case of hosting, this is not the rule, but many companies do exactly the same as with domains - they underestimate the price for the first year in order to raise the price for subsequent periods.

Of course, it is possible to change hosting and cede the domain, but sometimes these actions are so complicated that usually the owners give up and pay unreasonable amounts for subsequent years, because no other adjective can be used in the case when hosting costs PLN 100 in the first year and 500 PLN the next year with the same parameters.

Here we move on to further problems and pitfalls of cheap hosting. Unfortunately, 90% of cheap hosting is shared hosting.

What does this mean?

Same as when living together. If one of the tenants is cheating, the opinion of the tenants will be the same, despite the fact that you did nothing.

What am I getting at?

Shared hosting is an inexpensive alternative that works well for blogs, hobby sites, and more.

A site that promotes your business must have its own place and its own IP address, which in the case of shared hosting is also distributed among all "tenants".

At the end of this paragraph, I still want to mention the SSL certificate. There are many types of them, as well as prices.

Unless you own a huge online store or corporation, you don't need the most expensive ones. Even the free Let's Encrypt will do, which often has better test results than the paid ones.

2. Content Management System, or CMS

Once you have registered a domain and chosen hosting, which I assume you have done yourself, since it makes sense to be the full owner of the domain (if the developer does this for you, then he and will be the owner; legally, he can do almost anything he wants with such a domain and hosting), it's time to choose a content management system.

In short, a content management system is a tool for updating your site, i.e. changing text, images, certain settings, and so on.

For the most part, you will be offered the most popular CMS, namely WordPress. However, sometimes companies offer niche CMS or their own solutions. While in-house solutions have their advantages and disadvantages, niche solutions are more likely to be avoided.

Why would WordPress be a good solution?

This is the most popular CMS in the world. It has countless plugins and add-ons that extend its functionality.

Its popularity is also its disadvantage, because anyone can create a WordPress plugin, but not everyone knows how to properly protect it. Which, of course, creates holes through which such a site can be infected.

If the company you invite to create a website offers you its own solution, i.e. own CMS, then in most cases you will not have to worry about security.

The disadvantages of such a solution are, of course, limited opportunities for the further development of the site and the cost of their implementation.

3. Basic sketch of design and functionality

What do you need to know before creating a website? Of course, you need to have a general plan and a description of non-standard features.

You can't just write to a website development company and say, "Good morning, how much does a website cost?". After all, you don't go to a car dealership and ask, "Good morning, how much does a car cost?"

You must have a plan and a description of its functions.

The more information you provide the developer in advance, the better he or she will appreciate the complexity and time it takes to build your dream website. One that meets all your needs, and I assume that you have certain requirements.

4.Google Analytics

If you are serious about your website, you need to know who is visiting it and how much.

Google Analytics is a powerful tool for analyzing data from your website.

I already described how it works in my previous post on Google Analytics basics, which I invite you to read.

5. Photos on your website

Here it will be brief.

In 90% of cases, sites take a very long time to load because someone has added huge photos to them, which often weigh from a few to ten megabytes each.

If you want to use your own photos or large images from the Internet, it is recommended to optimize them first, i.e. scale down accordingly with a useful tool called TinyPNG.

Google's PageSpeed ​​Insights tool will tell you if there are problems with photos on your site.

If you don't have your own images, you will have to use images from the web.

How do you find them?

Here are 22 free image sites.

In this regard, what do you need to know before creating a website?

I have described only 5 things you need to know if you decide to create a website, but, unfortunately, there are many more.

Therefore, I invite you to read our other posts on the topic of websites to learn about other aspects of them.

If you already have some experience, what advice would you give to newbies if they asked you what they need to know before creating a website?

Share them with us in the comments section.