This guide was written by me, however I'm now known as Needsy on Nagrand EU.
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Hello,

Well, considering I design and create websites on a daily basis. I thought, I might aswell post a thread up here about creating your first WoW Guild Website, what you'll need to do, how to do it, etc.

I read through the guide by both Aylah (Found here:- http://forums.wow-europe.com/thread.html?topicId=186308645&sid=1) and Blanch (http://forums.wow-europe.com/thread.html?topicId=17801876&sid=1). But, thought I might try a slightly different approach to it.

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Well lets begin. As Blizzard are always looking for new Fansites, a Guilds website can be used for social purposes (Guild members interacting aswell as others participating in friendly discussions), even with the website being associated with your guild, you are still able to have the website as a Fansite.

Before we begin, you will find out about the following:

1. How to get a website online
2. A suitable domain name
3. What to do about a template
4. Aims and objectives of your Guild Website
5. Misc.

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1. How to get a website online

In order to create a website, you will need to have a hosting package from somewhere. Many people decide to purchase Hosting from companies, whereas others choose to have free hosting (BE AWARE: some include advertisements on your webpages). I have decided to do a little work and find and conjure a small list of both decent companies you can use who offer both Paid or Free to use hosting:

Free:

http://www.freewebs.com
http://www.bravenet.com/
http://www.heartinternet.co.uk/freewebhosting.shtml
http://www.tripod.lycos.co.uk/
http://www.freevirtualservers.com/free-hosting.htm
http://www.mister.net/
http://www.150m.com/
http://www.x10hosting.com/
http://www.hostultra.com/
http://webhosting.nationvoice.com/
http://www.8888mb.com/

Paid:

http://www.hostgator.com/
http://www.ocssolutions.com/
http://www.crisphosting.net/
http://www.123-reg.co.uk/
http://www.serversmicro.info/
http://www.fasthosts.co.uk/hosting/
http://www.1and1.co.uk/
http://www.heartinternet.co.uk/hosting-h.shtml

There a lot more out there, however, this is just a short list. If you need more please just wisper me in game (Realm: Silvermoon EU).

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2. A suitable domain name

Your guild website should have a domain name which is associated with it. The Ancient Heroes guild I am in, has the website http://www.ancient-heroes.net. This allows people to know that the website is associated to us before even visiting.

Some people find a little trouble in working out what kind of domain name would be suitable for their guild. Or may have trouble in getting the domain they want due to it being taken by someone else. For example if your guild was called:

Ancient Heroes

You could have the domain http://www.ancient-heroes.net. But, if that domain was taken then you could choose a domain such as:

http://www.ah-guild.net

The end file path does not have to be .net, but instead it can be anything which is availible to you. Many websites require you to purchase domains such as (.com, .co.uk, .net, .org, .info etc.). However, you are able to get hold of free domain names from many websites. As I have done with the hosting, below you can find a list of domain names you can get your hands on both free, and ones you can buy.

Free

http://www.dot.tk - (Domains which end in .tk)
http://www.freedomain.co.nr/ - (Domains which end in .co.nr)
http://www.tipdots.com/ - (Offers an option of 27 different endings with .tp)
http://www.cjb.net/cgi-bin/register.cgi - (Domains which end in .cjb.net)
http://www.shorturl.com/ - (Offers an option of 25 different endsing)
http://www.hotredirect.com/ - (Offers an option of 8 different endings)
http://www.ulimit.com/en/ - (Offers an option of 28 different endings)
http://www.ulimit.com/en/ - (Offers an option of 30 different endings)
http://www.zwap.to/ - (Domains which end in .zwap.to)
http://www.i67.org/index.html (Offers an option of 2 different endings)
http://www.ne1.net/ - (Offers an option of 3 different endings)

Payed

http://www.namecheap.com/
http://www.123-reg.co.uk/
http://www.daily.co.uk/products/domain-names/index.html
http://www.1and1.co.uk/
http://www.heartinternet.co.uk/domains-d.shtml
http://www.ukdomains.com/
http://www.godaddy.com/
http://www.fx-domains.com/

Remember a domain you can remember, is a domain which is most likely going to be visited by viewers. The more complex a website URL is, the less likely a visitor is going to visit, or remember the URL for future reference.

