Setting up a Website

[nifan]

Yep possible but wouldn't do it. 

Why not? Security issues?

Loads of issues security issues, speed ( the speed your net connection is quoted at is for download - upload is usually much slower particularly on ASDL) etc.

To be honest if someone is not sure if this is possible, they dont know enough to be going near it.

Far easier and safer to pay for hosting.

[bud]

Cheers Mhic, i'll try and put some of this into practice!

[Croí na hÉireann]

Anyone any tips for helping search engines to see your site??? I used the Blacknight meta tag builder and included the code in the head of the homepage. I've also registered the site with the main search engines but they say it can take a while for them to include the site in their searches. It's been nearly a month at this stage, how long does it take and is there any way to speed up the process???

[Treasurer]

Can take anything from hours to months.  I don't know it's still the case but it used to help if you registered with directories such as DMOZ (the only one that I can think of now).

[nifan]

The actual formulas search engines use is a guarded secret.

The more sites that link to your site the better you will score in most of these however.

[Mhic Easmuint]

Use the main key words (words/terms ppl would be searching for) in the title.  And have the title changing throughout your site for the different pages to make it more appropriate. If its a products website have the title bar display the name of the product. 

Use alot of your keywords in your homepage.
Keep your code clean.  Some sites have alot of javascript in the header tags which adds alot of clutter for search engines to filter through to find the useful information on your site. 

Submit a site map to the likes of google.  That way they find every page on your website.

Friendly URLs. e.g.

http://www,mysite.com/products/productname   instead of.
http://www,mysite.com/products.aspx?id=24

[nifan]

Use alot of your keywords in your homepage.

Some search engines are though to limit the number of keywords they will use to prevent the meta tag bombing phenomena where people put everything under the sun in there.

Same as when they put huge amounts of keywords as "invisible" text at the end of pages to try and up their hits.

[Croí na hÉireann]

Thanks folks. Registered with DMOZ and will have a look for some more like that. Must also get around to submitting a site map...

[nifan]

http://www.webworkshop.net/pagerank.html

some info on page rank.

[The Watcher Pat]

Use alot of your keywords in your homepage.

Some search engines are though to limit the number of keywords they will use to prevent the meta tag bombing phenomena where people put everything under the sun in there.

Same as when they put huge amounts of keywords as "invisible" text at the end of pages to try and up their hits.

Aye they put any keywords to get a link to the site.

I remember reading about a Tottenham Hotspur site that had one of the keywords "Champions league"

[thewobbler]

If you build your site using logical structures, i.e. placing headers and content in the correct order, together with good, relevant META information, then before long Google will place you correctly in the natural order of things. You can spend a lot of time and money tweaking and twisting the Google algorithm, but it's almost like Catch 22 once you go up that road; to maintain your artifically high position, you have to keep retracing your steps. Get the nuts and bolts right at the start and it's the best medicine of all.


In terms of HTML, use logically ordered mark-up. The order you read content should be the order it is placed. There should only be one H1 tag on a page. H2s, H3s etc should be nested appropriately. Use UL/LI and DD/DT tags for lists and for navigation, not images, and not tables. Don't use images for headers without an image replacement technique. Have a sitemap, and preferably an XML sitemap in the background.

In terms of META information, use targetted descriptions and keywords for your company name, products, services, expertise and crucially, location - but don't overdo them. Short, relevant descriptions serve a better purpose than long-winded, catch-all descriptions on every page.


Do submit your site to as many search engines as possible, and if time allows, set up reciprocal accounts on the likes of Facebook, Bebo, MySpace, Youtube, Flickr and LinkdIn. These shouldn't require a lot of maintenance once you've them up and running - their purpose is to direct people to your site.



Regarding hosting, traditional ASP is a dying language, and .NET can be a bit of a f*cker to get started in - so I'd recommend avoiding Windows Servers. LAMP (Linux-Apache-MySQL-PHP) is normally a cheaper, easier to upgrade, easier to get help with solution - and the fact that Wordpress, Joomla etc. are more easily customisable with Linux is a big plus for beginners.

I've used hosting-unlimited.net a few times and have found them to be excellent. If you exceed the limits of their £20 p/a account then you must be doing sometihing very right (or very, very wrong!) with your site.

123-reg are cheap but they'e one nasty shower of b*st*rds to deal with and I'd avoid them if possible.   

[ArmaghGAAforum]

if your looking to host just basic html pages and pictures then good free hosting is the cheapest.  try 000webhost.com for decent free hosting.

want a free .co.uk or similar other domains then check out this thread, http://whatsyourview.net/forum/f41/100-free-co-uk-domain-names-17223/ you may need to reg to see it but it works a treat and safe.