Finally! Building a Website-The Website

I know, I know, I started writing about building my practice website months ago, and I've completely dropped the ball. But only the blog ball. I've actually been working very hard on my own website, as well as that of my analytic institute, and on other tech-y advances we're adopting. More on that later.

For now, I have finally chosen SquareSpace as my site host, and I'm diligently shoveling away at everything I need to do to get the site up and running.

Why SquareSpace? I know that in my last post on this matter, it looked like I was going to go with Duda. Since then, I've traveled further along the convoluted paths of website-building research, and one of the things I discovered is that SquareSpace is a solid company in many ways, including staying power. I really wasn't sure I could say that about Duda-that a couple years from now, they'll still be around.

In the end, it was a competition between Squarespace, and a hosted site using Wordpress. I'll tell you a little bit about that.

I like Instagram. My interests fall into a few main categories: dogs, crochet/yarn, design, food, and museums. They have targeted ads, which I sometimes look at. One day, an ad came up for SkillShare, where you can take mini-courses taught by whoever. Some are free. Some require a premium subscription. I found a premium class called, Mastering Wordpress: Build the Ultimate Professional Website. So I paid the 99 cent three month trial fee, and started taking the class. It was pretty bad. It was boring, and the guy was describing how to make his EXACT site. But it did make it clear to me that I could do this.

Then I found another course, How to Properly Make a Website with Wordpress-Beginner's Tutorial. This one was helpful. You can check it out on SkillShare, but the guy has his own site called, Websites Made Easy.

Basically, you use HostGator.com to host your site. You can also buy a domain name through them.

To review briefly, the domain name is the name of your site, i.e. its address, like alfredeneumanmd.com. (I actually got a .org domain name). The hosting site is where your site "lives" online. Hosting sites usually have several pricing plans that vary by what's offered.

Once you buy your domain name and pick your hosting plan, you hook up Wordpress to it, and you build your Wordpress site.  Wordpress has a ton of plugins, which are little extra functions that someone else wrote the code for, and which do great things for your site.

I didn't go this route because I actually tried to go this route, and something happened with the billing, and then it somehow got canceled. The problem wasn't on my end, so I started reading reviews of HostGator, and apparently they used to be pretty good, but not so much anymore. So I gave up on it.

It's also not clear to me why this is a better way to go than simply hosting your site through Wordpress.

But here's what it came down to with SquareSpace. It's a one-stop shop. You can buy a domain name through them, and host on their site, and use their software to build your site.

The domain name has an annual fee (no matter where you get it), and SquareSpace charges $20/year, which is more than many of the other hosting sites. But they lock you in at your initial rate. Other sites don't tell you what they'll charge after the first year.

SquareSpace also doesn't give you a hard time about transferring your domain name, if you decide you don't want them to host anymore, as long as you've had your site for at least two months. According to reviews, other hosting sites do give you a hard time. I think it's indicative of SquareSpace's trust that you'll like their product, and want to continue with them.

The pricing is middle of the road. I got the "personal" plan, as opposed to the business plan. It boasts:

and costs $16/month, or $12/month if I pay annually. It includes Domain Privacy, which removes your personal contact information from the public WhoIs internet record of your domain name, which can be crawled by spam marketers for your email address.

The business plan has a few more items that I don't need right now. But you can switch between plans whenever you like. They also require  a 14 day free trial, so you're sure SquareSpace is what you want.

The design software took a little getting used to, but it's powerful, and really quite beautiful. They have excellent online tutorials, and lots of them.

In case you're interested, I chose the Keene template:

I changed the font and ditched the toothbrush, and I really like it. It's clean, uncluttered, and attractive.

The new font looks like this:

Finally, SquareSpace has exceptional customer service, which I came to realize is very important when you're DIY'ing your own site. Every review I read about SquareSpace was impressed by the customer service. I've already made use of it, and the turnaround time was faster than I expected, and they were genuinely helpful.

Next up, the ACTUAL building of the site, or, "How do I introduce myself to the world and describe what I do? What DO I do? Why do I do it that way?" I never realized how philosophical building a website can be.

Building a Website-The Pricing

First, I want to thank people who read my first website post and made suggestions about using Blogger, Wordpress, and Google for my website.  I'll incorporate those into my research.

I'm continuing to figure out which company I'm going to use to build my practice website. As part of my research, I found a wonderfully helpful site called, The Site Wizard, that contains all kinds of information like the definition of a domain name, and html tutorials. The author does not allow his material to be reproduced all or in part, so I'll just have to paraphrase, and you have the link.

