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When I was looking to set up my Web site years ago, I became confused. There were so many questions: How do I choose a name and guarantee that no one else is using it? How do I get my site listed so that others can find it? How much disk space do I need? How do I create the content and get it out on the Net? Should I pay a premium for a site that gave me templates, credit card acceptance and shopping carts? It seemed that every article I read only gave part of the story, or contained some tip that directly contradicted another one I found somewhere else.
Then I talked with Sruli, a consultant I have have known for years, and discovered that he was involved in setting up Web sites for larger companies. We chatted and we both realized that if I had questions, surely there were many others asking the same questions. Sruli guided me through the steps needed to create my own Web site, www.ccs-digital.com. Visitors to my site and readers of my monthly newsletter asked me how they could set up their own Web site and I sent them to Sruli.
How does one choose a Web host? Pretty much the same way I did. You have to find someone who is willing to answer your questions. There are a lot of $7.95 a month Web hosts out there, and I emailed several of them. Few will respond to your emails in a timely manner. Even of those who do, how many of them are qualified or willing to answer technical questions about ASP and FTP? How many of them will honestly explain the "gotchas" of Web-site ownership?
For example, when I first registered my domain name, Sruli asked if I wanted to hold it in my name or his. He explained that many Web hosts register domains in their name so that they can keep track of renewals and make sure that no one else ever takes the name away. However, some of these hosts eventually hold the name hostage and make the original owner pay ever-increasing renewal rates. Even some very well known names have been guilty of site hijacking.
Some sites compete by offering great amounts of disk space. "Get a 100mb, 200mb, 300mb site." They know that most sites barely use 5% of the space they are allotted. Sruli started me off with 50 megs. It was more than enough for at least the first year. Eventually I started adding articles, graphics and downloadable programs. At one point he emailed me to say that I was approaching the 50 megabyte limit, so he had increased my allocation to 100 megabytes at no extra charge. Some hosts don't do this for you automatically. They wait like vultures until you surpass one of your limits and then hit you with extra fees.
Sruli also told me about all the programs that were available, such as shopping carts, shopping templates and automated credit card acceptance. Then he recommended that I not sign up for any of these until I had time to develop the site and see where it led. With his help, I was able to create my own customized shopping cart in ASP. (ASP stands for Active Server Pages. It is Microsoft's language for producing interactive Web pages with databases. Other alternatives are CGI, Perl, PhP. You can read http://www.ccs-digital.com/asp.asp for details.)
Now I have a program that I control. I don't have to worry about it taking my customers off my site somewhere else, as some of the other carts do. I don't have to sign contracts with other parties. My cart is not tied to any specific merchant account, and I can use it with any payment service I want.
Creating your own sales Web site is not for everyone, but Sruli took the time to understand what I could do and explain those things with which I was unfamiliar.
With other people who were referred to him (he does no advertising), he took them as far as he could and then put them in touch with someone like me who could fill in the gaps.
My first Web site was actually called Ygoodman.com and ran on a Unix server. When I discovered that ASP would not work, Sruli moved me over to a Windows server. He did this seamlessly. When I decided that I wanted a more professional name and chose ccs-digital, he did his little magic so that both ygoodman.com and ccs-digital.com pointed to the same location. I did not have to change a thing, and all it cost me was the $10 domain name registration.
I don't think I could find this kind of support anywhere else. It is worth a premium price, but in fact, I don't think I could find a lower price.
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