Part two of my tips section is about some common pitfalls of web publishing.
1. Don't try to build your site from scratch (unless you have a lot of time and patience).
Don't get me wrong, I'm all about doing it yourself. But based on my experience of teaching web design to hundreds college students, if you aren't a techy computer person or have programming experience, learning to create HTML pages can be a very frustrating and unfruitful experience.
If you work at it hard enough (and have design chops) you can probably come up with a decent looking site, but because you won't know the best practices of building clean, efficient, manageable websites, you will probably end up with something that is so difficult to edit and update, and once you get it published you'll never want to touch it again. Since visitors probably aren't going to be interested in a site that hasn't been updated since 2005, in the end all that effort culminates in a stale site that no one visits.
A few years ago I would have said this venture was probably worth it, but now there are so many resources available for publishing content online, and almost any of them would be more productive than building your site from scratch.
2. Avoid low budget "web design" shops and templates
I see a lot of low budget "web designers" out there offering "custom designed" websites for as cheap as $1-200. You've probably noticed by now my gratuitous use of quotes; that's because I wouldn't consider what most of these places offer as legitimate design. OK so maybe I can't say what is and isn't design, but I can say that most of these places primarily produce bad design like this. This site was built by someone who is not trained in the visual arts and is trying to compensate for that by using as many images and flashy animations as possible. The result is an assault on the eyes and a usability nightmare.
An ugly, difficult to use website sends the user a message about your seriousness and credibility. But not only do these designers produce bad visual design, they also tend to produce bad structural design and you'll end up with site that is probably more difficult to deal with than if you had built it yourself (because at least then it's your mess).
The other low budget alternative are the webhost + website deals out there that advertise "custom" site design for $199 to go with their hosting plan. I don't have personal experience with these outfits but I suspect that this is really a ploy to sell webhosting plans. And while they advertise "custom" design, trust me, you are not going to get anything truly custom for $199. My guess is that they get a logo graphic from you and add it to the header of a tried and true template and then say "there, custom!"
But hey, for $1-200 it might be worth a try and you might get lucky to get something decent (your "custom" site may be based on a template, but if its a good template then you might do OK) ... just have the good sense to know if you end up with something that looks like a turd and don't make the mistake of soiling your name and brand with it.
3. Be leery of big budget marketing & design agencies
Since we looked at the cheapest end of the spectrum, now its time to focus on the expensive end. Don't get me wrong, there are plenty of agencies producing fabulous work, but don't think that just because you are spending a lot of money you are going to get a top-notch site. In my experience with these kinds of places will often produce good design over a poorly built website. That's because larger organizations are resistant to change, and once a way of doing things is established they will stick with it as long as they can. The problem is, technology is always advancing, so while you might end up with a site that was trick 3-4 years ago, it gets a big yawn by today's standards.
If you don't get a site that gives you the ability to login and manage your content (and this doesn't include using Contribute which sucks), then consider yourself getting ripped off. There is so much technology available today that makes it incredibly easy to manage content, upload and display files and images, have blogs and interactive features, that you should not have to settle for anything less. If your vendor is not utilizing this abundant technology, then you should find someone else.
Finally, avoid proprietary content management systems like the plague. I have worked on some of these, and I can tell you from first hand experience that they are usually half-baked, buggy software, that will cost you more, lock you into a single vendor for support (until they decide it's not worth the bother), and not offer anywhere near the features and stability that you can get from free, open source software (and reputable vendors like Expression Engine).
But like I said, a lot of these agencies will provide a really nice product (for a price of course), just don't make the mistake of going in blind and assuming that lots of cash always produces a good product. Do your research, find out what technology is available and compare that to what your vendor offers.
Coming soon in the next section I will be discussing some excellent do-it-yourself resources for getting your site online.