Do-it-Yourself or Designer? |
 A common mistake among people looking to make their first web site is confusing web hosting with web site design. You can think of web hosting as an apartment that you rent in a building, including plumbing and electrical access. When you first rent the apartment, it is completely empty and it is up to you to fill it will furniture. In this analogy, the apartment itself is the web hosting while all of the contents of your apartment make up the web site.
Although some web hosting companies may provide you with a do-it-yourself site building tool, web hosts will not build your web site for you. It is thus up to you to get your web site built. You have two choices when deciding how to build your web site: you can design it yourself or you can hire a professional designer.
Each of these two choices has pros and cons associated with it that will be discussed below. When deciding between these two options you must take into consideration the following factors:
- Your level of experience with web site design
- Your budget for getting the site designed
- The level of quality you want for your site
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| Do-it-Yourself |
If you have no design experience and want a site for a medium to large business then your best option would be to hire a professional designer. However, if you want to build a personal site or a site for a small business, it might be in your best interests to make it yourself. Often, web hosting companies will provide you with a web site building tool for no charge when you purchase a hosting account. These tools vary drastically in terms of quality, however; the better ones can produce very professional looking web sites. See the Creating a Website Using a Site Building Tool Tutorial for more details.
Building your web site yourself is definitely the cheaper of the two options. It is very common for a business to underestimate the cost of getting a web site built by a professional web site designer. Designers can charge around $70 per hour and a full site design for a small business can run around $5000. Some designers will quote you a figure well below this estimate however there may be hidden costs involved or they may design a site of poor quality. By designing your own site you have more control over the content and quality of the site. If you have little design experience however, it may be very difficult for you to create a professional site.
By building your own web site you are get more control over the management of it. You will learn a great deal during the process of creating your own site and getting it hosted. This knowledge will be invaluable when you need to make changes to your site and when you create your next site. Quite often in the web hosting industry, web site designers will offer to provide you with web hosting in addition to their design services. What they’re not telling you is that they just purchase a hosting account themselves, often at a discount, and then charge you a premium for it. By designing your own site, you retain more control over the entire process, especially the costs involved.
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