Get into the Game

In these days of modern times, there is no excuse for not having your own website. Yet a surprising number of you don’t. That's surprising for a business, but also for families and individuals.

This week, we offer some advice on selecting and acquiring a name for your website, some dos-and-don’ts for building it, and some tips that will be helpful even if you already have a corporate site.

The most common reason given for not having a website is fear. Fear of terminology like Ajax and Ruby and CSS. Fear that it will take too much time or money. But mostly that the site will look bad.

Let’s put some of those to rest. To paraphrase Ratatouille Chef Gusteau, “Anyone can cook up a website.” The most rudimentary form is a page on a social site such as MySpace or Facebook. Creating a presence there is no more difficult than filling out a form. This is suitable for making announcements and making it easy for others to find you. But it’s limited, and definitely not kid-safe.

The next step is what’s called a hosting service. You leave all of your photos, and movies and calendars and whatnot on their computer. Today, every service that will host your website provides free tools to design your website. You need to do no programming. From Angelfire to Zyweb, the basic sites charge as little as $5 a month, and many are free. Linda Roeder has put together an excellent list at About.com, though she left out Apple’s Mac.com.

Finally, don’t overlook your Internet Service Provider. Every ISP provides easy-to-use tools for creating a basic site at no extra cost. You’re paying for it. Why not use it? Many provide shopping carts and other sophisticated merchant tools. And all enable you to fence out the outside world if you like, by creating passwords for your friends and family.

One downside is that ISP sites all insinuate their corporate name into your address — Covad or Corecom or Comcast. Even better is an Internet address that is your own—the name of your business or the name of your family. Or your cat.

Some tips on how to secure that, on the next page.