I wanted to share with everybody what I have learned about building a website for starting my own law firm.
As I posted previously, I have been doing a lot of searching and reading about law firm website hosting. There are way too many web hosting options to list here. Suffice it to say that I can’t recommend one or another. Everybody wants to host your lawyer website.
So, where to begin? Do a google search and you will find many choices. I chose winhost.com. I’m not making a plug, I am just letting your now what I chose. I could have made a mistake, who knows.
I chose Winhost for two reasons: (1) the price and (2) the functionality. The price I chose was a monthly “Max” plan at $10.00 a month. They have a cheaper plan, but I wanted a plan with enough functionality for me to expand and add things like more website content and email users. The functionality compares with, if not better than, many website hosts out there. The “Max” plan has quite a bit of hosting space and other options that I frankly don’t know how to use. I will say this, I did quite a bit of research and I didn’t see this much functionality at places like Godaddy.com. The price is the same, but I don’t think you get as much. (Caveat, I’m a lawyer, not a web designer, and I really don’t know what I am doing.)
So, onto the lawyer stuff. I have decided to develop a law firm website right now. That way, I can build up links and get some traffic to the website before I officially open up my law firm doors in Minneapolis. Also, since I have more free time on my hands than I am used to, I figure this is the best time to learn this stuff.
Now that I have chosen a host, I have to figure out how to get a website up. This is where the real fun begins. I have no website building experience and I just learned how to set up a blog. I’ve put a lot of time into it, but there is a lot more to learn. As I am on a budget when starting my law firm, I don’t want to pay for a web designer. I’m trying to do it on my own.
Here are the tools I have used so far:
(1) Winhost.com (the website hosting service)
(2) Microsoft WebMatrix (a web development tool)
(3) WordPress.org (free blog and CMS website hosting)
(4) Various business and/or law firm templates.
Those are my current tools in more or less the order that I am using them. Again, not a plug for any of them, but that it what I have found so far.
On Winhost, there is a control panel which allows you to set up a database and it also contains domain information like your server address, url address, etc. This is all voodoo to me, but it is necessary to connect with the next step, WebMatrix.
Download WebMatrix and then learn to use it. Did I mention that it is free? There are plenty of tutorials on the Microsoft site. It isn’t the most user friendly software, but, then again, it isn’t that difficult. In WebMatrix you can choose a number of different website building options. There are templates pre-installed, but I recommend either buying a template or finding a free law firm template and loading it into WebMatrix. If you choose a pre-built template, you can load it into WebMatrix and then connect WebMatrix to your server (e.g.: WinHost). This is where the voodoo comes in. I struggled for hours to get WebMatrix to properly connect to and recognize WinHost. But, in the end, I got it to work. Again, instructions are all available via online tutorials and help forums. Also, you can load WordPress.org through WebMatrix if you want to use a WordPress design for your law firm website.
If you do use WordPress, there are many different free templates that you can use for your law firm website, or you can pay for and install a law firm theme for WordPress. I haven’t done this yet, but I am planning to go this route. Wordpress’ functionality and SEO optimization tools are easy, free, and, best of all, they look good.
So, that is my hackneyed explanation on what I am doing to create a law firm website. I’ll unveil the site on Solo in Minneapolis when it is ready. Let me know if any of you have questions on this process. I’d be happy to share what I have learned anybody wanting to build a website when the are starting a law firm.