There are many people out there who want to own a website or a blog but they do not know how to go about it. As a result, they land on the hands of website developers who mislead them. They buy websites that do not fulfill their needs. But, what does one need to know about owning a website?
One, the reason for owning the website or blog should be clear. For example, if the website is for a school, its main purpose should be to inform the parents what is going on in the school. Also, it can be a platform of reaching the learners when out of school. Such a website should not be static. Static website is a website whose information do not change regularly. When you see website developers talking of number of webpages on their charges it means they develop static pages. As a web developer, I do not encourage development of static website. It is boring reading the same information throughout the year. Websites or blogs visitors look for freshness of content.
Two, if the website will be monetized, that is, whether you will run paid ads, do not use unsupported languages on your website. For example, websites whose content is written using Kenyan local languages cannot be monetized on AdSense (I will talk about AdSense in another post) including Swahili. Therefore, before you develop your website know whether you want to monetize or not.
Three, know where your domain name is bought from. A domain name is the address of your website or blog. For example, www.davidodigitalsolutions.com. Many website owners do not know where the domain they own is bought from. They entrust the web developers with everything. If you are in Kenya there are many companies that sell domain name, but, I encourage my clients to buy from Safaricom (look here). If you want to buy from international companies then GoDadday, iPage, google are some of the best sellers of domain names.
Four, after you have bought the domain name know where to host your website or blog. In most cases, website owners host their websites where they buy the domain name, but, some of these sellers are not good for hosting websites. When you search a website and you find it being down, that is, you cannot access it, it means the hosting is not good. A seasoned web developer knows about reliability and uptime score. I encourage website owners to host their websites on google as it is free and its reliability is high. It is very rare to find websites or blogs hosted on Google being down. This blog is hosted on Google but the domain is from Safaricom!
Hope you have learnt something, let us meet in the next lesson.
Two, if the website will be monetized, that is, whether you will run paid ads, do not use unsupported languages on your website. For example, websites whose content is written using Kenyan local languages cannot be monetized on AdSense (I will talk about AdSense in another post) including Swahili. Therefore, before you develop your website know whether you want to monetize or not.
Three, know where your domain name is bought from. A domain name is the address of your website or blog. For example, www.davidodigitalsolutions.com. Many website owners do not know where the domain they own is bought from. They entrust the web developers with everything. If you are in Kenya there are many companies that sell domain name, but, I encourage my clients to buy from Safaricom (look here). If you want to buy from international companies then GoDadday, iPage, google are some of the best sellers of domain names.
Four, after you have bought the domain name know where to host your website or blog. In most cases, website owners host their websites where they buy the domain name, but, some of these sellers are not good for hosting websites. When you search a website and you find it being down, that is, you cannot access it, it means the hosting is not good. A seasoned web developer knows about reliability and uptime score. I encourage website owners to host their websites on google as it is free and its reliability is high. It is very rare to find websites or blogs hosted on Google being down. This blog is hosted on Google but the domain is from Safaricom!
Hope you have learnt something, let us meet in the next lesson.
