Saturday, September 06, 2008

How to Create Your Own Website (Sep 7 08)

First you should read the following document on how to create your own website:

http://www.thesitewizard.com/gettingstarted/startwebsite.shtml

Even if you do not create your own website, but you hire a professional web designer, you should read this document, since it gives you an idea of the activities involved in creating a web site.

You might want your website to be interactive (allowing inputs from your viewers) and dynamic (allowing the page contents to change depending on who the viewer is). For interactive, dynamic content, you need Javascript, PHP, and Perl, and this document tells you what they are:

http://www.thesitewizard.com/html-tutorial/what-is-html.shtml

Where do you put your website? You have two options.

(1) Buy your own high-end Intel PC with lots of disk space, install Linux-Apache-MySQL-PHP-Perl (Fedora-9 Linux with web-server and development support will be sufficient for this) and connect this PC to the Internet using a PLDT myDSL connection or Globe DSL. PLDT or Globe has to give you a live IP address so that your PC can be reached from the outside world, and such an account can be very expensive.

(2) Rent web space from a web hosting company. The monthly rent varies, depending on how much disk space the web hosting company gives you, the number of domain names you carry, monthly data transfer volume, how many webmail accounts you want, web-design and programming tools available, and website control tools.

The following document compares the top 15 web hosting companies in the Philippines. You should check them all and find out which one suits your budget and gives you the design and programming power that you need.

http://www.webhosting.info/webhosts/tophosts/Country/PH

At the Philippine Linux Users' Group (PLUG), where I am a member, we have an active discussion on the best "value-for-money" web hosting services available for Filipinos. These web hosting services do not have to be situated in the Philippines, since most Philippine internet service providers (ISPs) are one-hop away from the US, so US web hosting services are just as good for Filipinos. Furthermore, local ISPs are not even connected directly to each other, and so in a way, a local web hosting service may not be the best location for your website. The following are popular web hosting companies for members of PLUG.

1. web.com.ph
2. www.bizhost.ph
3. www.itdev.ca

They are listed in order from cheapest to most expensive. The more expensive web hosting services usually offer more space, bandwidth, tools, etc.

I hope that you find these links useful when you build your website.

No comments: