Today your website is like your cell phone. You need to be in control. Gone are the days when you were tied to one company. The cell phone companies would some how tie you to themselves so you could not leave, and charge you a fortune for their services. Today no one would think of signing a contract for three years, two years or even one year. With the packages today you can cancel any day or switch every six months. Once you were charged for every phone call and SMS. Today you pay a set price per month for unlimited connection. Another way they tied you to themselves was to sell you the phone, paying for it extravigantly over two or three years. And if you wanted to switch companies, your phone was locked and the new simm would not work in your phone. Never, Never buy a phone from the cellular providers! They are cheaper in the stores, at the kiosks, Walmart, BestBuy, Fry's even Amazon sells them.

Getting back to websites. You need to be in control. Websites today are built using open source tools on open source platforms. Gone are the days when you were tied to your Web Designer because he built your website with proprietary software using a proprietary platform on a server that only he has access to. Websites are now built with open source tools like Joomla, Mambo or Ruby which allow you, the owner, to modify the content using a password protected backend access to your site. No, you don't have to pay your Web Designer every time you want to put up a new article or a price needs to be changed on an item you are selling. Websites are now built on a standard server using Linux, Apache, MySQL and PHP. Allowing you to move your website to any server or hosting service that runs standard "LAMP" servers. Move your files, point your IP to the new server, and your site is up again.

Steps to setting up a website:

   * Choose and register your domain name. Your hosting service or your designer can register it for you, but be sure you know where it was registered and have the username and password in order to manage it yourself or at least be able to pass them on to a new hosting service.

   * Choose a hosting service. You don't have to put your site where your designer wants it, and you don't want it stuck there because only your designer as the access codes. Websites are global, on whatever server it is sitting, anyone on planet earth can still access it and your designer can still build it. He doesn't need, and usually does not have physical access to the server. He can use the backend or at least standard passive FTP, both password protected.

   * You have to write the content and collect the photos. Then either "Do It Yourself", most software, for example, Word, Powerpoint or any geneology software will save as a webpage. Or pay a Web Designer to design and build the site using a "CMS" - Content Management Software - for example: Joomla.

Hi-Rez Software would be pleased to host your website!