With the economy limping along and no bright shiny future right around the corner, more and more friends are starting to seriously look at starting their own business or at least add some gloss to their resume / portfolio. Since time and funds are tight and most of these friends have limited technical skills, I’ve put together a short overview of how to get a professional looking website up and running for very little time or money.
Get a domain
Ok, maybe I should have said “Get a memorable, meaningful name that is reasonably short and easy to spell. Oh, and .com is best unless you’re really are a .org.” If you really want or need help with a business name, try one of the professional naming services out there but be warned, quality and price vary widely so you might want to give it a try yourself first.
Once you have a few name ideas, Domize provides a great search tool to see if your requested name is available. Once you’ve found one that is available, then register it. I’ve had good experiences with 1and1.com (Disclosure: They’re my current registrar.), but GoDaddy.com is another popular choice.
Depending on your site, you may also want to setup subdomains (portfolio.janedoe.com, blog.janedoe.com, etc.) which can typically be done at no extra charge.
Cost: $7-10/yr. for domain registration
Setup Email
Once you’ve registered your domain, your host will have some sort of email option available for you. For domain packages only, you can typically set up multiple email addresses that you then forward to your “real” address (e.g. someone sending mail to jane@janedoe.com will be forwarded to your janedoe@gmail.com account.)
FYI, you can setup your Gmail account to reply from your business account which allows you to manage all of your email in one place — this is a good thing. Check out this article for more info on setting this up.
Cost: $0 for webmail
Setup your site
If you’re just getting started, I recommend using WordPress.com for your site. (Yes, I know this is a WordPress.com site. No, I have no other involvement with WordPress.) It’s super simple to use, allows your visitors to subscribe to your updates (via RSS, but you can also add email subscriptions using Feedburner), is pretty easy to customize, and is free. You can also upload and display various media (photos, videos, etc.) with just a couple of clicks.
Cost: $0 for WordPress.com
Redirect your Domain
Now that you have a domain and a website, you need to connect the dots so that your janedoe.com name actually points to your janedoe.com site. You can do this for free from your domain host by using a frame redirect which means that the address bar on the website will show your janedoe.com address and not the janedoe.wordpress.com address.
Provide Subscription Options
If you’re using a blog platform, your site will automatically generate an RSS feed. Using this standard feed is fine, but if you have a few extra minutes I’d recommend creating a Feedburner account. With Feedburner you can customize your RSS feed and create an email subscription option. Even if you’re not planning to run the site as a blog, per se, it’s nice to provide a regular push of information out to your subscribers instead of forcing them to come back to your site.
Cost: $0 for Feedburner.com