The question of pricing is more complicated than I expected, because different website builders or platforms have different features, with different charges. So I've tried to narrow things down to basic costs-the site itself, and the domain name.

But let's discuss basics.

What is a Web Host?
A Web Host is a home for your website. The companies I've been looking at, Weebly, Duda, Squarespace, and Web.com, are all web hosts. They have lots of computers, or access to cloud space, where your website will live. Duda, for example, claims to offer hosting on Amazon Cloud.

What is a Domain Name?
If I want my own site, that I name myself, that doesn't belong to some larger thing like this blog does to blogger, I need a domain name, which is like a business name. As long as I register it and pay the annual fee, it's mine whether or not I choose to have a website associated with it. That makes me the owner of the domain name, and allows me to take it with me if I switch web hosts.

You register your domain name, for an annual fee, with an organization called, ICANN, which has a list of domain name registrar companies that you need to register through. GoDaddy, the website builder I rejected in my last post, is also a domain name registrar, so I may need to reconsider using it. Google is also a registrar.

Some web hosts provide a domain name free for the first year, and then charge the annual fee. Many let you import a domain name you already own for less money than they would charge for getting you the domain name. And reputedly, some dubious web hosts will register your domain under their name, making them the owner. But apparently, those companies are largely gone.

Domains also come in different suffixes, like .com, .org, .company, .biz, .education, and respective costs depend on something called, "TLD", or Top Level Demand.

So let's look at the cost of a website at the various companies, including a domain name, and let's assume I want to call my website, "MyPsychiatry.com," provided that name is available.

Let's also assume I'm not going to use the free sites available via the web hosts I'm considering. They exist, but they have ads, and I can't use my own domain name.

And finally, I'm just considering price in this post. I'm ignoring various features, for now, because it just gets too complicated to look at all at once.

Google would charge me $12/year for that name. Google would also need me to use blogger or squarespace or something as my web host, so that would be additional.

Squarespace charges $20/year for the domain name, including the first year, but that $20 fee doesn't increase in subsequent years, something I haven't seen clearly indicated on other sites. It also includes something called, "WHOIS Privacy" which I don't really understand but seems to protect some information about you, as the domain name owner.

Then there's the website fee. The personal site costs $16/month or $12/month billed annually, and if you get the annual plan, they waive the first year's domain fee. The Business site's corresponding prices are $26 and $18 per month.

Wordpress:

This is Wordpress' price chart for website plans. It doesn't say anything about an annual fee for a domain name.

Duda does not sell custom domain names. The'll set up a subdomain on their free plan, which would be mypsychiatry.dudaone.com. But if I want a custom domain name, I have to go elsewhere. They have lists of compatible registrars, including Hover and GoDaddy, but they have a partnership with Hover which allows you to purchase a domain name from Hover while you're setting up your Duda site. Hover's .com pricing is $12.99 the first year, then $14.99 for annual renewals.

This is Duda's pricing:

Duda does have that excellent one-time payment of $299 site for life deal. I checked, and you can switch from a monthly or annual plan to a site for life plan, but they do say they may not have that deal forever.

Blogger is probably the best deal, financially. The web hosting is free, and you can get a custom domain name through them for $10/year. Blogger allows up to 20 standalone pages, so I could include things like the Surprise Act form and my office policies. The main problem with blogger is that sites tend to look like blogs, not websites. Some people have done amazing things with customization, check out this article  and this one to see some impressive sites. But these were customized with html code, so if I knew html, this would be great, but since I don't I'd probably consult someone professional to help me at least get started, adding to the cost.

Weebly has a pretty good deal:

The domain is free for the first year, and $19.95 each additional year, with discounts for extended terms.

I really find GoDaddy unnerving. They have a domain name auction site, where you can purchase a domain name that someone else swept up. For example, mypsychiatry.com isn't available. But mypsychiatrist.com is available for $14.99/year, plus an initial $5700.00 purchase fee. I used the 2 decimal places so you wouldn't think it was $57. On the other hand, mypsychiatry.net and .org are each $11.99/year. As I mentioned in my last post, they also have web hosting, but I find interacting with their site very unpleasant.

Finally, I couldn't find domain name prices on Web.com. Mypsychiatry.xyz was available, as well as .net, but all the "pricing" said was, "Add to cart." So I added .xyz to the cart so I could see the price, and pressed "continue". It was $1.95/month (not year), with a "*" I couldn't find the text to, and an option to keep my information private or not. Then it asked for my information before giving me a real price, and that's where I stopped.

