Publishing

When your site is published the process of developing your site is complete. In order to publish your site you should have:

1. Web space for hosting your site
2. A domain name, your web address for your site

Finally once uploaded to your web space then comes the final online testing to make sure that all links and custom are still working correctly and have not been corrupted in the uploading process.

Hosting Requirements

Clearly you need web space to host your site, but what support for the web space? If your site includes server side scripting you will need a host that supports ASP, ASP.NET, PHP, or other server side scripting. Note that CGI programs do not require the same scripting requirements. See our hosting page for a review of web hosts.

In your host package do you require email, or do you have separate email already? When selecting your email requirements you should remember that the domain name of your web site and the domain name of your email should match, this provides a coherent identity.

Domain Name

One of the most important decisions you need to make at an early stage is to select the right domain name. The domain name has a fundamental effect to everything you do online, from credibility, to how you market your site.

Having your own domain name has a number of benefits;

• The name itself can increase traffic to your site
• Having your own domain name builds credibility for your organisation
• Your presence is mobile when you have your own domain name
• Internet marketing efforts stick with the domain name.

When selecting your domain name, you should remember the following;

• The domain name should be easy to remember
• Try to associate your domain name with the organisation name, many users will go right away to "www.companyname.co.uk" or "www.companyname.com".
• If a suitable company name is not available try a descriptive name associated with the company service, for example "www.websitedeveloper.co.uk"

The alternative to not registering your own domain name is to use the one from your ISP or web host, which might typically look like "www.yourISP.co.uk/yoursitename". This is certainly less memorable that your own address.

You can also register multiple web sites. We do not provide a registration service, however your web host will probably be able to provide one for you, alternatively we can advise you as part of your web site development.

Live Testing

As a final test an opportunity to check that the web site works live on the internet. This can be done either:

• In a hidden directory on your web site
• A hidden directory on our web site (you will have access to this from an early stage in order that you can monitor the progression of your web site)

One testing is complete will either provide you with a copy of your code for you to upload, or we can upload this for you, you will still receive a master copy of your site for your storage.