I am no website design expert but in setting up this site I learned a lot. So let me share some of it:

1. Consider your message

A website is a form of communication. So, before you open your mouth to an international audience, think what it is that you want to say. Why do you want a site at all? Maybe you want a gallery to show off your work. Maybe you are setting up a busisness and need a fairly static site with your prices and terms and conditions. Or maybe like me you wanted a very active site with regular new content. The purpose of your site will influence many of the decisions below and it is worth thinking about carefully before you start. I found it helpful to set out a kind of family tree, with the home page as the founding father and all the possible pages I would want flowing from that.

2. Choose your name

 The perceived wisdom is that having  your name in the website title is good, as is having the title saying what the site is about.  Google your name and see what other sites are there to avoid confusion with their names.  Avoid very long sites ( www.helenconwaysamazingquiltemporiumofdelights.com) and abbreviations (www.hcaqeod.com) unless perhaps the organisation you are constructing a site for is already known by an acronym.

3. Get help.

The Internet is Geekland. There is nothing wrong with being a geek but of you are not a naturalised citizen of that world, a guide is a good idea. It is possible to do it yourself ( see point 5 below) but unless you are doing somthing very simple with your site, (akin to crossing the US border to Canada for the day or a booze cruise arcoss the channel) or unless you like the kind of travel that involves stepping off a plane in Kryzakiskan with no money, no language, no hotel, no transport and no return ticket, get a guide. I benefited immensely from the services of Brenda Gael Smith. I am told that Gloria Hansen is also a good choice. Be aware that the usual method is to commission the design of a site of a certain number and type of pages which will determine the price

4. Consider the cost

It is possible to do a site for free ( apart from paying your designer if you use one). The Internet provider you are using right now probably allows you some web space as part of your package. This may well be adequate for a simple site. However, the downside is that the site name is often something like www.yournewwebsite/yourinternetprovider.com. If you want www.mynewwebsite.com there will be a cost. The free packages are also limited in formatting and personalisation options. To move away from these limited ( but possibly perfectly adequate) options you will need

(a) a domain name. There is someone somewhere who is in charge of website names and has the power to dole them out like candy. I have no idea who and do not care. But I know that he lets certain companies sell the names. I bought mine from a company called GoDaddy. First choose your name. Then google 'domain name search' to throw up sites which will let you check if your domain (website) name has already been taken. If not they will offer it to you and give you an indication of what it will cost. Different endings ( .com,.org,.co.uk etc may have different prices). Names are not hugely expensive and can be paid for year by year or in blocks of years. I paid £56 for five years for a .com address

(b) a hosting company. Basically you need a big computer (server) on which you can store all the pages you have written. Every time a reader puts your address in their browser it sends them to that big computer who lets them read your page. Magic. (No I don't really understand either but I don't understand the combustion engine and I drove to work today just fine.) If you go for the free package with your Internet service provider they are basically letting you use a little space on their big computer. If you want your own domain name though you need to find a service who will let you use theirs.  Don't buy your domain name until you have chosen this as you may be required to work with certain companies. To find one, google 'web hosting companies', ask your Tip 3 helper or read on to discover what I found! Prices will vary depending on provider and what package you choose. I paid US$14.95 per month for the service behind this site with a 10% discount for upfront payment.

5. Consider how to write the site.

Your first option is to learn a language called HTML and code all your pages from scratch. This is perfectly possible ( I achieved 2 perfectly functioning pages) but is like ordering your chinese meal in Cantonese. Get it right and you will enjoy a lovely King Prawn Chow Mein just as you imagined. Make one little mistake and the chef is chasing you with a cleaver for calling his wife something obscene.  You can order in English. Or in fact - as I discovered - you can just point at the menu.

Brenda, my Tip 3 helper is a smart polyglot and can code from scratch. However, I wanted to be able to add stuff to my site without crawling to her for help every day and so she suggested I look at Word Press. Many people use that for their blogs but for me, for a site, it was still too geeky. For example, it was described to me as a ' open source platform'. Now, if you know what that is - go use it by all means. If you are losing the will to live let me whisper a sweet secret in your ear: Squarespace.

Squarespace is a WYSGIG site. (What you see is what you get). You can add code if you wish but you don't need to. You can set up a site on this by filling boxes in and pointing and clicking. It is simply fantastic. Any one who has blogged can do this falling off a log. If you are not blogging - well, you might have to learn how to walk onto the log first but I am betting you'll get the hang of the falling off bit just fine. Best of all you can get a free trial, set up a dummy site and play to your hearts content. It does take time to look at everything that is available but it was not hard to set up a site at all. It also has a free service with basic functioning.

So why do I have a Tip 3 helper? Well, partly for time - it was good to delegate tasks to some one with more knowledge to save on discovery time. But I also wanted somthing more personalised and complex than most quilters gallery sites and Brenda was able to guide me with advice on what designs and organsiations worked best,  to help modify the site past basic templates. She also had the capacity to test my site on a number of browsers and to assist me with user profiles from her other sites. It was a good partnership  and I would do the same again but I do think that if you are on a budget and/or you are happy to learn a new system you can do a simpler site yourself with squarespace. It is great for adding pages later.

6. Consider your design

Look at other sites. What features do you like? What annoys you? What features do you need to get your message out? What bells and whistles can you forego to keep within your budget? What colour themes reflect your personality? If you are using a logo will it date? If you are planning on developing your site leave room or scope to rejig the site to add the new features easily.

7. Streamline.

Make sure you do not have too many options on your main menu. I read somewhere that seven or eight was optimal. Any more and your readers apparently get confused. Or at least just plain tired reading them and making choices. Less is not necesarily a bad thing. But I had so many ideas for this site that I was running to far more than eight. Redrawing that family tree is a necessary stage as is considering using a template with a sidebar as I did. Hopefully the design is now a happy compromise between being chocka full of useful information and still being user freindly.

8 Learn about digital photos

Before I signed up to Square space I was used to Blogger. To add a photo there you just snap with your camera, upload to your computer and tell Blogger to use it. If I did that on a website  it turns out the photo would take an unacceptabely long time to load and would exceed the size of the screen. Well, who knew? Brenda did, obviously. And so did Gloria Hansen who explains it all in her book aimed at QDigital Essentails. Get a copy. (Note that whilst Amazon.com had it,( and you can buy from my store here) when I bought it Amazon.co.uk did not have it in stock. You can order from Rio Designs.) Also get a copy of a digital editing programme. Brenda told me to get Photoshop Elements 7. I did what I was told (OK, She didn't tell, she recommended, but she knows her stuff)  and it does the trick just fine. (And lots more tricks I haven't got to yet) . It was vital for restoring the right colour balances on the photos in my quilt gallery which had to be photgraphed in a studio with poor lighting.

 I hope this is useful for anyone thinking of setting up there own site. If you do - please email me so I can go and check you out.