Publishing Your Site
By: John Vinson
So your site is finished, now take a deep breath and a drink of water. I wish I could say that the hard part is over, but this is just the beginning. The next few steps that you should take is getting your website out there.
The first step in publishing your site is deciding on a domain name. Sometimes your domain won’t be able to exactly reflect www.your-site-name.com. The reason for this is someone may have already obtained the domain. Now dont panic, there are some ways around this problem. The first solution is to buy the domain from the person, this option is mostly reserved for larger companies with larger budgets. A more cost-saving solution would be to change the suffix of the domain. So instead of calling your site www.your-site-name.com, you would call it www.your-site-name.org, or www.your-site-name.net.
So you’ve decided on the official URL, now it’s time to find somewhere to host the site. Deciding on a web hosting service is like trying to buy a car (minus the polyester suits). One of the things to looks out for is “How much space, for how much money?”. Finding the best deal isn’t necessarily about what host costs the less, because they might not be providing enough space and features. The next thing to do would be to find customer reviews of the host, asking questions like “Are their servers stable?” or “How is their customer service”.
Alright, your site is finally on the internet. If someone types in your site’s url, it will appear on their browser. The final step is making sure that more people are viewing your page. Advertising is the obvious solution to the problem, and there are a few creative ways to get started. The first step is to make sure your site’s keywords are common and will help generate views on a search engine. If you can move up in page ranking at places like Google, and Yahoo then alot of times that’s all the “advertising” you’ll need. Another tactic you might take is to actually advertise on other sites. This solution can be tricky in that you’re paying for it, and you’re trying to find a site that generates enough traffic for your ad to be seen.
I know that all of these steps seem like a monstrous endeavor, but through dedication people will be flocking to your site.
