Starting Your own Web Site - Ecommerce Software 101
A Home Business Article Contributed by Sharon Hill
How to Use Ecommerce Software to Start Your own Web Site
One of the first, and most used ecommerce software uses is creation of a web site. You may opt to hire someone to create and design your site - or you can do it yourself. Either way, you'll need ecommerce software to do so.
The First Ecommerce Web Site Software Step - Creating Your Home Page
You first need text editor software and the use of html for your ecommerce home page. HTML use and knowledge offers a professional look to your site. Better yet it's platform independent - it works no matter whether someone is using Mac, Windows, Linux or anything else. When you create your HTML files in a word processing format such as Word, however, they must be saved as Text Only or you'll have garble when you try to retrieve. You can also use notepad.exe in Windows.
You'll next need a domain name and domain host or domain hosting software for your ecommerce business. Your host will assign you a user name and password and these are what get you into the "back door" of your site to do the creation and upgrades. You'll want a domain name that reflects not only your business name but, if you can't get the exact business name, at least is a logical choice given your industry.
If, for instance, you are Carol's Cutlery and carolscutlery.com is taken, you might choose ccutlery.com or cutlery.com or even carolscutlery.net or .biz. Since .biz is still not as well known as the others you may pay a smaller price for its registration.
There are many many hosts. While some are very inexpensive that doesn't necessarily mean they are the best buy. Shop around a little. Some well known and inexpensive hosts are godaddy.com, FutureQuest and Interland. What you'll need in the way of ecommerce software functions from your domain host are ample disk storage space, daily statistics, timely technical support and a sufficient number of email addresses. Yahoo Web Hosting is another ecommerce choice, though this software option is a little more expensive. It does offer great spam filtering, too.
Now to Html - Basic Ecommerce Software Functions
If you were around in the 70's when IBM computers first started spitting out camera-ready copy you would have had no option except to sit and painstakingly code in all commands such as flush left, bold, italics, and so forth. Each command might have been several characters long. This is similar to what creating HTML code is like now - though HTML is not quite as bad. If, for instance, you want a word or limited set of characters set as bold you type in a before the word.
At the point at which you want everything after that to change back to light face (not bold) the command is . Italics, for another example is lower case i instead of the b for bold. There are ecommerce software codes for other text features in HTML - headers (headlines), width of rules (lines) and so forth. All you need is a good how-to HTML book and a ton of patience and painstaking trial and error.
