How to Put Your Business on the Internet

[IMAGE MAP]

In this article, we describe how Weyrich Consulting Services can help your company establish a presence on the Internet.

An outline of the topics covered follows. The links in the outline below correspond to the bubbles in the PERT diagram above. You may click on either.

Establish Internet Connectivity

At a minimum, you will want to have e-mail connectivity to the Internet. Ideally, you will have a dialup connection to an Internet Service Provider (ISP) which supports SL/IP or PPP so that you can browse the World Wide Web.

You will want to invest in a 28.8 KBaud modem and a personal computer with adequate power (a 486DX-33 computer with 8 Meg of RAM running Windows 3.1 is probably the lowest you want to go -- Pentiums and Power Mac's are great). Weyrich Computer Consulting mainly uses 486DX2-66, 486DX-50, and 486DX4-75 computers with 16 Meg of RAM running OS/2 Warp, Linux, and Windows 95 for Internet access.

You choice of ISP's varies from locale to locale. Many are currently experiencing growing pains as new users jump onto the Internet. A good source of information on ISP's is The List . Weyrich Consulting Services presently obtains access to the Internet via Goodnet.

If you are reading this, you most likely have accomplished this step.

Develop a Style Sheet

Browse around on the World Wide Web to see what you like and don't like. Make 'bookmarks' on example pages. Then plan the general "look and feel" of your own World Wide Web Pages. Ask yourself questions like: This step is typically done in consultation with consulting firms such as Weyrich Consulting Services. If you know what you want, it only takes a couple hours to complete this step. If you are new to the World Wide Web, you may want to devote a week or more to browsing the net.

Plan the Web Pages

After you have decided on a general style sheet, you need to plan the content of your web pages. You may want to consider previous advertising campaigns, brochures, and telephone book ads. This step is typically done in consultation with consulting firms such as Weyrich Consulting Services.

Write/Collect the Copy and Graphics

Depending on your situation, you may have a good start on collecting your materials if you have word-processing files, graphics files, or printed materials. Many computer service firms, including Weyrich Consulting Services, can also "scan in" text and graphics from printed materials which you may have. You may also choose to contract out some of your technical writing and graphics arts work to a service provider such as Weyrich Consulting Services.

The time required for this step is highly dependent on what you already have and what you plan to do.

Convert Copy and Graphics to World Wide Web Format

In order to display your materials on the World Wide Web, you need to convert them to "Hyper-Text Markup Language" (HTML)

Weyrich Consulting Services has experience with hypertext going back as far as 1987.

Depending on the complexity and number of web pages, this generally costs about $30 to $100 per finished web page. A good estimate or firm price can usually be quoted after the planning, writing, and collecting steps have been completed.

Acceptance Review of the Web Pages

At this point, you should be able to see a working prototype of your final product as it will appear on the World Wide Web. At this point you may choose to make some minor changes.

Copyright © 1996
"Orville R. Weyrich, Jr." <orville@weyrich.com>

Last updated: December 31, 1997; Version: 1.5