: Is there a checklist that a small website should I am not a web developer - this would be my first foray. I can do HTML/CSS/Javascript, but never created a website for a company. If anybody

@Smith883

Take a look at this checklist: webdevchecklist.com/

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@Hamm4606531

It depends. If your client does not understand the process of registering a domain, you should do it, but enter their details for the records. With hosting, again, it depends. If it's a large website that might require one or more servers or a complex setup, it's probably better for you to organize this. If not, there is no harm in them ordering it and you working on their web space. Usually for small clients that will not require their own server, I just set an account up for them and assign some resources on my own server. If things grow, we can discuss transferring their site to a more powerful setup to handle the load.

So in general - it depends how tech-savvy your client is - you never know, they may have an idea in mind as to how they want to organize these kinds of things.
This depends on the requirements and purpose of the website, but generally yes. More work may be required to implement a responsive design for tablets, mobiles and other media but these are all things you should discuss in the initial meeting with your client.
If you're doing all the work yourself, this would usually happen during 'stage 2' (previous answer).
If you need to buy stock images, this is unavoidable. I'd be weary over what images you buy, I'm sure I can't be the only one that is sick of seeing the same stock images across multiple websites, if at all possible it would be best to source your own or get exclusive rights to a set of images.
"Copyright stuff". I assume by this, you mean things like your terms and conditions, privacy policy, etc. There is not much required of you here, there are many templates that make a google starting point, likewise for privacy policies. It would be wise to put links like this in the footer with a "Copyright 2012 mysite.com" or something along those lines to make it clear that your content is not for reuse and distribution or consent. Consult a lawyer if you're working on sizeable projects.
I would usually implement these when initially building the site (steps 2 and 3, as per your layout).
This isn't really how it works. The search engines find you, though perhaps not easily at first depending on a number of factors. Your best bet is to create a Google Webmasters account, which allows you to submit a sitemap directly to Google. Anything else you can do in the meantime to promote your site online (without spamming...) will make your site more visible to other SE's - so sharing with friends and so on would be a good start.


Some of your questions seemed to be bordering on asking about cash flow - should you buy hosting etc, or let the client buy it. Again, it depends on the job, but for smaller companies I would usually just factor all these things into my pricing and take a sufficient deposit to cater for any purchases I may have to make, as well as leaving some left over for security.

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@Sue5673885

1 - Usually web admins have all the passwords they need, as the client might not be technical at all (not even uploading files)

3 - SEO Stuff is not something you add at the end: you would need to take it into account when you design your website (keywords to target, URL structure, titles, meta desc, and more).

7 - Just register with Google Webmaster Tools, and other equivalent tools for other search engines. If you want to make sure your site is everywhere, you could add it to a few directories (i.e. DMOZ), where search engines will look and index your site.

It would be good to also add an XML sitemap to your site, and submit it to search engines (mainly for SEO reasons), and create a robots.txt

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