More impressive, Ozzie showed me how to put a counter on my web page to show how many “hits” my page had received. I was cynical about the usefulness of a counter. Who was out there to see it anyway? At most, I expected five or ten hits over the course of the next two years. Not that many people surfed the web in 1996, did they?

Several months later I took a look at my counter and accused Ozzie of hacking into my site as a practical joke. Since the counter required password access, the evidence pointed to Ozzie’s innocence and an even more improbable explanation: The counter was accurate. How many surfers were interested in cartoon cats and Yogi Berra quotes? The counter in question showed numbers in six figures. Before Geocities erased my site (due to owner neglect) the counter read over a million hits.

How did my website attract such attention? Probably because I unknowingly used the term “Jurassic Park” when referring to my workplace (“a bunch of dinosaurs out of control.”) I surmise that on a less-populated 1996 Internet a search using the term “Jurassic Park” brought up my website. The exercise with Geocities didn’t greatly enhance my web building skills. However, it impressed upon me a lasting lesson: never underestimate the power of the Internet.

I learned a few lessons between then and now, and with seven years of knowledge building, managed to establish a domain of my own. Now that I have been through it, I can advise that developing one’s own domain is not for the faint-of-heart, but it is a lot easier than I imagined. The results can be viewed at this web page . My domain should be available by the time this issue of PC Alamode is published. (J. B. McDonald & Son is a 106-year old family business, thus the “bricks to clicks” motto mentioned in the title of this article.)

The challenge of implementing a domain lies in the fact that you have to know a little about each of several technical areas and a lot about a couple. The building process requires patience, resourcefulness and, most of all, dumb luck. The fact that I could do it demonstrates the importance of the last item.

Whole books have been written about the website development process. Whole books have been written about the individual steps. However, the steps can be distilled down to a few basic processes, some of which sound arcane, but are simpler than one would expect:

1. Do your research
2. Establish a Domain Name
3. Engage a hosting service
4. Report your domain nameserver to your registration company
5. Write your code
6. Test your code
7. If necessary, set up payment and ordering services
8. Test your code
9. Upload your website
10. Test your code

I got a jump-start on the process by attending Lynn Northrup’s Creating an Online Business Presence class through Northside ISD Continuing Education. After the class I had the information I needed to start building my site and the courage to attempt it.

Research is important because you have a lot of decisions to make and those decisions are dependent upon decisions made previously. Sometimes you find yourself in a chicken-or-the-egg quandary. Thus, the steps don’t have a firm order.

If I had it to do over again, I would research hosting services first. Many offer free or very cheap domain name registration as part of the package. Finding the right hosting service can greatly simplify the second and eliminate the (possibly frustrating) fourth step altogether.

Before one can make an intelligent decision regarding a hosting service, one must know what will take place on the site. Issues like the number of e-mail and FTP accounts needed, whether CGI scripts will be required to implement forms, whether Front Page will be involved as a design tool, how much file space is needed, whether multimedia files such as .mp3 or .mpeg will be used and whether frames will be incorporated into the design. Very few hosting services offer adequate support for all of these requirements, so the search becomes a process of elimination.

For example, services like Netfirms offer free site hosting, but place banner ads on every page, a feature that defeats the use of HTML frames, a common design feature. Their paid services are cheap enough, but they offer very little file space and forbid .mp3 and .mpeg files. To compare features of web hosting services a good research tool is webhostingratings.

For writers of sloppy HTML, a hosting service that runs Unix may be too much of a headache. Unix demands that hyperlinks be stated using exact file names down to the capitalization. A hyperlink to the file “thestore.jpg” that happens to be coded as “TheStore.jpg” renders a “picture not found” icon on a Unix server, while a Windows-based server is more forgiving.

A domain name search can take place during hosting service research. A domain name search ensures that the desired domain name isn’t taken. Most hosting services allow such a search as a free, no-obligation feature. They also offer alternative names in the event that the desired domain name is taken. Having three or four names in mind at the start can save search time and lock in alternatives before they, too, are taken. Although the services suggest .org, .biz, or .net domains, the .com extension is still the most desirable for business sites. Most people automatically gravitate toward the .com extension, as one of my former .net employers learned the hard way. The .com version with the same name was a very unprofessional website, reflecting poorly on the .net company and confusing customers and potential customers.

If the desired hosting service does not offer free or very low cost domain name registration (under $10 per year) or if it is important to lock down a domain name for more than a year, a domain name registration service may be the answer. A list of accredited domain name registration services can be found at internic.

I got a good deal on a five-year domain name registration at Names4ever.com ($39.95). However, I experienced a lot of frustration trying to register the nameserver provided by my hosting service (ICDSoft.com). Although ICDSoft made clear the names for my nameservers, the Names4ever.com interface made the process frustrating to implement. Nowhere did Names4ever explain that you must delete their default nameservers before you can add the new ones. Technical support didn’t mention this issue when they answered my questions…after I had already figured out the problem.

Before paying for services (registration or hosting) print the contract and READ EVERY WORD. I was in the midst of signing up with one service when I heeded Lynn Northrup’s sage advice. In the printed contract, I discovered that the site did not allow .mpeg files, an integral part of my site. The contract reserved the right to place banner ads on every page and nowhere did it clarify that this meant ONLY free sites. Since my design incorporated navigation frames, I exited the signup before making a commitment and looked for anther service.

For sites that will offer a chance to order services or products online, payment and shopping cart services may figure into the research. Sites such as PayPal can help provide “buy now” buttons and other shopping cart services. PayPal offers a simple interface that allows you to select options then provides code to be pasted directly into your website.

Here ends the easy part. Now the hard stuff begins. Writing HTML code is extremely easy…to do wrong. A simple page that looks great in Internet Explorer on a 1024x768 monitor may look wretched in Netscape or on an 800x600 screen. An excellent resource that covers these and other pertinent issues is Elizabeth Castro’s HTML for the World Wide Web (PeachPit). The information on liquid layouts alone is worth the price of the book.

Code editing programs such as Dreamweaver or FrontPage are a mixed blessing. They are rapid development tools, but they exact a price. They put strange coding in your site, write code that is difficult to maintain in other programs and may require you to code more complicated features by hand. I use Dreamweaver for maintenance but for initial coding I use EditPlus Writing simple code, using scripts, plugins and multimedia only when the site’s function demands it and NEVER USING BLINKING TEXT will render a professional site accessible to the widest variety of users, an important asset for a business site.

When thoroughly tested, the files must be uploaded to the hosting service. The development tools mentioned above offer upload functions. So do some hosting services. However, an FTP program such as WS_FTP or Cute_FTP may speed things up when updates are needed, although they may be more difficult to set up initially. Thorough testing both before and after the upload and periodic testing after that will ensure that the site is still reaching its target audience.