And now for the spreadsheet:

From a strictly monetary perspective, Blogger is the best deal. I'm now quite sure I'm not interested in GoDaddy and Web.com, so I'm ruling those out. Everything else is somewhere in between, and will depend on specific features.

I'm also wondering if the most useful thing I learned in researching this topic is that I should buy up a bunch of domain names and charge exorbitantly for people to purchase them from me.

Building A Website-The Template

I've been blogging for a little over three years now, which is hard to believe. I feel like I'm about average on the tech-y scale, and I certainly feel like a web presence is an important thing for any business to have. But I'm just starting to consider setting up a website for my private practice.

The main reason I've delayed this long is that since I don't use email to communicate with patients due to privacy/confidentiality and delay-in-treatment concerns, there didn't seem to be a point to a website where the contact information consists of a phone number.

Also, I knew I'd want an attractive, professional-looking site, but I didn't want to pay a lot of money to a designer for a site, the function of which is to get people to call me. There are some nice mixes of low and high tech, like a wooden iPhone case, or 3D printing a yarn winder, but a website with a phone number didn't seem to qualify as such a mix.

I finally decided to cave when I was researching my Analytic Evidence post, and I checked out the website of John Thor Cornelius, whose YouTube presentation I referenced in the post. I'm not sure how he'd feel about my linking to his site, which is why I haven't done so.

It's a thoughtful site, not glitzy, not overwhelming, but with all the information prospective and current patients might need about his practice, in addition to the ability to pay bills via PayPal, and I thought, yeah, this can be done well.

There are companies out there that design websites just for doctors, but they're expensive, and I don't need or want all the EMR integration stuff. So I've pretty much decided that, at least initially, I'll design my own site, for free, or for as little money as possible, and then see how it goes.

A few things I need to figure out before creating my site:

I need to decide what information to include on it. I'll need a decent headshot, contact info with a map feature, and a brief paragraph describing myself and my practice philosophy, which means I need to figure out what my practice philosophy is. I'm pretty sure I have one, I've just never articulated it. And I need to articulate it in a way that feels confident and inviting, but not exhibitionistic.

I need to decide how much information to provide about myself. Is a CV a good idea? Will that much information interfere with therapy?

I need some kind of description of what patients can expect from treatment.

I need to include my practice policies, which I already have written up. And I want to include the Surprise Act forms indicating that I don't accept insurance, and what my fees are, because that way I don't need to hand the stupid forms to my patients.

And I'd like patients to be able to pay through the site, but I need to understand how that impacts privacy.

I also need to pick a free or cheap website builder. I did several online searches including "build your own website free", "website builder for physicians,", and "best website builder for doctors". After googling around, I found a few I want to look into:

Weebly
Wix
Sitebuilder
Duda
Squarespace
GoDaddy
Web.com

Web.com seems to have the highest rating when I looked up reviews, but my first concern was the template. Specifically, I wanted to find a template that looks like it's professional for a doctor, not professional for a lawyer, or a restaurant, or a dog-walker. My theory is that if such a template exists, then the company has probably had a number of doctors design sites through it, which feels like a "safer" bet to me. I don't want my site to look amateurish, but I also don't want it to look like I'm a graphic designer or the APA.

Note that contrary to my inclination, I'm not including images because I assume these sites are pretty proprietary with their stuff. Or maybe I'm wrong and they want the advertising.

Sitebuilder has a template category specifically for professional services, and it includes a physician page which is a little slick for my taste, but usable. What I didn't like about it was that it was the only site for which I had to register before I was allowed to see the available templates.

Weebly's closest business theme was for a law firm, and the next closest theme was a personal one that was basically a large business card.

Similarly, Wix's closest templates were Dentist and Doula.

Squarespace had nothing specifically medical, but I thought it had the most aesthetically pleasing themes.

GoDaddy has what I think of as a "jittery" site, where there's too much information thrown at you at once, and you just want to close the page. I don't think that bodes well for my own site. I did briefly look at their templates though, and I didn't much care for them.

The same was true for web.com-too busy, with only a small sampling of templates, all fairly ugly.

My favorite was Duda, which allowed access to templates, and had a specific medical template that looks about right to me. Also, their templates are responsive, which means they adjust themselves to whatever device the user is on, and can be customized for specific devices, i.e. you can make your smartphone page a bit different from your laptop page.

Well, okay, just this one image, since I'm saying it's my favorite:

Here's a spreadsheet summary of the templates:

Based on this information, I'm going to rule out GoDaddy, Sitebuilder, and Wix. I'm not crazy about Web.com but I'm going to keep it in the running because it gets consistently high ratings, so maybe there's more to it than I've seen thus far.