High Speed in Lanark County

When it comes to building a website you can take one of two approaches…

1. hire a professional
2. build it yourself

Hiring a Professional

Web design can be a highly specialized and technical area which goes beyond the aptitude and skills of most people. In addition to ‘building’ your website, a professional web designer can also help protect your site from viruses and spam, as well as set up e-commerce options (e-commerce is a term used to refer to how financial exchanges are made over the internet).

However, as with every other service professions, not all web designers offer the same options or the same quality so you will want to do some research as there are many things you will need to take into consideration including:

• Development Cost – the initial investment in your website may range anywhere from around $1,500-$10,000+ depending on size and complexity.  Knowing what you want before jumping into this process can really help you to keep your costs down. 

• Hosting– most professional web designers offer a hosting option for a nominal monthly fee. ‘Hosting’ refers to where your web site ‘lives’ so that it is accessible on the internet. The most common options for web hosting are:
  • Free web hosting in a shared environment–while this might seem like an ideal solution, there are a number of reasons why this might not be the best way to go
    • You might not get the space you need to showcase your business
    • You might be required to run the host’s ads on your site
    • There may be restrictions regarding bandwidth
    • You may have to maintain a look and feel (template) that is not consistent with your company branding
• Self-hosted – With this option you pay a specific fee for a specific amount of space on a provider’s server. This space is usually shared with other websites from around the world.  
• this option can be very reasonably priced but requires you to do all the technical setup etc. in order to make the web site ‘work’ ie: install operating system, upload files, test and troubleshoot, fix if it is broken
• Developer-Hosted - This is the most expensive option.  The developer maintains a machine that only their clients reside on and they take care of all technicalities.  Because of this the monthly cost is higher BUT you are not responsible to manage any technical data. 

• Domain Name: Another thing to take into consideration when creating your website is the domain name. While you do not need a domain name in order to have a website, owning your own domain name provides you with extra branding and marketing power in the same way that copy-writing protects publications and patenting protects inventions. There is generally a cost associated with owning a domain name which can range from $8-$35 per year.