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County of Sonoma California
Economic Development Board

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Regulatory Guide – Establishing a Web Presence

Website Design

How do you design a web site?

When designing a web site, whether you are using a HTML editor or authoring the code yourself, the most important item that you must never forget is the message you want your viewers to get.

The Message

Here, the message means: your service, products, or any information that is the basis for your home based business. Your message is the reason why you are putting in the time and energy to create a web site in the first place. Keep in mind that you don’t want your message to be diluted by too many fancy graphics, animations, or even too much information.

However, remember that the Web is a dynamic place to get information or to buy products and services. Unlike it’s print counter part, the Web is not static and can interact with the viewer of your page. Additionally, unlike it’s TV counter part, The Web allows the viewer to get the information, or products and services, on his own time.

Making your site informative, yet dynamic, to the viewer while keeping your message clear is truly the main balancing act of creating a good web site.

The Basics

All browsers read a language called "HTML" or hypertext markup language. If you go to your browser’s "view page source" or "source" under "View" on the top menu, you will see how this or any other web page is created. HTML is the basis for web pages, from there DHTML (Dynamic HTML), JavaScript (a ’lit step-brother of the program language "Java"), Java (an object-oriented program language), CGI (a type of scripting language used on the host server, such as Perl), and other types of languages are used to enhance web pages.

All of this can get complicated pretty fast. But, what is worse is the fact that all the different browsers used by Internet users implement the above languages differently. This means that your page could look entirely different on a browser being used by your customers, or your page won’t load up correctly if the browser doesn’t know how to "read" the language you provided it.

Seen By the World

Any one who is connected to the internet in any country can see your web site as long as they know your web address. But, what concerns you is who you created your pages for.

If you want everyone in the world to see your pages correctly, then you should use the most basic of HTML possible. This insures that no complications will pop up when some one downloads your site on their browser. If you are going for a specific audience, then you might choose to add special attributes to your site that allow interactivity, special effects, etc. that enhance your site.

Tools of the Trade

Learning to use the languages that create a web site can be daunting. As a business owner, you probably don’t want to invest too much time or money on getting your site running. Of course, if your object is a business strictly using the Web, then that is a different story. Nevertheless, you can learn the languages yourself, pay someone else to create yoursite, or use an HTML editor.

Using an HTML editor does have a learning curve itself. The speed of which you can learn any of these programs depends on the time you put into it, the complexity of the program, and the your own ability. WYSIWYG (What You See Is What You Get) HTML editors will give you the quickest results with the least amount of having to learn HTML, DHTML, etc. Here are the best programs on the market today:

There are more HTML editors available, but these three continue to be the industry leaders in HTML editors. They give you the ability to construct simple web pages or complex web pages. To search for other HTML editors, simply choose your favorite search engine and search for "HTML editor".

Getting Help

There are millions on web pages on the Internet today. More than likly, there are web sites that are similar to your business. Search them out using search engines and take a look at how they designed their sites. At the very least, it will give you a starting foundation for how you would develop your own site. Also, take a look at well established sites such as Amazon.com and Egghead.com. These sites have been around and have proven that their design is good for customer interaction.

Here is a list of links for helping the development of your own site. Some of them also provide tutorials on learning the languages needed for wed site design:

A big part of your design will depend on the Web Host you decide to go with. Make sure that they provide you with instructions on how to implement your CGI scripts if you wish to utilize the scripts in your web pages.

Tips for designing an interesting and functional web site Contributed by Bradley Creamer.

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Website Hosting

How do you find a web host?

Before you start looking for a web host, you should figure out what your needs are. How much disk space do you need to store your files? How many e-mail addresses do you need? Do you need autoresponders or mailing lists? Are you looking to put together a webfront store? If so then you need a host that can support SSL connections, and offers a shopping cart application. What about CGI, Java, or Databases? Most hosts will throw a laundry list of features at you. Features you pay for whether you use them or not. Decide what you need up front, then find a host that can provide you with the features you need, at a reasonable cost.

However, cost should not be the deciding factor. Find out about the companies before you make your final decision. What kind of customer service can you expect? What are their tech support hours? How many customers do they have? What is their reputation? Is their system monitored 24/7? Find out how many customers share each server machine. Some hosts will pack as many accounts as they can on each server. The more people you share a system with, the more likely your site’s performance will suffer. If the host you’re considering loads their servers with 150-200 accounts, chances are you’re going to have performance issues

Things to Consider:

Disk Space

This represents the amount of space you have to store files for your website. Hosts will offer you somewhere between 5 MB and 500 MB of storage space on their server. Purely informational sites, and smaller stores can get by with 10 MB or less. The typical HTML file is 1-5 kB. 10 MB is space for thousands of HTML pages with room to spare for graphics. Sites that will have many large graphics, or other large files will need more space.

Data Transfer/Hits

Many hosts have limits in addition to storage space. They will limit the amount of data transfer or the number of "hits" your site can receive each month. Most hosts average 1-3 GB of data transfer, and will charge you extra beyond this. 1 GB is typically enough for most sites, however sites that expect very high traffic, or transfer lots of large files will need more. "Hits" are the number of calls for files from the server. If your page has 5 graphics on it, when someone goes to that page, the server will register 6 hits, one for the page itself, and one for each file called from that page. Not many hosts charge by hits anymore, but if they do, this is what it means.

