So you’re starting a business and need a web site.  Great!  What next?  Here’s a step by step guide.

1. Pick a domain name.  Don’t worry if your exact domain name isn’t available.  Come up with something close and then let the search engines handle the details.  For example, if widgets.com is taken, try widgetshq.com or ewidgets.com.  Most domain registrars will help you with this process. DomainsOnIce.com can help you register your domain and this article will help you understand the current state of .com domain names.

2.  Pick a web host.  You shouldn’t need to spend more than $200 on hosting a year when you first start out.  If you think you will because of future volume, start with the cheap host and upgrade when you’re ready.  Your host should support PHP and MySQL.  Most will automatically.  FastWebUpdates.com hosts client web sites starting at just $149 per year.

3.  Install a free content management system.  Why do you need a system?  You’ll want to keep your site fresh and interesting so visitors come back on a regular basis.  A content management system makes this easy.  We recommend WordPress.  WordPress started life as blogging software, and it does that well, but it has some pretty sophisticated features that make it useful outside of the blogging world as well.  A decent content management system lets you add content without knowing a lot of code.  By the way, this site is powered by WordPress and so are our other sites.

4. Customize your look and feel to match your offline image.  You’ll want to coordinate the colors and logos on your site with any business cards or stationary you have.  Most content management systems provide you with a templating system that make this process relatively easy.  This part requires code, so you’ll probably want to contact a web site design company to help you out.  Try FastWebUpdates.com at 888-627-8888.

5. Trick out your new site with features that help you interact with visitors and other sites.  For example, you can use Flckr to manage your images and FeedBurner to track your subscribers.  WordPress plugins make this process quick and easy.  There are plugs designed to help with most previously custom issues like event calendars and contact forms.

That’s it.  Now all you need to do is add your content and you’re good to go.

FastWebUpdates.com has recently helped Clay Cafe of Lubbock and Clay Cafe of Visalia create WordPress driven web sites that integrate seamlessly with Flckr and other services.

If you’re asking this question, probably not.

A virtual private server is a GREAT idea if you need some fine grained control over your host. For example, maybe you need to change the default PHP upload limit from 2MB to 100MB. Or maybe you need a custom include path.

Sound like giberish? Stay away from the VPS!

The vast majority of business sites, especially small business sites, don’t need to do anything fancy with their hosting. You can have a standard mid level account with any hosting provider and be just fine. They have enough memory and disk space for anything you’re likely to do. More importantly, they insulate you from the complexity of running your own server.

If you get a VPS, you’ll suddenly have to deal with provisioning, user aliases, setting disk quotas and more. It can be a real drag. And if you don’t get something out of it–a larger upload limit, for example–there’s no business value to doing it.

OK–I’m out. Have a great night.

Gotta story about a VPS? Share it!