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3. What to do about a template

A good website is usualy by the way it looks. The way the website looks, is purely reliant on its layout. Some of the free webhosts I have mentioned about offer free to use templates, however, these aren't always the best choose *wink*.

Many websites, put alot of effort into their layouts, which makes them stand out from the rest. You can either choose to design your layout using Paint, Photoshop, Adobe Fireworks etc. and then code them using Dreamweaver or Notepad, or you can use some of the links found below, which offer free templates. Creating your own layout, takes alot of time and effort, the more effort you put into your website, the more likely hood it will become successful.

Free templates

http://www.wow-europe.com/en/links/fansites.html - *Blizzards very own Fansite Starter kit!
http://www.clantemplates.com/free_templates/1/106 - *3 Fantastic Free WoW related templates to use
http://www.joomlashack.com/ - *If you use Joomla, you can get free templates here
http://www.freemambo.com/ - *If you use Mambo, you can get free templates here
http://www.zymic.com/show_templates.php?id=2 - *Free website templates
http://www.oswd.org/ - *Free website templates
http://freetemplates.blogspot.com/ - *Free website templates
http://www.interspire.com/templates/ - *Free website templates
http://www.freelayouts.com/websites - *Free templates for various websites

There are many more free website layout websites. If you choose to look yourself then simply go to http://www.google.com and search either "Free website templates" or "Free layouts".

When choosing to download a Free template, remember to use images from World of Warcraft, this will enhance your website to be more associated with the game. For example you wouldn't want to go to http://www.ancient-heroes.net/ looking for information about Ancient Heroes but finding a website which has images to do with web hosting, or music?

The best key to making your website the best to its ability, is to think as a viewer :)

Websites can be difficult to create, if you have no experience with HTML, PHP, MySQL, CSS, or any other webpage language, then I highly advise you to do a little studying whilst creating your websites. I've decided to do a little work and collect a few websites which offer help with HTML, and other webpage languages.

http://www.w3schools.com/
http://www.htmlgoodies.com/
http://www.html.net/
http://javascript.internet.com/
http://www.utexas.edu/learn/css/
http://www.php.net/
http://www.mysql.com/

When you understand how to do HTML, your website will be alot easiar to control and update.

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4. Aims and objectives of your Guild Website

As mentioned above, a good website is about the layout it has. However, a website with an amazing layout, can be very boring without the right content.

Your guilds website should offer the following:

- News about the guild
- Updates to the guild
- Members of the guild
- A Forum (For interacting)
- Guild Roster
- Links to other guilds (Friends of the Guild)
- Application Forms

These are just a basic line-up of what Guild websites should include. If you use this setup, your website will be ready to be used for both Guild members aswell as visitors who aren't in your guild.

Started from the top of the list and working our way down, I will begin with the News part of your guild. This section of the website should include information regarding what your guild is up to, and what they have achieved. This section is very similar to the "Updates", however that section will post screenshots of new Bosses your guild has brought down in raids, to your newest achievements as a guild only, to Guild Anniversarys. A good way of displaying News about the guild can be done by either using HTML found above (read section 3 of this guide), or by using scripts made by others. I have composed a short list of websites which offer scripts to allow you to display, add, edit and remove news on your website:

http://www.cutephp.com/
http://www.moodle.com/
http://www.e107.org/
http://www.phpnuke.org/

When people want to view your Guild website, they usualy want to see who are in that Guild. Having a Guild Roster is always a bonus for the website. You can either have a Guild Roster on the website or create your very own Guild Members page using HTML you have learned from above. With this in mind, a forum is a major part to your Guild Website, this section of the website allows your viewers to participate in discussions, or to keep you informed of whats going on in and around WoW and your Guild. Below are a list of websites which offer free forums:

http://www.phpbb.com/
http://www.freeforums.org/
http://www.proboards.com/
http://www.eamped.com/ - *Also offers free hosting for your Forum
http://www.bravenet.com/webtools/forum/
http://www.aceboard.net/
http://www.nabble.com/
http://www.takeforum.com/

Added to the sticky thread collecting guild site and forum guides:
Guides: Guild Sites and Forums