NiceSite.ca Web Site Building - More Information
There is lots of jargon used when building web sites. If you are new to all this stuff, then it is useful to gain an understanding of the basics.
Web sites are viewed via a BROWSER and the content is stored on a SERVER, which is physically located at a HOSTING COMPANY,if you are serving public facing Internet web sites. You can host web applications that are inside your firewall on servers located within your network (these are called Intranet's). Or private networks can host "Extranets". Most people are looking for a public facing Internet Web Sites. These come in two flavors; Static and Dynamic.
Static web sites are hard coded HTML, which may have embedded components like Images, Flash, Silverlight, YouTube, etc. Best practices dictate that the HTML only contain content within tags which describe the content. The "Look and Feel" of your website is coded in a separate CSS file, which is attached to your HTML file. The actions or behaviors within your web site is controlled by Javascript, which again should be in a separate file, and attached to the HTML file. The very popular extension for Javascript that we use is called jQuery.
The other flavor of web site technology is referred to as " dynamic. This means that a software application on the Server created the HTML as the page is requested from bits of code and usually a database of details. The popular languages are open source PHP and Microsoft ASP.Net, with complimentary databases of open source MySQL and Microsoft SQL Server. The open source products have a massive worldwide community of developers, and due to the free nature of the software, is very popular with small firms. Microsoft being the massive company that it is, has more to offer, but you pay more for it.
The next step up from "Dynamic Web Sites" are referred to as "Web Applications". or RIA.
And finally, the best web applications have offline capabilities which allow them to continue to function when the Internet is not available. These are called "Hybrid" RIA's. Microsoft offers ASP.Net, Silverlight, SQL applications with compete cloud hosting on Azure. Adobe offers Flash/Flex/Air RIA's and hosting on there business class servers. PHP may have some ability to work offline, but Microsoft and Adobe are the leaders at this level, with Microsoft pumping billions into its product development, and thus have our attention.
But if you are small business, just build a very simple site with HTML, CSS and JQuery. Use nice graphics. Answer the basic questions about your business. Keep it updated and optimized for Google Search. And don't forget to set up Google Analytics.
Avoid PHP, ASP.Net, MySQL, and main components built with Flash. Not because there is anything wrong with these technologies, it's just that they are hard for non-techies (you) to maintain, edit and upgrade. Then you site gets stale and serving the purpose you intended it for.
To keep costs down, try to modify an existing "Template", rather than write all the code from scratch. There are many free or low cost templates online. What you want to look for are "Standards" based templates which use CSS for the page layout rather than the old way of using tables. The other things to look for are "Fluid Width" vs "Fixed Width" layouts. Fluid layouts adjust themselves to better fit a users Browser Window. Fixed width is easier but (yuck).
We built our own fluid width templates which feature tabbed navigation and "Full Screen" optimization for up to High Definition (HD) screen sizes. There is more information in the next tab.
Our NiceSite.ca Templates
- W-5 Template
(Who What Where When Why How)
There is also a color picker at the top right on this template. - Real Estate Template (coming some day)
- Tourism Template (coming some day)
- Restaurant Template (coming some day)
- Resume Template (coming some day)
Hosting
NiceSite.ca hosts with Microsoft Azure CDN, the largest and most sophisticated, global Content Delivery Network (CDN). While your web site is under developement, there is no charge for hosting. Once you site is mature and generating traffic, we can set up a permanent hosting solution (about $10/month).
You can also host for free with your ISP. Google and Microsoft also offer free hosting, but you may get ads on your site (yuck). If you find hosting elsewhere, check to see how many physical Servers will host your content. Old sytle hosting is just one machine, which gives you a single point of failure for your web site. I would avoid these cheap options for hosts that server from multiple machines in multiple locations, a much greater fault tolerance.
NiceSite.ca uses both Google gMail and Microsoft Live Mail (Hotmail). You should try both and see which one your prefer. If you use other Google or Microsoft products, then pick their mail system. Google makes it very easy to map an email address like your.name@yourSite.com to Googles servers. In other words, your email address does not have to end in your.name@gmail.com. It can end in your own domain name. Much more professional! But you still access and use it just like normal gMail. Or you can use Outlook to interact with your gMail or LiveMail (you don't have to use the web site provided).
