Can I be www.myname.com?

Well possibly, if you have an unusual name, but not likely if you have a common one. It all depends upon availability. You can check whether a particular domain is already taken or not by typing it in at UKReg.com (that is where I buy domains these days by the way - as you can see, their prices are competitive). If you want to go ahead & buy a domain, let me know first as you will need to have a DNS code from me (the address to my server) if you are going to take advantage of my cheaper hosting.

Can you arrange it so my site will list top on search engines like Google & MSN?

Again, if you have an unusual name then this is not so difficult, so you need to think of something fairly unique in order to make this easier. Search engines like Google, keep changing the parameters by which they order the web sites in their directory because Web designers keep finding ways of cheating the system.  Therefore even if we can get you to the top of Google's listing for a particular keyword, there is no guarantee that we can keep you there. Having relevant keywords regularly used amongst the text on your site will always help your listing.

Whilst a good listing always helps, an unusual product or service and good word-of-mouth still remains perhaps the best way of promoting your work.  A website can function well as a place to direct people upon first contact to much more information about what you do - (effectively acting as a shop window for you or your business), but you will still need to promote it yourself to get people to it in the first place.

Will I be able update it myself, or will I have to pay someone to do that?

There are several ways of updating a website, some of which require specialist knowledge of coding and expensive programs and some of which don't. If you have a basic website (which will be coded in HTML), you could use a basic text editor like Notepad in Windows to update it, but you would need also to understand HTML.  Without this specialist knowledge, you would need to use a web design program (which does the coding for you), or one of the cheaper and more bomb proof versions designed for non-technical users. Macromedia's Contribute is such a program and it retails at around £100.

As well as being able to update the pages, you will also need a way of downloading and uploading the files to your Web server.  This is often done using an FTP program, of which several free ones are available to download from the Internet. Core FTP and Cute FTP are two such examples, while programs like Contribute have their own FTP client built in.

The other options used to update your website involve using online tools like your Web hosting control panel. Joomla! based websites (which are coded in PHP) have their own built-in administrator control panel which enables you to add, edit and delete content, control users and much, much more. You can then update you site anywhere that you can gain access to the internet.

What will I have to provide?

 I will need you to tell me a number of things, beginning with what you want your website to achieve and what your budget is.  In terms of data, I will need a list of pages, any text that you want to include, photos/pictures etc. Full details of all this can be found in my website information sheet.

I want to go ahead with a website, so what do I need to do first?

Contact me & ask for my website information sheet, then read it through. Whilst at first it might seem that there is a lot to think about, it is just a matter of going through things one at a time - the process is not a difficult one. Drop me an e-mail or give me a call if you want to ask any more questions, or just chat about the process, I'd be happy to hear from you.