Chapter 1 Website Development Process

Chapter 1 Website Development Process If you are new to web development process, there might be some point that you don’t know where to start. In this chapter, it discussed the practical way to start a website from the scratch.

Mandatory Requirements

Building your website online needs an intermediate knowledge on the world wide web. There are only 3 basic requirements for the web development, the domain, hosting and content and you are all set!

Domain

The domain is like your home online, it will be your address on the world wide web (ex: yourcompany.com). Most of the Top Level Domain (TLD) such as .com, .net and .org is for sale, while if you are starting you don’t need a TLD, you may consider acquiring a sub-domain which is for free from different blog providers such as Blogspot and Wordpress.

Parts of the Domain

Please take note that not all domain names are for sale or open to the public. In the case of .edu.ph, the domain name is available only for Academic Institution for the Philippines and can be registered with a verification process. Another domain that is not for sale while it is widely used by the government agency in the Philippines is .gov.ph, where registration is handled by the Department of Science and Technology.

Sub-Domain for Starters. There are several providers that could cater your needs in building an online presence. Wordpress.com is one of the leading blog hosting services that offer free subdomain. There are numbers of government agency use subdomain as a way to provide information to the clients. In the Philippines, the CHED kto12 Transition Unit uses the domain chedk12.wordpress.com. This waived the cost of the domain because technically, once you owned a domain name, you can add subdomain as many as you want.

Registering a Domain. You need to first register a domain from a domain registrar. Godaddy.com is one of the most popular domain registrars. First, you need to search for your preferred domain name (ex: mycompany.com) to check for domain availability. Second, once the domain is available, it’s time to congratulate yourself, but make sure to pay for the domain so that no one else could acquire.

Screenshot of the Godaddy.com Website

Paying a Domain. Most of the domain registrar prefer payment from a VISA/Mastercard, if you have a credit card then you are good to go.

Hosting

Hosting holds your files online. Its good thing that Wordpress suggested hosting company that could meet the requirement of your website. To run full running WordPress, the platform recommends your host supports PHP version 7 or greater, MySQL version 5.6 or greater OR MariaDB version 10.0 or greater. Wordpress.org recommends Bluehost, Dreamhost, and Siteground.

Cost of a Website Having a domain is like having your own place over the internet. Before you upload your website files and information, you need to consider how much it will cost you.

First, you need to select a domain name. The most popular domain name is .COM extension, where it cost you around $ 10.00 per year and renewable every expiration. Second is you need to buy a hosting for your website, a single domain may cost $ 108.00 per year or $ 9 per month with the package of Unlimited Disk Space and

Bandwidth. Hosting are web servers that handle your web files, where these servers are dedicated online which is like an online disk space.

To conclude, a single full website may cost around $ 118 per year, which excludes the content of a website. If you are a webmaster, you can save money in creating a website content files, but if you want to hire a personalized design without using a CMS, you can invest around $ 300 to $ 500 for a personalized design and services fee in uploading content.

In order to save cost in hosting, you can have multiple websites with a just single hosting plan for around $ 120 dollars per year. Note that prices are maximum amount for the cost of building a website, but you need to consider the reliability and specification of the server if the provider is offering very low price.

Is sharing hosting is okay? Of course, you will share at your own risk, it is okay but it always depends, you should host a website from a trusted partner. Make sure that they would not violate the rules and regulation such as uploading inappropriate content, hosting non-web files and abusing hosting services. If you don’t like to be shared on the risk of violation, you should ask sharer to have a new hosting or buy from a cheap reseller.

The Right Content Another mandatory requirement for a website is the content. Building a website content is a different story. A website without a content is like a house without any materials, it cannot be live in. A website that is not updated is a person who speaks the same word repeatedly.

The Homepage

The home page is the front view of the website, it is a welcoming page for a website. It is like an abstract of a research where you invite your visitors to browse your website.

The About Us Page

The about us Page provide basic information about your business. The page can include history, vision and mission statement of the organization.

News

There is no reason for us to return to a website if the content is not updated. Updating your clients is important to improve the visitor of your website

Contact Information

Contact Information is the very vital for your client to get in touch with you, this information includes your personalized email address and telephone number.

Website Promotion Tips Website Promotion is one of the hardest parts to do. You give a time and effort to promote a website. Promoting a web content is the same as Marketing a Product. Where you let the people know about your product or your name.

Here are some of the tips that might help you to promote and gain more visitors to your website.

1. First, your website must have an original and quality content which search engines and readers will enjoy looking for it.

2. Build links to another website, Link Building will help a lot for better ranking. Be friends with a lot of site owners to link you.

3. Your website must be visible to Search Engines such as Google.

4. Join Forums and Social Networking site such as Facebook.com and leave a link to your site, even Digg.com can do that.

5. Always use an International Language site which is English, for a Search Engine to read more tags and keywords from your site.

6. Always update the content of your website. This is a reason why people will be going back to your site. If your website content doesn’t change at all, there is no reason to visit your website again.

7. Never copy content from another website such as the Copy-Paste thing, this will lead you to blocked websites in the Search Engines.

8. Include good META tags for your website.

9. Request visitors to bookmark you, much better if they subscribe to an RSS.

10. Lastly, learn and study hard how to gain more traffic on your website.

Getting Advance Web developers are the one who is really a type of software developers (yes they are one) in the World Wide Web applications, everything you see online are done by Web Developers except for add-ins such as animation (created by multimedia developers) and articles (which a literature experts will be the one responsible for it). Everything that a web server to a web browser reads may come from a web developer. There is usually a Project Manager in a web development applications, most of the web developers have different expertise such as the most basic HTML (which all web

developers must know it), JavaScript, CSS, and other basic designing scripts). Intermediate developers are also needed to master such as Perl, Python, Ruby, PHPSQL, Java, ASP.NET, .NET MVC. The web will not also work without a content creator, author, writer, marketing advisory which are not web developers itself. Whatever you see in italic are the one that a web developer need to learn.

If you plan to become a web developer, (aside from taking up BSIT and choosing Web Application Development as a major), you need to focus on web related subjects. You may start studying HTML which is the foundation of everything, after that you should learn CSS. Another important and should I say really needed is a knowledge in Creativity (such as Photoshop and Animation). Good thing to start is to buy a domain and explore different available CMS in your Cpanel and little edits on PHP files. That’s it, you are already a Junior Web Developer.

acknowledgement The researcher would like to thank the following. First the University President, Dr. Dexter R. Buted for giving trust to manage the new face of the University Website. Michael John Manaoat, Administrative Aide 1 for the assistance during the start of the web development. The trainees of PSU Lingayen namely Kurt Danlog, (WebMail incharge) Genesis Arenas, (Web Technical in-charge) and Ferdinand Manaoat, (Web Content format in-charge), for some sleepless nights and in excellent assistance to the website development and its management, Nikki Soriano for the content during the initial critical stage. Dr. Philip Queroda, Director, External Linkages for the critic and advice, Dr. Renato Salceco, Principal, SHS PSU Lingayen, for the motivation in my study and for conducting research. Dr. Liza Quimson, Director, PRPIO for managing the PRPIO team with all the PRPIO team. Lastly, my ex-girlfriend Caren Orlanda, for taking care of our little Cody Ventayen while writing this study.

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