Merritt Communications - web site help

Confused

This page is here for those of you who may not yet be familiar with the considerations and issues involved with putting up a web site. Most of these issues we take care of for you after discussing your needs.

We hope this detail helps. Feel free to contact us if you have any further questions.

Domain name	Web host	Web space
Web design	Browsers

Domain name: The first thing you need to decide on if you want a web site is your domain name (a name that uniquely locates your site on the world wide web, like microsoft or jamerritt). You should try to pick a domain name that's memorable and truly representative of what your site is about.

Of course, you'll need to pick a name that hasn't already been taken by someone else. To see if your preferred name is available, try one of these sites:

Note: At the linked site, you must type in a domain extension (like .com, .net, .org, .gov).
For example, to see if cleopatra is available, type cleopatra.com .

To get to your site, visitors need the full address, or URL (Uniform Resource Locator, like www.microsoft.com or www.jamerritt.com.)

You'll need to register your domain name with Internic (the international body that regulates the internet.) Internic currently charges $35 a year; you pay $70 up front for the first 2 years.

Note: You won't need to do this if you're getting a free virtual domain (discussed below). Also, your hosting service may do this for you. You shouldn't have to pay them to do it; you can easily do it yourself.

Web host: You need a place to host (or store) the web so it's available to others on the internet.

If you're doing a home site, you may want to consider getting free web space from any one of several free hosting services, like Xoom or GeoCities. You pick a "virtual" or "subdomain" name (like jamerritt). Your URL will include the host's address (like members.xoom.com/jamerritt).

We can set all this up for you. All you need to do is tell us the domain name and password you want to use.
If you're doing a business site, free hosting won't be good enough. You'll want more services and guaranteed longevity.

Your current ISP (Internet service provider) may or may not provide web hosting. If they do, there'll be an extra fee most likely, apart from your regular internet service.

It's a good idea to pick a web host that provides FrontPage extensions (a set of programs and scripts that support FrontPage authoring and extend the functionality of a Web server.) Although it's not a necessity, FrontPage extension capability means access to features that are otherwise not available (like forms processing, which allows your visitors to communicate interactively at your web site).

Note to companies with in-house web servers: The FrontPage Server Extensions are available for the Microsoft Internet Information Server and other popular Windows and UNIX Web servers. If you are not sure if your Web server is supported, visit http://www.microsoft.com/frontpage/

Web space: Most free web hosters give you from 5 to 10 megs of space. For all but unusually large sites, that should be plenty. This site, for example, takes up less than 1 meg.

A commercial web hoster typically has several plans that differ in cost by web size and features provided (like multiple email accounts).

Web design: You need to think through the content you want on your site, to get an idea of what pages you'll need (i.e., separate units of information visitors can look at, one at a time, like Welcome, Estimate, Order form, and Beginners help at this site).

We can plan the pages for you, once we know what you your site is about and what you want it to contain.

Browser considerations: People use different browsers (like Microsoft Internet Explorer (IE), Netscape Navigator, and AOL). The browser is the program responsible for downloading and formatting text and graphics on a computer screen.

Every browser has its own peculiarities. Some code may work on one browser but not another. And older versions of a particular browser may not be capable of handling features that today are now standard with the newer browsers. For example, older browsers don't support frames (that divide a Web browser's window into separate regions, each of which can display a separate, scrollable page.) Note: many people do not like frames.

You need to think about your average visitor, and how likely they are to be up-do-date on browser technology. You may need to sacrifice sophistication for simplicity to support the least capable browser. It all depends to a large extent on what your web site is about, and what type of user you expect to attract. Some sites use "browser detection" to determine which version of a web site to display for a particular browser. To use this technique, of course, you need to create multiple versions of your site.