Splat | WiseTome.com

The past series had been on creating websites.  Let me just summarize them and have the links in one place to each of them.

• Creating Websites - Options - When you intend to create websites, you need to be aware of your options.  To help you choose one of the options, you need to plan out the purpose and various cavets about it.
• Creating Websites - Personal Online Presence - If you want to just create a personal websites, you have several free choices (in terms of budget) available for you.  There are webpage hosters, blog hosters and forum hosters.  The choice again would be based on the purpose of your personal website.
• Creating Websites - Paid Web Host Service - If you need to create a business website, then you would usually need to go for a paid hosting service. The choice of the service provider would be based on reliability, cost, and technology requried.
• Creating Websites - Ways To Build Webpages - Once you are settled with your options, the choice of how you build the webpages is narrowed down.  Webpage hosting service providers usually provide you with option to build pages out of templates.  If you are hosting it yourselves, then you have several options like simple HTML pages, blogging engines, forum softwares and general CMS.

As part of the ‘Creating Websites’ series, we have looked at the different reasons one would want to start a website, the different options one would have depending on these reasons in terms of budget (time and money). Assuming, you have these figured out by now, let us look at the different technological options you have in building or creating the actual webpages.

Before we go into that, let me briefly explain what these webpages are. If you notice, all web address start with a ‘http’. For example, the URL for this blog is:

http://www.wisetome.com/splat

The http, if you do not already know, stands for ‘Hyper Text Transfer Protocol‘. It is a protocol to transfer hyperlinked text. When one types an address into the address bar of their browser, a request is made to the server, with the help of domain names, and the server returns with a HTML document. HTML stands for Hyper Text Markup Language. So, it is that simple. To have a website, you just need to place the HTML documents in a place from where the server can pick it up and send it to who ever is requesting it.

You can do this in several ways.

• Static Pages
  • Hand Coded
  • WYSIWYG Editors
• Dynamic Pages

Let me explain a few of them briefly. Read the rest of this entry »

If you intend to create a website for business purpose or if you are ready to allot a bit of budget for your personal website, instead of opting for the various free options of online presence, then you should go for paid web hosts.

There are several different kinds of packages and options given by different web host service providers. There are so many, that it can be quite a daunting task for you to choose among them.

You can decide based on the following options.

• Technology
• Reliability
• Cost

Let us look at each of these option categories,.
Read the rest of this entry »

With an experience that ranges around four to five years, I have tried just about all options of free online presence in different categories, even if not all the ones with in a category. These options though, as I stated earlier are suitable for personal websites. If you want to get a business website, then I strongly recommend getting a professional hosting, a domain name and a proper website setup. (See my previous introductory post - Creating Websites - to know more).

But the following choices are good, if you just want a personal online presence and do not want to spend a buck on anything other than the time you spend on the internet.

Let us look at the options available in the following different categories.

• Personal Websites – These are websites in general. The will have a handful of pages or more that may have your resume/portfolio, or information and resources on your favorite hobbies.
• Blogs - These are like diaries. The articles are posted in reverse chronological order. The visitors can leave some form of comments on your posts.
• Forums – These are basically discussion boards or bulletin boards. These websites are, in a simple sense, the descendants of mailing lists or mail groups. More than one person can post. Posts are strung in threads. Usually, the latest posted thread will be shown at the top.

These are the broad classifications of things you can have as a personal presence online. Let us break down at each of them and see what options we have available.
Read the rest of this entry »

Seems like not many have noticed but I could be wrong. Or I could be the only one among the net-savvy to still use Orkut for networking with friends.

In any case, my friend pointed me to a modest link at the Orkut homepage.

You can choose that ‘edit feeds’ link to add any feed URL. Once it is added, it comes as another link under the profile links.

It aggregates the content using the feed URL and conjures up a web page with it.

I am marginally excited though - I would have been more interested in a feed to my scraps. A feed to the scraps would make it much easier to keep track of conversations with your contacts.

It was when I was telling the story of my journey down the cyber lane, that my friend suggested I write few blog posts that would help newbies create websites of their own. Hence, all you veterans, stop saying anyone can do that, and do suggest something more that would help those who do not know.

From the moment I started contemplating about giving a short post on setting up a website, I came to comprehend that the simple question, ‘how do I setup a website’, does not have a simple answer. It involves various parameters, and thus let me help you sort those out.

There are many parameters that decide on the approach of setting up a website, but there are two basic question that would help you arrive at the approach.

What is the purpose of the website?

Answer this, and pretty much most of the options gets answered. The two basic purposes are personal websites and business websites. Of course, there are many gray areas, but it should be easy to choose between the two.
Read the rest of this entry »