So you decided to build a website and now need a designer to create it and a hosting platform to publish your creation for the world to see.

Here we will give you some advice on how to make the experience as smooth as possible and ensure you get the most for your money.

There are many options available when it comes to getting a website published on the World Wide Web. The best choice for your needs depends very much on your goals and how much you’re willing to spend.

Before you approach a designer,  give some thought about what you want to achieve from your website. A little forward planning will make it a lot easier to communicate what you want and could prevent expensive rework down the track.

You can have a Nissan Sentra, or a Mercedes Benz

But remember, you get what you pay for. Ask your web designer what your can reasonably expect on your budget. You might get a cheap website designed for under $200 USD, but don’t expect the quality to be stellar. This might be perfectly fine but consider your needs.

Do-It-Yourself vs Hiring a Professional Designer

If you know a little CSS and HTML, you might consider doing the job yourself. Doing your own design means you can take control and create your site exactly the way you like it. In practice it is not always as easy as you think and will often take far longer. A professional designer will likely achieve results faster and maybe even cheaper. You are effectively trading time for money, his time for your money.

Choosing a Web Designer

There is plenty to be said for developing a long-lasting, healthy relationship with your designer, especially if you think you might need more work done in future. Finding someone in your local area is highly recommended as meeting in person can often make communicating a lot easier.

Consider their portfolio and level of experience. Look for someone with at least a couple years of experience or a lot of projects to their name, also try and find someone who has worked on the type of site you want built.

I probably don’t need to say this, but ALWAYS get your agreement down in writing. If you have done the right preparation work, this will be much less of a pain and it will certainly save a lot of hardship further down the line.

Consider if the price is going to be fixed or will vary depending on future changes. If you work on a fixed price, ensure you clarify what constitutes a finished project, also clarify how you will handle maintenance and revisions.

You might have to work with more than one designer before you find one you are happy with. If your budget allows it, offering a small, initial project is a good way to test their ability before moving onto bigger things

Choosing a Host

Many website owners think web hosting is simply the server where your web site is stored. While this is true, there are a variety of other services a web host offers that will help you move your site from dream to reality.

A quality web host is responsible for doing a number of things:

• Keep up to date with software technology
• Monitoring hosted websites and uptime guarantees
• Regular hardware upgrades
• Provide tools and technologies for customization and growth of customer’s websites

When researching your host a good starting point are searchable directories that offer comparison on popular hosts. One must be extremely careful online because many of the websites promoting web hosts are actually affiliates who give biased reviews.

We have compiled a short list of the more recognized hosting directories here.

Web hosting forums like WebHostingTalk.com are also good places to ask relevant questions.

Seperate vs All-In-One Hosting and Deisgn Packages

First consider that you don’t need to hire the same company to handle both the web hosting and design. Sometimes you get more value for your money if you hire a professional company to handle the web design and another to handle hosting.

While it is convenient to have a professional web designer take care of the hosting as well, consider where their strengths lie. Many web designers spend the majority of their time designing and maintaining sites and have little time left over for website monitoring, uptime guarantee and regular hardware upgrades.

In their defense, this has a lot to do with the workload they are under, but if their hosting service is unreliable, then it might be smart to go with a seperate hosting company.