Frequently asked Questions Web Issues (828) 713-0535 helpdesk@leelehman.com PO Box 19185, Asheville NC 28815 Q:  How do I find out about legal issues related to the web? Q:  What is it that I have to purchase in order to have my own web site? Q:  How do I pick my domain name? Q:  Whose domain hosting should I pick? Q:  How fancy do I have to get to have my own web page? Q:  Can I save money by buying modules? Q:  How many e-mail addresses do I need? Q:  What do I have to know to select a web host? Q:  Is all domain hosting the same?   Q:  How do I find out about legal issues related to the web? A:  I recommend Stephen Fishman's book on Web and Software Development, http://www.amazon.com/Web-Software-Development-Legal- Guide/dp/1413300871/ref=sr_1_26/104-7947413- 0207902?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1173491831&sr=1-26   Q: What is it that I have to purchase in order to have my own web site? A: The official term for a web site is a “domain.” A domain consists of the name itself plus a suffix, such as “com” or “org.” In other countries besides the USA, the suffix may include country information. Thus, the domain for this website is leelehman.com. In order to have a website, you must purchase a domain name (this is unique), and then have it “hosted.” The host is the physical address of your domain on the world wide web. Go to Top Q:  How do I pick my domain name? A: This is actually a more complicated question than it might seem. Once upon a time, the answer was simple: you picked your own name, or the name of your company. But here's the problem with this: in order to find you, your potential customer has to already know your name. You need to ask yourself honestly whether this is the case. Search engines like Google and Yahoo actually use the domain name as a primary factor in searches. For example, consider http://ashevilleweddingphotography.com/. This is a name you can figure out, so to speak. Now this page is actually a play in itself: not the page of a wedding photographer, but of a clearinghouse that is selling advertising to wedding photographers - precisely because the domain name is so memorable. But as a consumer, this is much easier than trying to remember Krys Streeter Photography, one of their advertisers. Lehman Associates will be happy to help you choose your domain name wisely. Go to Top Q:  Whose domain hosting should I pick? A:  There's a lot of competition in domains, and this has dropped the price of hosting considerably. These days, most sites will handle the registration of your domain name for free as part of the service. The hosting service I use is Lunarpages. Among the things to look for in a host:     * Speed: some hosts sell more bandwidth than they can really support, and so pages on them run slowly, or people get "kicked off"     * Back-ups: you really want your site to handle automatic backing up. Not that you shouldn't do this yourself, but how many of us are really obsessive enough to do this as frequently as we should?     * Features: many hosting services have multiple plans. You can probably start small, and then "trade up" if you need the features of the larger plan. Another part of the features is free software: but don't overpay to get access to software you don't need.     * Discounts for pre-pay: an annual plan should be cheaper than by the month. Incidently, if you do need to cancel before the year is up, you generally can get a partial discount, but check the provisions of the host for this.     * Automatic trouble-shooting: your web host can actually monitor your site for malicious attacks, either through e-mail or by loading malware on your site. Does your host do this? Go to Top Q:  How fancy do I have to get to have my own web page? A:  It depends. If you want to have a shopping cart, and you know nothing about web design, you will probably need to hire someone to set this up for you. But if your website is not designed around shopping, then the answer is: it depends. One of the keys to a successful website is good graphics. This can be in the form of your logo, the menu structure, or simply pictures on the page. If you are pretty good with a digital camera and scanner, then you can handle the pictures, although you may need additional software to help you adjust the size and density of the picture. As for logos, there are programs out there which can help tremendously in the design. On the other hand, you may want to hire a graphic designer to give your page a really unique look and feel. However, if you decide to do this, you do have a decision to make about web design: and it's one you really cannot just leave to your web designer. There are two main approaches to site design. The older concept is templates. In this style, the designer sets up a framework generally in html and Java: a new page is created by copying the framework, and then adding the specific content for the new page. These websites are normally maintained through programs like Dreamweaver® or Cold Fusion®, or my personal favorite, Namo WebEditor. Many domain hosting sites have software to help you create such a template for your site. The newer way is to use a content manager such as Joomla® or phpWebSite. With a content manager, a site template is created, but the “Webmistress” or “Webmaster” hardly