Create a Website – Estimate Time to Build a Website From Scratch
A question I get asked a lot is: can you please give me an estimate of how long it will take to create a website from scratch? My answer is always the same – it depends. It depends for what type of website you want to create and what is the website for. I kept track of how long it took me to create my website, so I can use myself as an example to try to estimate how long it might take you to create a website like mine.
For this estimate lets have the following conditions:
10 pages of content A simple graphic banner A standard 2 section layout (body and right navigation panel)
The above is a standard website. It is also the same parameters that I used to create my website. So using my website as an example I can give you an estimate time to build your website.
Another important factor is your knowledge of website technologies. Since you are interested in knowing how long it takes to create a website it is safe to assume that you have very little experience – you have never created a website before. When I created my website I also had little experience. This estimate assumes that your experience is as follows:
very basic understanding of HTML no understanding of CSS little or no experience creating graphics (Photoshop) little or no experience using website creation software (Dreamweaver)
If your level of experience matches the above then this estimate will be very accurate.
There are 3 major parts to creating a website. First there is content – the words that will fill the webpages. The second is the website itself – the layout and navigation between pages. And lastly there is the graphics – logos and eye pleasing graphical icons.
The first thing you should do is create the content, because without content all the other stuff does not matter. In a word document write all the pages for the website. Creating content can take as little as 10 hours (1 hour per page) to 100′s of hours. It all depends how well you write and what you have to write about. For this estimate lets assume that it takes you 2 hours per page to create content. So you have a total of (10 pages * 2 hours/page) 20 hours.
The second thing you must do is the website layout. For this you will need to learn how to use a website creation software and learn how CSS works. The website software I used was Dreamweaver. I spent about one full day going through tutorials learning what it can do and how to use it. So that is another 8 hours.
CSS is hard to understand. I spent about 4 hours doing tutorials and trying it out. I must admit even after the 4 hours I still did not grasp it fully, but after a few days of website creation I began to get the hang of it. CSS is best understood by experience. Spend 4 hours reading about it so that you get the general principle of it and then start your website. In time, and in the process of using it you will learn it.
Creating the website layout seems like a simple task. It is. Simply create a template page, choose some colors and fonts. It is simple, but it takes time. Because you need to make little adjustments and tweak things. The general layout takes no more then 8 hours, but the details take days. Making sure that everything is aligned, that the colors contrast each other pleasantly, that logo is centered. It is a lot of little things that add up to taking a long time. For my website all these little things ended up taking about 25 hours.
Using my website as an example, here is an estimate of how much time is takes to create a website:
Creating content: 20 hours Learning to use Website Creation Software and CSS 12 hours Creating website layout and basic graphical logo 28 hours
Total hours : 60 hours
In 50 hours you should be able to have a complete website with around 10 pages of content.
Free Website Design Tips
In this article I will give a few tips of where to find a low cost web design company and also about the best ways of producing a quality website.
How many people or companies are advertising their services for website design?
The answer is a great deal. They surely can not all be asking for huge sums of money to build and design websites. There must be some who offer cheap, affordable websites.
If you think about a company or person who is just starting out, they have not got a very large portfolio of previous work and clients to show, and in this situation are likely in these early days to offer you a competitive rate. Once they become more established they will then no doubt increase their prices.
To find these companies which are just starting out, I would advise looking on auction websites like ebay, looking in Yellow Pages, looking in newspapers such as a paper we have here in Birmingham called bargain pages. Looking on the internet on search engines and asking family and friends is also other avenues to explore.
Once you have found a company you need to think about the content for your website, the colours and also about graphics. Do you want it have flash design? These are all things to think about.
You then need to think about hosting, who will host your website? It may be worth asking the web designer if they can recommend a host.
Then once you have had your site built you need to promote it. Building up a regular and constant stream of backward links is very important as this will result in your website obtaining a higher page rank and more visitors.
Create a Website – Can You Do it Yourself? Do You Want To?
So you have ultimately chosen to create a website, but you have no idea of where to begin! The initial thing to determine is what you want your website to contain. What information will you provide? Will it be a website about yourself, or someone else? Is it going to be a website that has discussion forums?
Once you have the concept in your head, you must have somewhere to host the website. There are a few places that you can join and create a website immediately. This is ideal if you only need something that is easy to do and you want to write a few tales or let people know what you have been up to.
If you desire to do something elaborate like have photo galleries or use e-commerce to make sales on the Internet, then free web hosting is probably wrong for you. For this situation there are businesses that can host your website and give you the software tools that are necessary to create a website for an affordable cost. You only have to pay several dollars each month to have an account and you will receive everything that is necessary.
Creating and planning your website is the hardest task. You can accomplish this alone if you are good with artwork or skilled in technology, but you can let somebody else do the work for you. A lot of software exists to assist people in designing and establishing their websites, and several of them are simple to do, even without any experience. Even if you begin with the template and change it around a little, you can make your website look original like it was made just for you.
When you make your website and put it on the Internet, it is necessary to keep it up to date. You don’t want your information to be boring, or have old news on your website. It can be a hard job to keep a website current, but if you have a website where people can express their opinions and leave feedback, this will usually help you with the procedure. If a lot of people visit and participate, you could also attempt to gain some income by placing advertisements or signing up for affiliate programs. Making a profit for working is an excellent motivator.
Creating a website used to be something that only highly skilled designers or programmers could do, but those days are long gone. Today, anyone at all can set up a web site and have a place to tell the world about what interests them. It just takes a little bit of time and effort, but you will find that it’s quite satisfying in the end.