Your website is the digital face of your business, making a positive impression is key. But how do you go about building a website from scratch while ensuring cybersecurity? Here’s a guide to help you navigate this essential task.

1. Define Your Purpose: The first step is understanding what you want your website to achieve. Are you providing information, selling products, offering services, or a combination of these? Knowing your website’s primary purpose is the foundation for its design and content.

2. Choose a Domain Name: Your domain name is your online address. It should reflect your brand and be easy to remember. Ensure it’s unique and available. You can register your domain through various domain registrars.

3. Select a Hosting Provider: Hosting is where your website’s files are stored and made accessible on the internet. Choose a reputable hosting provider that suits your needs in terms of storage, bandwidth, and security.

4. Design Your Website: Design is crucial. You can use a website builder like WordPress, Squarespace, or hire a web developer to create a custom site. Ensure your design is user-friendly, visually appealing, and responsive on all devices.

5. Content Creation: Develop content that speaks to your audience. Include engaging copy, high-quality images, and relevant videos. Your content should inform, entertain, and guide visitors.

6. SEO Optimization: Optimize your website for search engines. Use relevant keywords, meta tags, and create quality content. Good SEO practices increase your website’s visibility on search engines. Additionally, follow cybersecurity best practices to protect sensitive data and customer information.

7. Testing and Launch: Before launching your website, thoroughly test it. Check for broken links, compatibility issues, and overall functionality. Make necessary adjustments and ensure everything works seamlessly. Prioritize security testing to identify and address vulnerabilities. You should also invest in cybersecurity measures to avoid spam and malware.

8. Ongoing Maintenance: Your website is a dynamic entity. Regularly update content, security measures, and features. Pay attention to user feedback and adapt accordingly. Keep your cybersecurity measures up to date to guard against emerging threats. Software like Privacera can help level up your cybersecurity

9. Promotion: Share your website through social media, email marketing, and other promotional channels. This step is vital to drive traffic to your site. Also, promote your commitment to cybersecurity to build trust with your audience.

Building a website from scratch is a rewarding endeavor. It’s your digital storefront, open 24/7 to the world. By following these steps and integrating robust cybersecurity measures, you can create an engaging and effective online presence that bolsters your company’s success while safeguarding sensitive information from potential cyber threats.

Challenge
When Hudson became an independent public company in 2003, it launched a global intranet on a 3rd party CMS dedicated primarily to delivering Company News from the top. In addition, a hastily launched “communities” platform based on WSS 3.0 had shown the company the potential of collaborative technologies to manage projects and encourage user participation. By 2007, much had changed; from user expectations and web technology to Hudson’s own business model and management structure. With this backdrop we embarked on a project to replace Hudson’s Intranet with a modern approach that could meet the current and future business needs of the company.

User Research
We wanted to redesign the Intranet with user research at the center of our decision making. So, we began by engaging an ethnographic research firm to help us interview and observe the work habits of a cross-section of our user population from administrators through to VP’s of sales. We found the following user themes:

• I read the news on the homepage, what else is there?
• I’d rather call someone than use the intranet
• I don’t see anything relevant to my job
• It’s easier to find people in Outlook

Design
Using the research and the realities of an obsolete platform with no development support as the business case for proceeding with the project, we began the design process. We partnered with an external agency to augment our internal team for information architecture and wireframes. Only a month after the official release of MOSS 2007, our lead developer built a “Show Car” on a sandbox MOSS server to prove our vision and further refine our requirements. At this point in the middle of 2007, we could point people to the vision, but had huge doubts about our ability to roll the project into our internal infrastructure.

Development/Beta Launch
With many web development and business priorities competing for attention through 2007 and 2008 we continued to chip away at the coalition building and hardware investments it would take to make the intranet a reality. During that time our CIO commandeered resources to clean up Active Directory and build out a development, staging, and production environment. At the same time the marketing team worked on final branding templates, content strategy, information architecture and Senior Management buy-in. Site development, including the heroic task of customizing Sharepoint templates, building custom webparts and configuring servers began in October 2008. The end result was a Beta Launch of InSite in June of 2009, 8 months later. We used the following Camtasia Video to communicate the exciting launch of what should prove to be a major leap in productivity for the company.

The Future
In the next 2-3 months we expect InSite to come out of beta and be every person’s homepage. After the platform is fully vetted in North America, we plan on deploying the project globally to fully replace the aging current platform.