Okay, I want to put a temporary web site together to defeat a ballot initiative coming out in November.
Not a clue where to start. I don’t even think I know all the terminology. I’m assuming I need someone to host the site? Where do I go for that? How the hell do I design this thing? Are there places that design it for you? I think I can find a site to register a domain name…one I figure out what to name the thing.
I want something simple and easy to navigate. Not a bunch of frills…just a place to provide info to the visitors and links to places with similar views, maybe a form letter to send to our state reps.
How much a month can I expect to pay for this thing? Is there anything else I need to consider?
Oh, God, what am I getting myself into??? This is something I want to do, but I have no idea how to do it right! (hence, the virgin reference…be gentle with me please…I’m an innocent in this arena…)
Alrighty here is webpage 101 in… less than a page when printed.
Well there are two options, either you need a host or your internet service provider (who you use to dial up) may provide limited space. I highly reccommend the extra mile and buy a hosting plan from another company. To find one go to yahoo or google and look for hosting services, or if you prefer to go with a local company go to your yellow pages under Internet or Web - the categories vary from city to city.
Parallel to this you need a domain name to get better recognition, some hosts make it mandatory to have one. This message board has so many brains I’m sure someone here can help with a domain name suggestion. To register it I suggest http://www.godaddy.com they offer one year of a domain name for like 9 USD.
Now about the design.
If you want to make this a simple page then many companies who would offer to make it are fairly reasonable - you aren’t doing anything super indepth. But I would also make a public cry for backing and see if someone with the skills and time would donate them to your cause - you would be surprised. A lot of indy web designers want to get attention for their skills and find this as an opportunity.
As for the nitty gritty money –
This is how I break down - 10$ initial for the domain from godaddy.com (that it is a one payment per year, not monthly)
I pay approximately 24$ every 3 months for my web hosting service, which is very cheap on that end. It is a simple 50 meg space with 1 gigabyte of transfer per month. That is a small account as compared to something like yahoo.com which I am sure surpasses 1 gig transferred in the time it has taken me to say these words.
The price for web designers varies widely, as I mentioned above you may find some free ones - friends who know how to do the basics, or people who want to support your cause, or people who have free time - just put a call out.
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Ivylass, have you considered how to get people to visit your site once it’s up? You can spend a little or a lot, but if no one sees it, you’ve wasted your money.
You need to put ads in your local paper, saying something like
**Vote NO on Proposal 61!
Unfair to thinking Americans!
I work in Web design/development, and thanks to an injury I’ve got a lot of free time at the moment. If you want a hand with design or development email me, and I’ll see if I can help.
Considering this is a temporary site (that is, you only need it until November), if you’re really strapped for cash you can use one of the free services, such as Tripod, or your ISP probably offers you a small amount of webspace. However, a ‘punchier’ URL looks more serious and doesn’t cost that much (mine was $14.95 from www.itsyourdomain.com ). For webhosting, I use http://www.addr.com which is $7.95 with no set-up fee.
As far as web design goes, Netscape includes a free, simple WYSIWYG editor called Composer. Purists will tell you that these type of editors generate bloated code, but you’re not trying to learn coding, you’re trying to put up a website fast.
Grab a free background graphic that suits the ballot issue from Absolute Background Textures, use that as your background graphic, then create a one-column, three-row table, using solid white or black as the table’s background. In the first row, put your headline. In the second row, type up your text. In the third row, insert contact information. You might need to play with the number of columns/rows if you have more information to show (such as links, quotes, etc.).
Save it all–webpage and graphics, then upload it to your webhost. Voila!
I think register.com has a $20/yr special now, includes 3 page website & your own name.
Thats what you want. You should hurry up though because the sooner you do it, the sooner
you can get seach engines to see it & some of them take weeks to get around to your site.
I would recommend catalog.com. They offer free (no monthly fees) hosting when you register a domain name with them, for which they charge $35 per year. The storage space (20MB) and traffic allowances (500MB/month) are probably plenty for your purposes.
Also included is Site Builder, a browser based web authoring tool. In other words, you select your layout and color scheme from templates, then fill in the content. No need to do any coding or uploading, and you can end up with a pretty nice looking site.