Thinking about building your own website for your business?

And you are going to do it yourself. You are wondering if this a good choice… Lets look at the pros and cons.

Pro’s… Well, first off kind of sounds fun!! Right? You will be creating what the world will get to see about your business. Plus, who knows more about your business than you? You will have pride in builder-ship and it won’t cost you much in monetary values. Do these statements sound true?… If so, you might want to tackle the build yourself. But there are landmines along the way…. You need to watch your step.

Lets start at the beginning…. Do you know how to check on a url to see if it’s available? Through out the years we have seen people search on (for example) GoDaddy, to see if there are any cool url’s available. They spend time typing in different variations and then sit back and look at the list….. with out making a purchase then and there. Too late. After you and your business partner or wife have decided on the perfect url…. you go back to purchase and … well… it’s taken!!! How did that happen? These url registration sites are smart and are in it to make money. Sometimes they will purchase a url if they see a high volume of traffic searching that topic. Then they will put it up for sale and try to make you pay 5x what you would have in the first place. Kaboom…You just stepped on your first landmine.

To properly check on an url, you should just type it into your browser bar. If it says “This website is not available.” You can bet no one has probably secured that url….. make sure you have typed it in correctly though. I have made this mistake myself. Once you have done your checking by typing into the browser bar, decide which one or ones you want. Then proceed to Enom, HostGator, or GoDaddy to purchase your url. You can contact us if you want. We can always help you out.

In our next blog installment, we will cover the securing of a hosting plan and email. What are your choices for hosting, what to look for, and do you need a secured hosting plan. Why you need to think about your email set up. Do you want to forward, Pop, or Imap your email? Which is better, Yahoo email, Gmail, or Google Apps or Outlook?