Domain Name
You should have your own domain name like "NiceSite.ca". We use Netfirms.ca which charge about $10/year for your own name. They also offer hosting and other services. NiceSite.ca has had hundreds of domain names via Netfirms with no issues to date. Another big name provider is Go Daddy, but we have not used them. But the owner Bob Parsons has some crazy videos on his site worth checking out!
Pick a Microsoft Product:
- Gmail
- Hotmail
- Calendar
- Contacts
- Messenger Windows Live Essentials 2011:
- Photo Gallery
- Movie Maker
- Windows Live Mesh
- Writer (Blog Tool)
- Mail (enhanced email)
- Tools
- SkyDrive
- Word
- Excel
- PowerPoint
- OneNote
- Photos
- Social Networking
- Photo Gallery
- Movie Maker
- Windows Live Mesh
- Writer (Blog Tool)
- Mail (enhanced email)
- Tools
- Office Live - Small Business
Google's Amazing Free (Basic) Web Email Program
Storage: The Gmail service currently provides more than 7500 MB of free storage. Users can rent additional storage (shared between Picasa Web Albums, Google Docs and Gmail) from 20 GB (US$5/year) to 16 TB (US$4096/year).
Spam: Gmail's spam filtering features a community-driven system: when any user marks an email as spam, this provides information to help the system identify similar future messages for all Gmail users. Users may tune the system to allow mail marked as spam to be handled in particular ways.
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Bing (Windows Live):
Microsoft Office Integration and Web Features for Small Business
If you use Microsoft Office, then you can integrate your web strategy with Microsoft Live, SharePoint, Azure, and Mesh. You can scale up your web integration on the Microsoft Platform. The order of scale, features and horsepower goes like this:
Pick a Google Product:
- Gmail
- Google Calendar
- Google Contacts
- Google Tasks
- Google Chat
- Document
- Presentation
- Spreadsheet
- Form
- Drawing
- Google Sites
- Google Analytics
- Google Accounts
- Google Maps
- Google Earth
- Google Sketchup
- YouTube
- Google Search and AdSense
- Google Latitude
- Blogger
- Google Buzz
- Google Checkout (not yet in Canada)
- Picasa Web Albums
- Google Chrome (with Extensions)
- Google Translator
- Google Wave
- Google Talk
- Google TV
Google's Amazing Free (Basic) Web Email Program
Storage: The Gmail service currently provides more than 7500 MB of free storage. Users can rent additional storage (shared between Picasa Web Albums, Google Docs and Gmail) from 20 GB (US$5/year) to 16 TB (US$4096/year).
Spam: Gmail's spam filtering features a community-driven system: when any user marks an email as spam, this provides information to help the system identify similar future messages for all Gmail users. Users may tune the system to allow mail marked as spam to be handled in particular ways.
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Google Docs:
Google Products You Can Use On Your Web Site
Google has some amazing products that you can use, mostly for free! Of course many free services have a cost of some sort, either in being sponsored by advertising, reduced features over the pay version , or lack of customization. However, Google makes enough money with it's search revenues, that their free offerings are amazing. Play with some of the Google Products, and if you are happy, then they are a good choice to include in your web strategy.
Adobe Business Catalyst
Adobe has built an integrated, hosted solution, which covers the following five core features for business web sites:
- Easy-to-use Email Marketing More...
- Integrated Customer Database
- A Flexible, Hosted Content Management System More...
- Built-in Turn-key eCommerceMore...
- Powerful Reporting & AnalyticsMore...
Adobe offers a very interesting integrated business solution. Take a look at Adobe's offering and if you are interested, we could build you a solution based on their platform.
Pricing ranges from $16/month to $79/month (USD) to Adobe, plus our fees on top of that.
Read about "Adobe Business Catalyst" at the Adobe Website.