Do It Yourself
Guided Web Page Designing & Publishing

Crossfire Engineering sets up and trains small businesses to maintain their own web sites and use their own web pages. Whether you want a simple web page to advertise your business or a full eCommerce site to do on-line sales by credit card our staff is ready and willing to help you achieve this goal for your business.

The low cost of doing your own web work is very attractive for many and the rewards in both ROC and esteem are great. Remember, our staff is always here to help you while your skill level increases. Your site will never be without the complete resources available from our professional staff.

So what do you need to get started after you decide to do your own web site. The list below is a list of the same tools we use. We never use any fancy internet tools to design web pages because they produce so much extraneous code that it is very difficult to make simple changes when required to do so.

  You will need an easy to use full featured text editor. We use UltraEdit which is available at ultraedit.com for under $60.00. We think UltraEdit is the ideal programmer's text editor for all our XML, HTML, CSS, PHP, Java, Javascript, Perl, and other programming needs.

  You will need a good source of HTML, CSS and XML information. While there are many books on these subjects we recommend you go to w3.org/TR/html401/ and werbach.com/barebones/ where there are lessons on the latest version of HTML with abundant examples to lead you as far as you want to go. These are free.

  You will need a commercial web site, not one of those free sites. They will never get your business the high ranking on the search engines you need. NetworkSolutions.com, Yahoo.com, Tucows.com, Web.com, JustHost.com and many others. Be sure to read the terms for the hosting service before you pick one. We can help you come up with a list of requirements you will need to successfully enter the world of www business. Things like bandwidth, peak loading and other parameters should be considered in selecting a hosting company. This will cost you between $15.00 and $30.00 per month for an adequate start-up eCommerce site.

  You will need a domain name. Research and register the domain names you want after you test their availability on whois.com. You can even buy it there for under $8.00 per year. If the name you want is available buy it in your company's name so you have control over it. Hosting companies will do this for you but if and when you move to another hosting company, getting your name transferred to the new hosting company may be more difficult.

  Never buy a domain name from one of these people who bought up a lot of domain names on speculation. We ran a very successful web business for years as Kegman products under the corporate CrossfireEngineering.com web domain name. One day I saw a Kegman.com business selling the same products I was on the internet. Fortunately I had been using the name in books and on products for years and had a contract with Miller Brewing, Miller having the trademark on the name, to mutually share the name. I shut down the site using our name but was never able to get control of Kegman.com because some sleaze bought the name and wanted ten-thousand dollars for it. We registered the name Kegman.net and operated the business successfully because of high search engine rankings until we sold that portion in 2007. The business is still operating well and can be found at Kegman LLC. The name is only as important as you think it is. It is all about Search Engine Optimization (SEO) to make a business succeed.

  It is very useful to put a web server on your personal machine. With that you can test your work before you upload it to your web site. We suggest you use a Windows XP system since they are the easiest to install the free Apache server (apache.org), PERL (activeperl.com) and PHP (php.net). Best of all these are all free. Again these programs are all free.

  Also free is Team Viewer (TeamViewer.com) which will allow secure remote access to your machine. We use this with our customers to set-up servers on their machines at their location from our location. We have also used this to give live instructions on programming problems you might experience.

  The last necessity is a file transfer program (FTP) to place the work on your local machine on the server you have selected to host your web presence. We us CuteFTP from globalscape.com. It is available for under $50.00 and will save a lot of time and grief over using a free one in a browser or other place.

Some businesses need a shopping cart for taking internet sales by credit card. There are many free shopping carts on the internet to choose from, We can help you assess which will best suit your needs. Crossfire Engineering is available to solve any eCommerce situations which may come up in the operation of your business. Take a look at our Sample Internet Store.