Do you need a web site ?

While this might seem a strange question for us to pose it is worth you considering whether you need a website at all? For companies or organisations that are very small or offer a very local service it might be more appropriate to have a "business card" type page on a hosting site. Otherwise, a web site can be a very useful resource for information, interaction, entertainment as well as sales.

choose a domain name

Hopefuly this should be easy - the name of your company. However often the name of your company/organisation will already have been taken, or in some cases the name is unsuitable or too long. Domain names must be at least three charcters and up to 68 characters long. Also names can not contain any spaces, although word separation is usually indicated by hyphens (-).

registering a domain name

There are many companies that will provide a registration service. Some are better than others.
pitfalls
Some of the registration companies that appear to offer low priced services have a sting in their tales. While the cost of getting the name registered is low, you are charged additional transaction fees when you wish to do anything with the domain name, like point it at a server.

tip
You should not be paying more than 15 GBP (17.50 USD) per year for .com, .net, .org domain names, and 10 GBP per year for .uk domain names.

hosting

To make your web pages accesible to the world (or your selected audience) you need a web server.
For most circumstances it makes perfect sense to use commercial web hosting services. You do not need to use the same hosting service that might be offered by the company you registered your domain name.
Having said that there are many good hosting deals that include reasonable domain registration services.
For many circumstances we would recommend occupacia as they are a startup currently offering very good facilities at very reasonable prices.
pitfalls
Some high profile hosting services (for example those offered by some telecom companies) offer very poor hosting in terms of server functionality.
Most of these only allow flat HTML files, with no options for includes, database interaction, password protected directories etc.
Unless you are only ever going to want a site with a few files that are rarely going to be changed, then going for hosting with interaction. And the good news, it will probably be cheaper than that offered by various high profile companies !!

design

While it is sometimes said that a child could make a web site, it is also true that if you let a child design a web site it looks exactly like that, a childish web site.
For a site to be pleasant to look at, accesible to all and a pleasure to use it needs to be put together by some one who understands how the internet works.
We of course are able to offer this expertise.
pitfalls
There are many examples of extremely poor web design commited by so called professionals. One of the greatest mistakes revolves around the issue of "frames". While frames can be a useful tool they need to be used intelligently. While we use them occasionally we always provide a link for non-frames browsers. Any one who argues "there is no need to cater for non-frames browsers as all browsers can handle frames" obviously does not understand the internet and should not be trusted. (if you want to know why then go here >>> ).
Apart from the basic issue of understanding highlighted by the "frames issue", another common mistake is the one of insufficient testing. This means ensuring that a site will display adequately in a range of browsers on a number of operating systems (not everybody uses Windows and Internet Explorer) at different screen resolutions.

tip
It always makes the design construction process a lot quicker and more succesful if you have a strong idea of what you would like. In the same way that you would give an architect some clues as to the type of building you would like, how many rooms and what is going to happen in the various rooms, a web designer needs to know what is required of a site to produce a suitable end product.

management solutions

For some organisations it makes sense to have some one else manage and develop the site. This might be because there is no one within the organisation with the time or skills, or because a professional service is preferred to cope with domain changes or the infrastructure consists of more than just a web site.
There are many companies who offer this sort of service, however the description of "web site management" covers range of scenarios which we have arbitarily called daylight robbery, assistance and total management.

daylight robbery
Recently we heard of a small business which trades internationally that has a site which is a subdirectory of the hosting company's site. They do not have access to update their own files and have to contact the help desk who charge them an additional fee for alterations on top of their annual fee.
For this "service" they are paying just under 500 GBP per year.
If this sounds familiar to you then do something about it straightaway. Whether you contact us or look in your local business directory it is important to get yourself sorted out.

assistance
For most organisations it is true that no one understands the business better than the people who work there. For this reason it often makes sense that someone within the organisation be involved or responsible for managing the content of the site. Often there will be someone who understands the web a bit but who is not able to generate a high class design or create functionality for the site such as database or email interaction for the web pages.
In these circumstances a competent developer can work with the organisation to develop site strategies that can aid content management, presentation and security.

total management
If you have a large and/or sophisticated site then you may wish to opt for a total management solution. Under this sort of scheme we would expect to provide you with the tools to manage strategic content yourself should you wish. This would include periodic improvements and up dates to your site.
To achieve this level of service we would expect to have periodic meetings to keep up to date with any developments and to ensure that the site continues to serve your needs.

protect your site from website strippers, email harvesters and other rogue elements.

It is a sad fact that much of the bandwidth for many sites is taken up by numerous "rogue crawlers" that are stealing your content for uses that neither benefit you or your users.
Many of these are harvesting site content for reuse.
Email harvesters are after addresses for spamming, image strippers take all your pictures for unauthorised clip-art collections and image libraries, and web site strippers take down your whole website - possibly to pass off as their own design.
These are but a few of the thefts of your content that can take place, all paid for by you in bandwidth costs!
A new website is the perfect opportunity to ensure that these rogue elements do not get a foot hold.
Even well established websites can experience a drammmatic decline in the incidence of "bad bot" visits.

This system is now undergoing commercial development, however we may consider additional sites to the trial.
If you have a site that is predominantly PHP, ASP or ColdFusion driven then contact us by email: agentscan@rylands-internet-solutions.co.uk

tip
Fight back easily by installing our agent scanning system.
This system has been undergoing trials since the summer of 2003. It has succesfuly stoppped numerous attempts by image strippers on one site that was regularly plagued by these visitors which would download 50 MBs of images a week.
All the trial sites have had visits by email harvesters stopped before they even got start.

Sounds too good to be true? Well it isn't! It is the power of collaborative protection in action.