The Essential Requirements for a Stellar Website: Are You Meeting Them?

I Want to Create My Own Website. What do I Need?

You Need Webspace for Your Website

Webspace is the basic requirement for running a website. Webspace is the storage on the Internet where all the files of a web site are stored at a fixed address and can be accessed via the Internet 24 hours a day.

Big companies and very demanding internet users often run their own server for their webspace. For the average user, this is too much effort and it is too expensive.

This is where Web Hosting Providers, who make webspace available to their customers, come into the scene. With this solution, several customers share a single server. This keeps costs down and the websites (especially Loading Speed) is still sufficient.

How Much Storage is Recommended?

The amount of disk space you need depends on what you are uploading to your webspace. For simple websites with just a few HTML files and maybe a small number of images, a few tens of MB of webspace is perfectly adequate. If you also want to upload high-resolution images or videos, several 100 MB, or better, several GB of webspace may be useful.

For a Content Management System (CMS) such as Wordpress, Joomla, Contao or TYPO3, including the recommended Themes and Plug-ins, 250 to 500 MB of webspace (Disk Space) is usually sufficient. The amount of disk space required should be estimated relatively generously. For most websites, 25 to 50 GB of webspace will be sufficient.

To get a rough idea of how much webspace you will need, you should also consider how much your website will grow in the near future. With 500 MB to 1 GB of web space, you will be well-equipped for most small to medium-sized web projects. For medium to large projects, you should round up the available webspace to a full 10GB. Note that available disk space is no longer an important cost factor.

There are also free webspace offers that are usually financed by more or less intrusive advertising. These free offers are not recommended for almost all web projects, because the advertisements damage the reputation of the website operator.

From time to time, some web hosts have limited-time special offers with a permanent price guarantee. These are offers you should take a closer look at, as they are usually only available for a short time, so you need to decide quickly.

Low-priced web hosting offers with up to 12 inclusive domains are already available from 30 - 40 USD per year.

These hosting packages are particularly interesting if you don't need a Drag-and-Drop Website Builder, but would rather use a good Open Source CMS. If you already know that you will need more than two or three additional domains for other Web Projects in the near future, such a hosting package is an interesting offer.

You only need to specify one domain when you place your order. You can order the other domains when you need them.

A good web hosting package should include at least the following features:

Don't be fooled by the low introducttion prices that are sometimes advertised. Many web hosts offer hosting plans that seem very cheap or even free at the beginning. However, once the trial period is over, prices can rise sharply, sometimes by a factor of 10 or even more.

It's better to consider the price you'll have to pay after the trial period. Then you will know how much it is going to cost and you can prepare for it. Also note that due to the general rate of inflation, you can expect annual price increases of 3 to 5%.

You Need a Domain Name for Your Website..

The domain is the Internet Address under which your Website is found on the Internet. The domain of this Website is website-advisor.de. A domain usually costs USD 8 to 15 per year, depending on the domain extension (e.g. .de or .com).

A .com domain is usually ideal. This is especially true if the website is international or multilingual. For a German-language website, a .de domain is recommended in most cases. Depending on your target audience, a .at (Austria) or .ch (Switzerland) domain may also be suitable. This is serious and looks professional. The domain extensions .net or .org are usually not the best choice for private or commercial websites.

There are several mistakes you can make when choosing a domain name. Think of a distinctive domain name that fits the topic of your site. Check that it is still available. Then register your desired domain as soon as possible before someone else beats you to the punch. It may also be wise to register domain names for future projects as a precautionary measure to prevent someone else from registering the domain.

Pay attention to the following points, so that you are still happy with your desired domain in a few years:

1. The name of the domain should match the topic of the website.

2. The shorter the name, the better. Keep to a maximum of 16 characters. Use hyphens as separators between terms.

3. Avoid special characters in the domain name, although different diacritical letters are allowed depending on the domain name.

4. Use a spelling that most people know.

5. Make sure that you don't violate any trademark rights.

Communicate Professionally with Your Own E-Mail Address

If you run a Business Website, you want to communicate with your Customers and Website Visitors in a professional manner. Free e-mail providers are a dime a dozen. However, all the free email providers don't seem to be reputable. This is especially true for Yahoo, GMX, Hotmail.

But things aren't much better with Gmail. Gmail email addresses are also very often abused for spam.

From the customer's point of view, this negative image of the free-mail provider is automatically transferred to all of the provider's email addresses. What can you do to protect your integrity?

An E-Mail Address with your own domain looks much more professional and credible. It's also easy to get and doesn't cost anything. You need webspace and domain anyway. E-mail addresses that match the domain name are automatically included.

The only thing you need is an email client. This program allows you to receive, read, write and send emails. As IMAP (Internet Message Access Protocol) is the most common way to receive emails today, your email is available on all devices (e.g. PC, Laptop, Tablet and Smartphone).

An e-mail program has a lot of advantages over webmail.

• Email programs allow you to manage multiple email accounts in one place. This is useful if you use different email accounts for different purposes. The email accounts can be hosted by different providers.

• Messages from all accounts can be retrieved simultaneously.

• Email programs are faster and easier to use than webmail.

• If you have more than one email account configured, you can easily choose which email address to use as the sender for each email you write.

Most people today are familiar with webmail. It uses a web browser, such as Mozilla Firefox or Google Chrome, to read and write emails. Webmail works from any computer with Internet access and a web browser. However, if you want to check emails for different email addresses and have to visit different providers' websites (e.g. Gmail, GMX or Yahoo), webmail can quickly become a pain.

An easy-to-use alternative to webmail is an email program. Once you have installed the software and configured all your email accounts, you can retrieve emails from all your accounts at once. Different providers and servers do not matter.

There are several free email programs available for all major operating systems.

My recommendation: Use Mozilla Thunderbird or Evolution Mail for your emails.