E-Mail Addresses/POP3 Accounts/Aliases/Autoresponders

An e-mail account, or POP3 account is an actual "Post Office Box" for e-mail. Aliases are e-mail addresses that forward e-mail to a POP3 box. For example if your POP3 account is janedoe@somedomain.com, janedoe is a box that e-mail is actually kept in. If Jane has an alias, say webmaster@somedomain.com, that forwards mail to her janedoe account, then she only has to login once to check her e-mail. All of the mail sent to webmaster@somedomain.com will automatically bounce to janedoe@somedomain.com. An autoresponder is an e-mail address that automatically sends a generic response to anyone who sends mail to that address.

Static IP Addresses

If you don’t know what an IP address is, here is a quick lesson. All computers on the internet have an address assigned to them. This address consists of 4 numbers from 0-255 separated by periods. When you register a domain name that name is assigned a primary and secondary nameserver. The nameserver tells the user surfing the internet’s browser what IP Address the requested domain goes to. For example, everyone knows that www.yahoo.com is the address for Yahoo! However when you type in www.yahoo.com in your browser, your browser actually looks up the name yahoo.com and finds out that the address for Yahoo is 204.71.200.68. If you type this number into your browser, you’ll wind up in the same place as if you typed in www.yahoo.com. A static IP address means that your site’s IP address will always be the same. Why do you care? Because if you want to do e-commerce you need a digital certificate which tells the people browsing your site that you are who you say you are. In order to get a certificate you have to have a static IP address. A static IP address is also required for a True Domain name (see below.)

True Domain Name

This goes along with the IP address discussion above. It is theoretically possible to resolve thousands of Domain Names to a single IP address. When multiple domains reside on one IP address, the server forces the users browser to pass additional information on to it when it makes requests for files. The problem with this is that not all browsers can send this additional information. Even though over 90% of users on the internet use a browser that can, you still have to worry about those who can’t. They won’t be able to visit your site. Having a true domain name, one where only your domain resolves to a single IP address, is another requirement for a digital certificate.

SSL

Secure Socket Layer (SSL) is the process that encrypts sensitive information (such as credit card numbers, Social Security numbers, etc) before transmitting them across the internet. It ensures that only the intended recipient can receive and read the data being sent. You don’t have to have SSL to accept credit cards, but most people will not send their information if it isn’t secure. In order to use SSL you need to obtain a digital certificate from a Certificate Authority such as Verisign or Thawte. This is an additional charge you need to take into account, certificates usually run $250-400 per year.

Virtual Hosts

This is a list of some of the hosts that have a solid reputation and track record. This list was compiled in November of 1999. C|Net also compiles a much larger list of hosts and ranks them based on value and reputation.

Verio and Concentric also offer ISP services and are two of the nations largest ISP and hosting companies. Net10 is based right here in Sonoma County (Santa Rosa.)

Tips for finding an Internet Hosting company Contributed by Sara L. Roesch

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Website Promotion

How do you promote your web site?

This question may have different answers depending on the size of the site that you are working on. However, in our case we are going to assume that you just created a home business site or just created a site to enlarge the demand for your business goods and services sells. This page is just a collection of the main ideas and issues on how to promote your web site that are posted in the Internet and everyone agrees on. There are a lot of information out there that simply is going to take you to the same conclusion, so don’t panic and try to implement as many of the points reference here and you probably will see results soon.

Each category has a small sentence as a main idea followed by some key points. There are some links included that will take you to sites with related subjects or just may complement your information.

Place your Site in Main Search Engines

Reason: You want as many people as possible visiting your site. Search engines are what drive most of the traffic “Internet users” through the Net. It is the easiest way that people can find your site. Most of the Internet users go straight to search engines and search for what they are looking for. Main Search engines have the potential to send you a lot of possible customers. You may want to register with several search engines, among them are Alta Vista, Excite, HotBot, Lycos, Webcrawler, Planet Search, Google and Yahoo, which is not exactly a search engine but it’s a directory. Even though it is hard to get into it, we will include the submission form too.

Problem: It is really difficult to keep your site on the top of the stack of any of the main search engines. This is because often search engines change their algorithms on the way they search the data. A possible solution would be to register on a site that stays uncharged, keeping you on the top of the stack. This doesn’t mean that you can’t do it by yourself but it just saves time.

Get a URL with the Correct Name

Reason: You want your business to have a good image. It is not a good idea having as your URL a long address full of inaccurate words. Don’t use some free URL like www.member.freepage.com/yourbusiness; Get your own URL with your name or the name of your business. Also it is a good idea to include some key word that will describe your product in your URL. For example, http://www.yourname

Don’t write more than 10 main key words for your site that will describe your product:

Reason: The main reason is to get listed in search engines. Try to be as specific and limited as possible. Remember that these key words are used by search engines to get your site listed.

Keep your site clean, simply and easy to search

Reason: Image, professionalism and organization are key issues that you want to have in mind when you are designing and maintaining your site. By this time we assume that you are thinking in investing some money in placing your site in search engines, If so, you want to have a good presentation in your site. Remember that most of the time, image is what sells. This doesn’t mean that you have to spend lots of money to implement your site, it is just the idea of keeping things as easy as possible without making your site too dumb. It just has to be maintained in the right level for your possible customers.

Put your URL in your business cards and some useful tips:

Reason: Today business is done at any time and from anywhere. You want to let your customers know that they can reach you or get in contact with the business at any time. Make sure that your web site is ready for business before listing it in any search engines. Try to keep your site and all your pages as fast accessible as possible. By not placing to many graphics or things that may take long time to download from servers. Use links and a good distribution of your data. Add your website to all external advertisement. Place your business address and phone number on all the pages of your site. Don’t forget that a good image of your site has a mayor effect on your traffic.

Tips for promoting your web site Contributed by Juan Ochoa.

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