Yes! You too can have this face of pure accomplishment. Aren’t you glad that you didn’t give up after reading the intro? Starting a website can be a wonderful experience of self-discovery and personal growth, but as I learned very early on, you have to venture out of your comfort zone to really get what you want (and if you don’t at some point go red in the face and try to throw your computer out the window, you’re not really learning). Don’t get discouraged! This is why I’m putting all of the information you need to get started in one place – so, let’s begin with some common vocabulary and requirements:

Web Hosting and Domain Name

A web host is a server where your website’s directories, files, graphics, etc. reside. Think of it as a safe where you keep all of the pieces that comprise your vision – your .html, .php, .css, and .jpg/.gif/.png files. It’s typical for web hosting firms to provide you domain registration services, and I recommend that you conduct all of your business with one company (it just helps you keep track of billing and additional sites in the future; keeping everything with one firm will allow you to remain in control of your accounts’ administration or any critical changes that may occur over time). Should you go with paid or free hosting? This depends largely on how media-rich you plan to make the site. Are you going to be including a lot of high-resolution images, videos, music? I strongly suggest you consider using DreamHost (which offers unlimited storage, and unlimited bandwidth – both critical in content-heavy sites that can be constrained by the limits of free hosting). However, if you’re just planning a simple blog, events itinerary, or donation/info page, then you can’t go wrong with free hosting. The most popular free hosting services among bloggers are: Yahoo! GeoCities, Netfirms, Bravenet , Blogger, LiveJournal, Wordpress .

A domain name is the identity of your site, typically beginning with www, and ending with .com, .net, .org, etc. If you believe that your site’s name is sensitive to infringement (or ‘stealing’), you have the option of purchasing additional relevant extensions so that other people do not invade your brand (intentionally or otherwise). So, if you’re buying a .com, be prepared to buy the .net and the .org if necessary (and if you can spare the extra $9.99/year each). You are welcome to try “free domain registration,” but this comes with a ton of loopholes (you can even lose your domain all-together, you’re basically at the mercy of the registration firm) that you can easily avoid by shelling out the $10 for a “paid domain.”

The best way to pick the actual name is up to you but you should ask yourself the following questions:

• Do I want the name to contain common words associated with the cause? (i.e. GreenPlanetRecycling.org is a good name for a cause that focuses on “green living” and “recycling”; MariyasCauseSite.org is not a very good name because it’s too obscure and may miss out on a good chunk of a potentially interested crowd)
• Do I want users to associate my cause with a specific symbol, logo or idea? (i.e. SaveGreenRecyclingPlanetAwesomeTrees.org is not the greatest approach for naming website, and you will find that many times organizations use a symbol, logo, or idea to communicate their vision, such as the WhiteRibbonAlliance.org – though the site does not use maternal mortality or maternal health in the domain, it’s still obvious what the organization represents)

Once you commit to a name, it’s a good idea to register your domain for more than a year to avoid extra costs or potentially losing it.



HTML

Remember, that the correct syntax of HTML requires the use of tags on both ends of the text you’re trying to manipulate (these are often referred to as opening tag and closing tag). Here are some examples:
Paragraph – <p></p>
Heading1 – <h1>Heading1</h1>
Heading2 – <h2>Heading2</h2>
Heading3 – <h3>Heading3</h3>
Heading4 – <h4>Heading4</h4>
Heading5 – <h5>Heading5</h5>
Heading6 – <h6>Heading6</h6>
Single line break – <br></br>
Bold – <strong> </strong>
Italic – <i></i>
Subscript – <sub></sub>
Superscript – <sup></sup>
Quotation – <blockquote></blockquote>

One of the most useful tags at your disposal is the one you can’t see when you’re browsing the website – <!-- This is a comment -->. Comment tags can be extremely useful tools for any number of special notes (reminders, definitions, indicators), so use them as often as you can until you get used to running the site.

These are all of the basic tags that you will use on a regular basis. Though you can also explore HTML styles… it’s a lot more time effective to learn Cascading Style Sheets (CSS). CSS allows you to define all of the styles for an entire site in one targeted file (or several) and you will not have to build every post from scratch. To give you an example of what I mean:

• HTML is great for editing posts, specifically to link images or text, and formatting
• CSS, on the other hand, is perfect for defining the overall look of you site. Unlike HTML, which needs to be adjusted in every file every time you make a change, CSS allows for a smooth, seamless, and fast administration and browsing.

Luckily, most website templates (even free ones) already come with stylesheets (you’re not expected to make them yourself), but it is recommended that you become familiar with the “Box” concept around which CSS is written. Here is a quick cheat sheet you can download (made available by the team at AddedBytes.com), which can get you familiar with the language attributes quickly. Are you a little confused? Don’t worry, everything will become clear when you start to actually work with your site template.



PHP and MySQL
Ah, the most hated part for newbies! What is PHP? PHP is a scripting language upon which most current websites are build – it’s is extremely popular and accessible. PHP code in a script can create images, read/write files, talk to remote servers (and it is designed to go hand-in-hand with HTML and many top servers (Apache) and databases (MySQL) in order to make the page dynamic) – the possibilities are literally endless. Do you need to know a lot of PHP when you’re starting out? Absolutely not – in fact, real knowledge of the intricacies of programming only comes through experience. With PHPs surging popularity and extraordinary dedicated team and community, it’s hard not to love it. More on PHP.

MySQL is a relational database system that is used to store information. MySQL can store many types of data from something as tiny as a single character to as large as complete files or graphics. Although it can be accessed by most programing languages, it is often coupled with PHP because they work together with ease. More on MySQL

CSS, PHP, and MySQL aspects of starting a site are relatively easy because most templates include working code (and set up instructions come with most site platforms, such as WordPress) – however, I do suggest that you practice adjusting them if you want to be comfortable running a site.

This concludes Part 1 of How to Start a Website For a Cause. The next post will address the following questions:



Part II – Building your website using pre-existing themes and widgets/plugins with WordPress

• What is WordPress? What other platforms are available for site management? How do I set up WordPress?
• What are WordPress themes? What themes fit a non-profit cause?
• What are WordPress widgets/plugins? Which widgets/plugins are essential for the best user navigation and experience on my site?
• What is an RSS feed? Why is it important to syndicate site content?