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So You Want a Website!

With more than 2 billion Web sites online and more than 100 million You Tube views per day, there is still a need to help some understand the intricacies of the online community – particularly Web sites and Web site development.

It’s probably impossible to go through a day without hearing or seeing the term www. Twenty years ago, www or WorldwideWeb was as new as the term social networking is today. But www has become the staple of doing business worldwide today – hence the need for a Web site.

So now that you have realized your business needs a website, what’s next? Before you contact your local web designer, or even worse, try to do-it-yourself, there are 3 basic components of a website that every consumer should be aware of.

The first component when purchasing a website is the development of the site itself. This is the time and labor spent on planning, designing, and programming the website. The cost of purchasing a professionally designed website could vary from less than one hundred dollars to thousands of dollars. Typically web designers charge an average of $100 per billable hour. Or, many companies offer web design packages in which they may provide a select number of web pages per package. However, Advancing Business Technologies (www.advbt.com) charges by the page. With this simplified billing method, consumers can control the cost of purchasing a professional designed website based on their need and designated budgets.

Once development is complete, the designer could simply hand you the website on a disk. However, unless you pass out copies of that disk to all potential customers, no one would know you had a website. Your web pages must be transferred to a server, or host, so that they are available to the rest of the world via the Internet. A host is a computer that has a constant, high speed connection to the Internet. The average cost for a reliable hosting plan for a company website is $20/month. You may find plenty of companies who will provide free hosting plans. However, beware! You will get what you pay for! Many times, these plans are not reliable. This translates to your website may not be available for viewing, right when that customer wants to research your company.

The third component is the domain name. Domain names are the words users enter in the internet browser to visit a specific web site. (For example – yourbusinessname.com) A domain name provides an online identity and a contact point for your business, organization, or project. Almost every transaction on the Internet relies on a domain name to conduct commerce, display Web pages, deliver e-mail, and more.

Every domain name has an extension which is the letter combination to the right of the domain name, after the "dot". Therefore, a domain name like AdvBT.com has what we call a "dot com extension". You will also find .net, and .org extensions, along with a host of newly popularized extensions like .biz, .name, .tv, etc., as well as country level domains (.us for the US, .br for Brazil, .uk for United Kingdom, and so on.)

Originally, .com extensions were intended for commercial ventures, while .net's were intended for use by Internet Service Providers and .org's by non-profit organizations or groups. Truth is, this original classification is no longer enforced, and anyone can register a domain name with those extensions. A consumer can register and annually renew a domain name at an average cost of $10/year.

A wise consumer would not jump straight into something without knowing anything about it. Ask yourself, would you buy a brand new car with no engine knowing you have to use it to get to work the next day? Planning to acquire a website without knowing these 3 basic components is on the same lines as purchasing a car without an engine. You need all of these components in place before you can get it to run.