Leading Edge Web Services-beginners to businesses and all in between

Menu
A diary opened with the heading let’s get started.

Getting Started

Well welcome to the new and exciting world of the internet. Where you can write a book and never use any paper. Where you can send letters and stories and pictures to places all over the world and never have to buy a stamp, or wait weeks for the letter to get there. This is the world of instant gratification.

Let’s talk about a few of the many new words and terms that you will need to be accustomed to, such as internet, website, web hosting and domain name. I hope the graphic below may help a little with the analogy to a street, address, land and house.

These can be the parts of the internet that works as if you live in a house. The road going to your home is your internet, the domain name is your letter box or address, the land is represents web hosting, and you put your website on the land which is your house.

If you want to build a website you must first purchase a domain name. There is a small cost to this generally less than $20 and you need to renew it every year for generally about the same price.

Next you will need to buy hosting, this is generally a monthly figure. It can vary a lot depending on the size of your website, how much use or traffic you are going to get on your site. There are a lot of other things available as optional extras (some really necessary – others not so much ) – depending on your knowledge and desire to be hands on or off. It is possible to get a (complete package – as it were) where your hosting provider will do updates and other maintenance on your website for a small fee.

Then you need to plan and build your house or website. If you are adventurous, or very capable you can be a home builder and do it yourself. Most people get someone to build their website for them, the same as building houses.

You need to have your “dream” or goal or aim or plan so you can “commission” someone to do it for you, so to speak, just like a house. And just like a house there will be updates and maintenance required on a monthly or annual basis. This can be handled by your hosting company or you can learn to do some or all of yourself.

Now it is planning and decision time.

A cartoon person kneels with both hands holding his head and there are five question marks over his head because he doesn't know what to do and how to get started.
What is your website going to do?
Is it just like a business card – something you can direct people to so that they know who you are and what you do?
Is it going to work for you and bring in leads, customers or clients?
Will it have a place where people can get in touch with you and ask questions?
Do you want your site to have a BLOG? If you will you regularly use this site to post articles, updates and other useful information for your friends, family clients etc, then this is how you can do that
Do you want to have a site that allows bookings for a product or service that you supply?
Would you like to have your own shopping site where you can display and sell your products and services?

So as you can see there is a wide variety of things you can do (and this is only just scratching the surface of possibilities). Which means the price to build and set this up will vary quite a lot.

When you are ready to enter the digital world please get in touch with us at Leading Edge Web Services via our contact page and we will guide you through to your digital world.