There are two approaches to DIY Website Construction.

The first is to go about gathering and purchasing all of the components separately. The second is to buy a package that has all of the components and build your website yourself using the tools at your disposal.

When you think about what you will need for a DIY Website Construction, consider the following:

• Domain Name
• Web Hosting
• Templates or HTML program
• Keyword Research
• Content generation
• Autoresponder
• Sitemap submission
• Community or forum for support

If you don't do this on a regular basis, putting all of the pieces together for a DIY website may seem overwhelming.

But you don't need to put all of the separate components together to do your website yourself. You can buy a package that combines the best of everything.

One thing, though. Your best bet is NOT one of the domain name services. These services allow you to get a "brochure site" up quickly. But they don't help you generate a website that sells. And, unless you are putting up a website just for friends and family, there's no use in a website that doesn't sell.

Instead, you should look for a package company whose goal is to make your site sell. They're not there to sell lots of additional components, they want you to succeed.

For one price, you should get your domain name, web hosting, templates, keyword research, an autoresponder, email addresses, sitemap submission, statistics monitoring, and more. You also want to make sure that there is some level of support for the community whether it is phone based technical support or a welcoming forum.

If you're not ready to put all of the components of a DIY website together yourself yet, I recommend Site Build It for a package deal. It includes all of the necessary components and has a very supportive forum community.

To get the SBI package deal, click through to my Small Business Website Marketing Blog.

Your business can benefit from an online presence because of the flexible nature of online presentation.

It is possible to establish a cut off date for the sale of certain products and then use the same date to establish a new line. This can be accomplished through an automated dating system in web builder technology. You can even assign a certain product to show up in the clearance section of your site months ahead of time if you wish.

In a brick and mortar business environment there is a lot of work that has to be done whenever there is a change in sales promotions or when items need to be repriced and segregated for clearance sales. Staff members are required to stay late or come in early to make sure the new prices and displays are ready for the consumer.

In the world of online business you can create all the changes you want whenever it is most convenient. Because content information is tied to a dating system the web builder software will recognize those changes down to the minute.

If you've promised your customers a special sale beginning at a specific time it is possible to manage this change hands-free. When the time comes for the sale to begin the new information is assigned to the location you predetermined for it and customers gain immediate access to the sale prices.

Imagine the day after Thanksgiving, but without the hassle of actually having to show up for work on time. Many businesses enjoy the flexibility of making changes to their business site well in advance of the date the changes are to be put in place.

This idea may stand in stark contrast to the way you run your website. In many cases the only changes that can be made are alterations directed by the web designer. Often a web designer lacks the ability to make immediate and/or timely changes to your website. Businesses that use a web designer often need to make multiple requests for work to be completed on their site.

The growth of self-directed site design is due in large part to the need businesses have of being able to make immediate changes to their site if necessary. Due to the immediacy of the web it has also become important for businesses to learn to manage those changes quickly.

In a feat that might rival The North Pole and its inhabitants, webs builder technology seems to operate on a magical plane where things systematically change without the need for direct human intervention.

If you're a website owner have you ever had trouble managing even the simplest changes when you need changes made? It can be frustrating to know that the alterations of your website are contingent on the ability for someone else to view your needs as a priority. If your web designer doesn't view you as an immediate concern then you simply have to wait until they are good and ready to help.

Orchestrate your own business symphony by making sure every instrument comes in on time.

Like a lot of web developers, I'm not always that disciplined when it comes to the file naming convention I use and I sometimes end up with a situation whereby I have some files that are in lowercase, some that begin with a capital, and some that are a bit of a mixture.

One web site I maintain contains about 2000 web pages and has about 20,000 hyperlinks. As you can imagine, I had one of those sinking feelings when I was told that in order to migrate the web site to a new content management system, all the file names and hyperlinks would need to be changed to lowercase.

Whenever I am presented with a problem like this, my instinct is always to write a Perl script using one or more regular expressions to solve the problem. This particular situation was no exception.

Change a string to lowercase

The following regular expression changes all the characters in a string to lowercase. The first part of the regular expression finds a hyperlink, and the second part converts the string. (Just in case this article is not displayed correctly, there should be a single backslash in front of the 'L$1').

Change a filename to lowercase

Likewise, changing a filename itself is very simple. The following two lines perform the task quite nicely:

(Again, there should be a single backslash in front of the 'L$name'.)

If you need more information on how to incorporate the above code snippets into a complete script, feel free to contact me directly.