I thought I would add an article about setting up web sites and how this site came about. Sorry, no pictures on this page as it's purely technical information. This article is intended to help those of you who want to set up your own website. I am not saying that the path I took was the easiest or the best but I hope this checklist proves helpful.

I'll break websites into three main sizes. I am no expert but I ran this page past the IT Monkeys at work, Ant and Jace;

Small - Beginners website of up to about 10 individual pages. This is OK if you just want to put up a static website that does not have regular updates and does not grow. Like a school class website. You could use the free templates that your web host might supply to do this. It's a cheap and cheerful way of getting the information up quickly but lacks fine control.

Medium - 20 to 200 pages - This site falls into this category. Small enough to hand build each page rather than the automated route. Most web sites are like this. Typically this will be done with programmes like Microsoft Frontpage or Adobe Dreamweaver. The vast majority would be in this category. Many commercial sites.

Large - Normally corporate, up to 1000's of pages. Here the information is not built but rather entered and the web page is scripted. Scripting language has enjoyed an enormous growth in popularity over the past few years. It benefits from being particularly easy to pick up, and from having been designed as a language specifically for producing web pages. This means that choosing a scripting language such as PHP as your implementation language allows you to build a dynamically-generated web page quickly and easily. This is not for the beginner but is the route to follow if you expect your website to grow fast. Not for the beginner.

Be aware that each solution is discreet. If you cross over from one solution to the next you will need to start from scratch.

24.06.2010 - This site is currently 700 items and 40mb in total. Approx 100 pages. I get the massive rate of 60 'unique' hits a day! (woo-hoo) and bandwidth is about<500mb per month. I pay £3 a month for the host (ish). Those figures might help the beginner to understand what a site is all about. I have only really been running since mid 2009. It's all about ratings and links. Ratings with Google and links with sites with established numbers of visitors.

1. Website Name (domain name)

If you go to one of the 1000's of sites that allow you to register Domain Names (such as http://www.simplynames.com ) in the search box type in the shortest name you want (just 'briglin' not 'briglin.com') and see what domains are free. Usually the .com address has gone for all good names. Caiger.com is simply a better name than Caiger456.com .Keep the name short and easy to remember. If you don't care what the name is then you can often obtain free domain names through other services but the address of your site will not be very memorable. In the end it really depends on how much effort you intend to put into your website. If you intend to put a significant amount of time and effort into your new website then find a good name, otherwise it's not important. You can always change your sites name at a later date. You buy the sole use of names for a period of time. 2 years might be £30. If you do not renew your web address with your domain host then it becomes 'free' for anyone else to register.

2. What Software?

Big choice. You are going to need to learn how to do your website yourself. I would really not suggest paying for someone else to do your website simply because it is expensive. Find some teenage relative who can help you as it is not easy. I found everything difficult and I work with computers daily. Unless you have some time to learn this and and are 'good' with computers it's going to be like pulling teeth if you want anything more than the most basic of sites. If you need to be able to add items and keep the site 'alive' you will need to know how to maintain your site and add pages and articles. Static sites are boring, there is no reason to return. Unless a site grows I would consider it pretty pointless. Most web sites become out of date VERY quickly unless maintained and there is nothing worse seeing the last message on the title page of a site dated from years before. If you are going to do a site then keep it updated regularly. There is no easy answer to the software question. I did look at www.wordpress.com but you can't use this free software unless you have an expensive hosting package, which can handle databases. You can download wordpress here: www.wordpress.com All through they say the installation process is easy. IT IS NOT unless you know what you are doing. There are free web design packages on the internet and this is probably the best place to start. Microsoft Frontpage is free.

3. Web Host

OK, so you have some software installed and a domain name you now need a host. The web host supplies the space on some server somewhere that you can store you design and allow others to access it. Typically you will need to pay for this although you can acquire 'free' space through home internet packages. Some packages are better than others and you can pay a lot of money for the high end features. It took me days to work out that Wordpress requires the SQL extensions to install. You can see the sort of cost here: www.1&1.co.uk Shop about for the best offer and read the small print. You do not need much space. this website is about 20mb and will be 40mb when finished, certainly 100mb will be enough. Bandwidth is important. I have uses massive pictures with low compression. Every time someone visits my website they download my pictures from the web hosts server to their home computer, this is called bandwidth and it is limited. If the site become successful then it will cost me more money. Monitor your bandwidth usage as the excess charges are excessive.

5. Photographs

Big is best, jpg or png are the way to go. Most home cameras will do but you will need a macro function if you want to take close up detailed images. Get a tripod and use it. Take ten photos of each item and only use the best ones. Keep the quality high. Keep everything. You will need to clean your images up so get some sort of image editor. I use a white background but you could use anything that suits your website. The best solution is a dedicated space in some study where you can build a photo booth with static lighting and leave the camera and tripod there. I once went to QVCs headquarters to do a survey and they had a whole room dedicated to filming closeups of the items they were selling such as jewellery. They had a white 'light box' made of sem-transparent material with an open front, to negate reflections and lots of static lighting. IMHO the pictures on a ceramic site are everything. Rubbish pictures = rubbish site. Get the pictures right and you are half way there.

7. Time

You are going to need a lot of this. My site took much more than I expected. I kept going back and tweaking the font size or the colours and the layout. I was learning at the same time and if I were to start a second site it would be much quicker. The photos take a lot of time and I would estimate that it's probably more than 45 minutes to add an item to my website. The way I do it is all by hand. This suits my small site, larger sites would auto create each page from the input data (see scripting under PHP). This site has taken 100's of hours, but I have photographed 100+ pieces and learnt everything from scratch.

8. Why?

Be fully aware of why you want to set up a site. Does your site have a clear purpose? If you want to sell items then you might have to look into secure payment methods as people do want to buy items at 3:00 AM. I am an amateur collector and set up my site to help others. There is not much money in advertising unless you are getting many, many thousand hits a week or people purchase items directly from your referral. In any case you are probably better off without advertising until the numbers warrant spoiling your site with banners.

You must have a clear reason for your site. Do one thing and do it well! No pictures of you, your kids your house or your dog!

Good luck!

Here are some working images I saved. I cut and pasted screen grabs from other sites in a graphics programme to create the 'look' I wanted before I moved to HTML. I really did not have a clue how to use the design programmes at the start. A blank page can be very ominous. My advice is copy the best bits form sites you like create a montage you like the look of and follow that.