ever gets involved in the “code” behind the site, which is usually in either php (Hypertext Preprocessor) or css (Cascading Style Sheets). Here, the end user can add “pages” at will by copying in word processor documents and classifying them. Both systems have menuing, graphics, and content. The content manager version takes much less effort to change or expand, even for somebody like me who is fully conversant in html. A content manager can be tweaked to have a customized look and feel: but you're probably no going to want to learn how to do it yourself. But hiring somebody to do the initial set-up is easy. php/css pages, whether they are formally done with a content manager or not, do have some technical advantages. One of the biggest is that these systems are generally tied to databases. One of the simplest types of database is the calendar. Whether you want to formally show a calendar on your site or not, you may want to have content which expires (i.e., disappears) after a certain date. It looks very sloppy for someone to visit your site to discover the sale that ended last week: or worse, last month or last year. Lehman Associates can help you to make the best decision for the “guts” behind your website. Go to Top Q:  Can I save money by buying modules? A:  Yes you can. There are a lot of modules out there that you can install onto your web site - and that cost a fraction of what it would cost to have a consultant create them. Some of these can even be free, depending on what your web host offers. For example, on my host, I can put up a forum or a blog for free. A calendar function is a good example - or a blog. When you purchase one of these modules, generally all you have to do is install them, and then add a small amount of code to one or more web pages to "call" the program. This is something a web consultant should be happy to do - because, frankly, programming such functions is generally tedious. Lehman Associates will be happy to talk to you about how you can add these features - as well as installing them for you. Go to Top Q:  How many e-mail addresses do I need? A:  Some hosting services seem to ration e-mail addresses – which is rather pointless in the present world of gigabytes of storage space for the average domain. One obvious consideration is: how many people do you have working for you? Lest you think that that number is the number of addresses you will need, think again. You may want to apportion e- mail addresses by function, and not just by person. This is especially useful if several people share the same function. So take the number of people you have: and multiply by five or ten, depending on how optimistic you are. Lehman Associates will be happy to help you think of innovative ways to use those extra e- mail addresses – besides giving them to your friends! Go to Top Q:  What do I have to know to select a web host? A:  These days, most web hosting comes with a suite of tools: many of which you will never need. These tools are there to help you maintain your own site – and the assumption is that you will maintain your own site. If you are hiring a web designer to design your site, chances are, she or he already has any tools that she or he wants to use anyway. So the tools may or may not be that important. Perhaps the most important question in choosing a domain host is whether you want to do web commerce. If you never ever want to think about this – or alternately, if you are satisfied with Paypal as your only option, then you can probably choose the cheapest site you can find. If you do ever want to have a shopping cart, then make sure you choose a domain host that can support this. We would recommend that you select a domain host that has at least two levels of service higher than that which you select as your starting point – because you just never know. And yes, Lehman Associates can help you pick a domain host. Go to Top Q:  Is all domain hosting the same? A:  In a word, no. The issue is really what the hosting site expects you to do. Some web hosts assume that you will be building your own site – which you can do, with computer knowledge at a level of intermediate word processing. A site like this is really good if you do want to set up and maintain your own site, especially if you expect the total number of pages to be maybe a dozen or less, and if you plan on moderate to no e-commerce. Other sites are more robust, and these are the more generic players: the Unix-based web hosting sites. Many of these feature an interface called cPanel X. While not as intuitive as the proprietary sites, the fact that all these sites feature the same interface, and the same suite of support programs means you become less dependent on your hosting site, and have access to a wider range of web developers, because these tools are not site-specific. These are the site you should consider if you expect to have a more complex site – but you may well need help in developing or maintaining such a site. Lehman Associates can work with you to design your first web site, or to help you explore the best ways to improve your web presence. Lehman Associates can work with your web developer to maximize the potential of your site. Go to Top All the images here are clickable links to websites that Lee has either designed, or administered.