How to build your own website

08/26/2012

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I am sure many would know building your own website can sound like a quite daunting, and some would rather not even ‘’venture’’ into this unknown territory,  however you would probably spend more time researching and trying to find out what to do than actually building your website. With this in mind, I have decided to dedicate a blog post to designing and building your own website.

After searching through endless websites, reading endless posts and downloading free e books on how to build your own website. Once upon a time I too found myself completely overwhelmed by all the information and complicated computer terms after all I was completely brand new to all this and didn’t know at all where to begin.

After all my research, I had found that the below method I will be sharing is the simplest and easiest way, no sweat no fuss. This is intended for beginners taking you step by step through the whole process:

Step 1: Get your own domain name.

Your domain name is what you want your website to be called (www.my name.co.za/www.myname.com) there are plenty websites which you can quickly Google where you can purchase your domain name and you will then pay a annual fee for the upkeep of your domain. This doesn’t give you a website, you will just have name but you are one step closer to your website

Step 2: choose a webhost for your website

This is a hosting company that will connect your website to the internet and usually involves a monthly fee (ranging from R30.00 per month to R300.000 ) depending on which package you would choose to use, however for a start site/business you wouldn’t need a larger package.

Step 3: Designing your site:

The next and almost final step would be to finishing your website is designing the site itself and if you are a beginner and no real time to do it, there are more complicated ways to do this via dreamwaver, wordpress...etc. however the easiest option is to choose a free website builder namely www.wix.com or www.yola.com

The advantage of these website builder sites are that they are already laid out and designed, leavening you with only the responsibility of filling it. They also have online support for any questions for concerns you may have and whenever you want to go back to change or update something on your website, you could easily do this by logging in. (you’ll be provided with a login and password once registered)

Step 4: Linking your website to your domain

Once you are done designing your site, you will have the option to publish it and clicking on this option will lead you to either choosing ‘’I would like a sub domain’’ or ‘’O have my own domain’’

Clicking on ‘’I have my own domain.’’ Your website builder company with give you all the necessary DNS settings for you to link your website with your domain. Once you have the dns settings, you can just email your hosting company the following:

Good Day

My domain is www.myname.co.za and I have designed my website with www.wix.com/ www.yola.com.

Would you please point your server to the following settings:

Name server1: 457.519.253

Name server2: 478.591.456

This will usually take 24 hours to take effect and once that is done wala!!! YOUR WEBSITE IS UP AND RUNNING.  

Hope you enjoyed reading my post

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What's in a Name

08/05/2012

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I’m sure many have thought and asked why I have chosen Digital Memory Creations as my name. ‘It’s quite a mouthful’ as some would say.

Well, my story goes right back to the beginning when all my business was just a hobby to me, to past time by and to feed my creative side. I was working full time and in my spare time loved designing and working with photographs.

It started off with me trying to organize the millions of family photos taken over the years and making sure they won’t get lost and trying to display them in a way that I wouldn’t have to print all of them and organize this physically in a scrapbook. All though I love scrapbooking, my full time job left me with no time to do anything else but work work work and when I got home, all I wanted was to kick up my feet. I needed a quick solution.

So decided to make a digital scrapbook...designing my photos in a scrapbooking format and making them in a photo movie, this not only saved me tons time but was perfect for not having to clean up the mess I would’ve made with scrapbooking and I could easily do 300 photos at a time.

This DVD was especially great for when my mom and sisters would visit ..I could just pop it in the DVD player and we could “’watch ‘’ the photos on screen with music and animations.

Not long after, I realised how many other people are out there just like me wanting to preserve their memories and display them but had no time to do it. I then started advertising my services on free classified website.

At the time I had no thoughts that this would one day grow into a business, not to mention a full time business, I just wanted to help people and if they were anything like me... loved and treasured their family pics. Before long many people started enquiring and ordering which left me asking “I should probably name myself” and this is how Digital Memory Creations was born

Full definition: ‘’Taking memories and creating it in a digital way.”

Months passed and I had a craving to do much more with photos.... which in turn led to putting them on mugs, mousepads, bags, aprons....etc. and just as baby would grow and develop...so did my hobby.

From personalized gifts lead to printing: t-shirts, embroidery, designing business cards, logos and most recently wedding and party favours

At this time I wondered if my name did my business justice as I felt it didn’t give enough indication to the vast services I now provide to when i just offered Digital scrapbook dvds.

So I started considering perhaps changing my name, i had many ideas in my head but was left with also many doubts, as many clients have come to know my name now and already had a website up and running.

After much debate and consideration, I have decided to stick with my name, which has not only become known but always reminds me of my story and just where I started and what I have grown to now.  To satisfy the other part of me that still wanted clients to know just my reading my name, what I do know. I have added a tagline ‘’personalized gifts and printing’’

I have been extremely blessed and continue to believe this is only the beginning.

Our vision: Providing excellent quality and affordable printing and personalized gifts to both the personal and business market precisely as required for any occasion

We have made many friends, met extraordinary people, had some strange requests and slept very little :-) Thank you to all that have supported us thus far.

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