So you’re thinking of redoing your existing website, or perhaps you don’t have a site yet and want to set one up. One of the first questions that you’ll face is whether to build and maintain your website in-house, or to hire an external agency to do it for you. What approach works best depends on many factors.

Do It Yourself

Building a website yourself by hand is a pretty daunting task. You need a solid grasp of HTML, CSS and possibly JavaScript and other languages. Additionally you need to be familiar with the basic concepts of web design if you want your site to look at least vaguely professional.

If you have the time and appropriate skills, building a website by hand is the cheapest and most flexible option. All you need is a good web host and off you go. Most of us however won’t have the necessary skills to build a functional and decent-looking website.

Do It Yourself, Advantages:

• Cheap
• Total control over your site
• The sky’s the limit

Do It Yourself, Disadvantages:

• Solid HTML and CSS skills are absolutely necessary
• It’ll consume a lot of your time

Web Publishing / Content Management Systems

With the abundance of user-friendly web publishing software available online these days it’s a tempting choice to use one of these and build a website yourself. Systems like WordPress, Squarespace and Wix make it look easy to design and build your own website in a matter of minutes. (Many webhosting companies also offer easy-to-use web content management systems, but these often turn out to be very basic systems that won’t get you very far.)

The uncomfortable truth however is that everyone can build a website with these tools, but building a good website takes a lot of time and effort.

Web publishing systems can help make it easier for you by providing design templates, easy layout options, and intuitive admin functions, but in the end you’ll still have to invest a lot of your time, and potentially money, to get the most out of it.

Every easy-to-use web publishing systems has its limits and constraints, usually necessary to ensure it remains accessible to non-techie users. You’ll also be forced to work with the design elements the tool provides you with, which can mean your site looks similar to other websites out there. A way around this is to have a unique design made for you. This doesn’t have to be an expensive option – unique WordPress designs for example can be had for a few hundred dollars or less.

Web Publishing, Advantages:

• Easy to set up
• Easy to use (mostly)
• Professional design templates are widely available
• With plugins you can add all kinds of functionality to many web publishing systems

Web Publishing, Disadvantages:

• Not all systems are free to use
• A truly unique design will probably cost you money
• Each system has its limitations in terms of flexibility and functionality
• Getting to know your tool and building a good site will take time

Hire an External Web Agency

If your pockets are deep enough and/or your time limited, hiring an external agency to build your website for you is a viable option. But don’t just hire any agency – shop around and compare. Many agencies are barely more than a programmer and a salesman working out of someone’s basement, and they won’t be able to deliver proper long-term service and support.

When looking for a web agency to outsource your website to, keep the following things in mind:

Does the agency have an excellent website? For web agencies their own website should be a prime demonstration of their skills. It needs to be as good as they can make it. If you’re not blown away by their own site, they may not have the necessary capabilities to build a truly great website for you.

Do they use a lot of technical jargon? Abundant use of web-speak may be a means of hiding their lack of expertise. You want an agency that speaks your language and can communicate their ideas to you in a straight-forward manner.

Does their offer match their price? As in all industries with web agencies you often get what you pay for, but sometimes an agency might take advantage of a new client’s lack of online experience. Don’t commit to a website costing tens of thousands of dollars until you’re totally sure they’re the right people for the job.

Do they offer good (and affordable) support? Building a website isn’t the end of the process, you’ll need proper support from the agency to keep the site up-to-date and error-free. Ensure that the support they deliver after the new website is live is part of the contract, and don’t let them charge huge maintenance fees either. If you’re paying more each year in maintenance cost than your website originally cost, you’re being ripped off.

External Agency, Advantages:

• All the hard work is done for you
• A good agency can supplement your own ideas and come up with even better concepts
• Your website will be unique and (hopefully) effective

External Agency, Disadvantages:

• It’s the most expensive option – by far
• You run the risk of being stuck with a mediocre agency and an under-performing website

Building a Website – Do It Yourself or Hire a 3rd Party? is a post from: The Great Websites Blog

Web hosting, the infrastructure of servers and connections that make your website available to the internet, is an inescapable part of having a website. Ideally web hosting isn’t something you want to worry a lot about. It’s a commodity – it’s (relatively) cheap, it should work fine all the time, and there are literally thousands of suppliers to choose from.

However, the reality of the matter is that there’s a great deal of difference in quality between web hosting providers. While many of the hosting packages most companies offer are similar in terms of specifications and pricing, the real differentiator is the service you get.

It pays to do a little investigation before you select a hosting company. Moving from one hosting company to another can be a difficult and complicated process, so you want to select the right hosting provider from the start.

The first thing you want to select on is the features and specifications you’ll require for your hosting package. Do justice to your ambition and don’t go for a cheap, simple package just because it’ll save you some money. Upgrading your package when your site becomes a success may be difficult, and often more elaborate packages aren’t outrageously expensive, so it’s a good idea to think big. Storage space, bandwidth, databases and email accounts should all be sufficiently spacious to accommodate your ambitions.

Now that you’ve found a few hosting providers that offer the packages you’re interested in, you should see if they go the extra mile. Do they offer extra tools like pre-installed web statistics software? if you want to start a blog, do they offer support for blogging software like WordPress? Is their helpdesk reachable by phone? Don’t make it easy for yourself here but invest time and effort to read through their service offerings and ensure they overdeliver.

This will leave you with a few companies that have the right goods. All of them will say they’re the best choice, but there’s only one type of opinion that really matters: that of their existing customers. There are several independent websites that gather reviews of hosting providers, and this is a valuable resource to further narrow down your decision. Do a Google-search on “hosting reviews” and you’ll find abundant resources to help you find opinions and reviews from real customers of your selection of hosting companies.

Don’t let your guard down though, some savvy hosting marketeers will game these websites by inserting fake positive reviews that raise the score for their company. What you’re looking for are negative reviews. If a company has a lot of them, regardless of the number of positive reviews they might also get, it’s probably not a good idea to do business with them. But if they have only a few negative reviews, or if the negative feedback is from a while ago and lately mostly good things are being said, they might be the right hosting provider that’s got their business in order.

Once you’ve selected the hosting company that you think best suits your needs and can deliver quality support, it should be an aspect of your website that’s invisible. If the services delivered by your hosting provider are a recurring source of trouble and worries, it’s time to consider moving to a different provider.

Choose The Right Web Hosting Company is a post from: The Great Websites Blog