One of Normandy Websites main aims is to provide easy to understand and sound advice to our customers. In order to give you a taster of the style and approach we take we have put together a few key questions and answers below:
"What is a website anyway?"
A website is just a set of files (like in your 'My Documents' folder) sitting on a computer somewhere that have a unique address, can link to each other and are accessible by the public. Users can view these files using their web browser (e.g. Internet Explorer) and the browser determines how to present these files.
Some people would tell you it is more complicated than this, and of course it is, but as a small business trying to get a website running you don't need to know the complexities. But you do need to know enough to make an informed decision about what you are buying.
Web hosting is a service companies provide effectively renting space on their computers where you can keep your website. Web hosting companies may provide many other services such as tools to help you build websites, email services and design services.It is important for you to get to grips with the different types of service so you can identify what you need for your business.
"What is HTML?"
HTML is a type of file format. HTML files are the fundamental building blocks of a website. When you create a website the majority of files created are HTML, they contain the textual content and links to other pages and multimedia (i.e. images, movies etc)...
You should not need to know the details of HTML or be an expert to build you own website, although it is useful to understand some basics when creating professional looking content.
"What does CSS mean?"
A CSS (Cascading Style Sheet) is a another type of file used to tell the browser how content will look to the user when they view a page on a browser. It is an important aspect of a modern professional website for a number of reasons that are overly technical to get into here.
You do not need to understand the complexities, of CSS or how they work, to get your own website up and running, but you should expect whoever builds your website to use a modern CSS based approach to building it.
"What is Web 2.0?"
Web 2.0 is a made up label so industry experts can make technologies, approaches and functions sound cool and new. It encompasses a technical approach called AJAX and use of multimedia, public user contribution and social interaction to create blah blah blah...
You really don't need worry about this. What you should do is take a look at your competitors sites, and some other sites you really like on the web and decide what you would like for your own site. Whether you use web 2.0 features or not is an irrelevance.