A beginner’s guide for how to build a website.
I have seen many articles written about how to build a website or blog. For the most part I feel like they all leave beginners with many unanswered questions. I will be changing that by writing this comprehensive guide. You will learn the fastest, simplest, and cheapest way to build your own website or blog from scratch without writing any HTML (Hyper Text Markup Language) code. If you don’t know what the heck HTML code is, good, don’t worry about it. That is not going to matter for what we will be doing. There are days I wish I didn’t know what it is.
The first step in how to build a website is to find a good web hosting company to host your website. This is how your website can exist and be found on the Internet. Without having your website hosted, there will be no way for anyone to gain access to it online. Think of it like this: Your website is a phone. If nobody knows your phone number, no one will be able to call you. Without going into the technical aspect of it, a hosting company provides you a phone number as well as phone service so people can find your website. Web hosting can range anywhere from free to upwards of $200 a month. We will be focusing on hosting that will cost between $4 and $20 a month. You might be thinking that even $20 a month is steep. Well, you are right, and I will explain the difference. But before I do, you should also be aware that free is not a good choice either in my opinion. Sure, you can host your site for free, but you will not own it. By that I mean, if the free service you are using decides to stop providing it someday, you will have to get all of your content off and try to find someplace else to host your account. In the mean time you will loose all of the hard work you have done to get your site ranked in the search engines and have to start over. Another bad thing about a free account is if someone decides your content does not meet their guidelines they will just simply delete your account. How would you like to wake up only to find your 50 page website is gone. The last point I want to make about free hosting is you will not be able to use your own domain name. Instead of your domain name looking like this: www.widgets.com, it will be something like this: www.widgets.freehostingservice.com, I will get into more about domain names later so don’t worry if you don’t know what a domain name is. The list of potential problems with a free hosting service goes on and on, so I won’t focus on that subject anymore.
If you want the easiest way to build a website, you will be looking for a host that provides “site builder” software. Site builder software is a program that let’s you build your website by selecting pre made templates or themes and arranging the items on your webpages the way you want them to look. The only real trouble with something like this is you will be very limited on how much control you have over the final look of your pages. You will be working with pre made templates that only let you do so much with it. Let’s say you find the perfect template, but you would like to have the sidebar on the left instead of the right. Or you want the background color to be red, but the template only allows yellow and green. Chances are you won’t be able to make these changes and are left with having to make do with what is available. This is why most people (myself included) seem to outgrow this type of web hosting company in a hurry. Not to mention that these conveniences are what makes the price of hosting closer to the $20 range. Basically the company is making money off of you because you are new and think that you can’t do this yourself. It’s not that they are evil, it’s just the way the business works. Heck, back in 2005 I was paying $35 a month for this type of limited service. But I have evolved since then and so will you.
The type of hosting that I will recommend for someone starting out is a host that offers a site builder as well as open source software installation such as WordPress, Joomla, or Drupal. This type of hosting is used by the majority of websites you see online. This type of hosting will run you between $4 and $10 a month. The open source software is free as well as being very popular and quite good. This type of software is often referred to as a content management system or CMS. A CMS will allow you many options for adding content to your website as well as choosing the layout and the look of your web pages. You will be able to add not only text, but photos, video, and audio as well. You will be able to do all of this in a matter of minutes once you get to know your way around whatever CMS you choose. These types of CMSs are the exact ones that the companies that build websites use. They build it in 30 minutes and then turn around and sell the pre made website for hundreds of dollars. It’s the exact same software you can get for free. Getting back to the site builder options, most good hosting companies offer the site building software as well as CMSs for the same price. They do this so when you outgrow the site builder limitations you can just install a CMS instead. Then you won’t have to find a different web host. This is just another reason you want to find a good reputable web hosting company.
Out of the above choices for a CMS, WordPress is the one that I recommend and use due to it’s popularity and quick learning curve. I use WordPress for all my websites and have gotten to the point of being able to get a website up and running in under 20 minutes. The hardest part about building a website will be the content creation. No matter how good a CMS is, you still have to come up with the content for your website. Joomla and Drupal are very nice and powerful CMSs also, but they have a bit of a steeper learning curve. Generally a larger business with a lot of content and customer interaction (forums) will be using Joomla or Drupal as their CMS. Another reason I like WordPress is how much information and help there is about using WordPress. There is a lot of support for WordPress, if you ever have trouble with anything, you can find the answer from a quick Google search. WordPress even has it’s own support forums with many experts moderating and answering questions. You will never get the feeling of being left high and dry.
I’m going to quickly jump to another step in the process and then return to CMSs. The next step in building a website is choosing a domain name for your site. A domain name is the phone number for your website. It is the name people type in to their browser, such as (www.google.com). Most hosting companies will offer a free domain name for life if you sign up for a hosting account with them. But be careful of the fine print. Many web hosting companies will make it very hard or very expensive to get access to your domain name if you should decide to switch hosting companies in the future. The last thing you want to do is have to get a new domain name for an already established website. For that I would suggest getting a domain from a private registrar like GoDaddy. Now in the case of GoDaddy, they offer hosting as well as domain names, but it is easy to switch hosting to another company and still have full control over your domain name after you switch.
Now we will get back onto the subject of content management. Once you pick the right hosting, domain name, and CMS for your website, the next step is to install the CMS software to the “back end” of your website. The back end of your website is only available to you. The general public only sees the front end when they visit your site. Installing the CMS is done right from your control panel that you will receive from your hosting company after you sign up. The control panel is nothing more than a private page from your web hosting company that only you and the hosting company have access to. The most common control panel will be called Cpanel X. Cpanel X is the brain of your website. This is where you will be able to control all the back end functions of the site. To be honest, don’t be afraid of this since you wont really need to do much of anything if you choose a good hosting company. The only thing I ever do in the Control panel is make email accounts for my websites, add domain names, and install the CMS. The software installation is really easy because most good hosting companies have it set up so you can add what ever CMS you want automatically. You just need to follow the onscreen instructions and set up your user name, password, and the name of your blog or website. It really is quite simple to do if you choose a reputable hosting company. I don’t want to keep scaring you by talking about choosing the right host, but some hosting companies are so far behind the times that you will end up having to do all of this back end stuff manually. Trust me, I’ve done it manually and it really sucks.
Now that you have signed up for a hosting account, Picked an awesome domain name, chosen the best CMS, and installed it from your control panel. The only thing left is to choose a theme or a template for your website. A theme or template is similar to what I was talking about for a site builder. It is a pre designed look and layout for your web pages. The big difference between a site builder and a CMS is, with a CMS you have virtually limitless choices to pick from. WordPress has many free templates you can use for your website and they are getting better all the time. The easiest way to adjust templates used to be buying a premium template, but now the free ones come with some very easy ways to customize them for your own tastes as well. The subject of templates is a completely different topic and will have to be tackled with it’s own article.
Like I said before, whether you choose WordPress, Joomla, Drupal, or a site builder, There is an awful lot of help available to you. Usually it’s no further than a Google search away. There will also be help available to you through your web hosting company. Do you think these guys don’t know anything about websites? The technical support line can often be your best friend. That is all the more reason to pick a good reputable hosting company. I know that this is a lot of information to soak up if you are new, but it’s not a hard as you think. As I said before, Once you get the hang of it you will be putting up websites in no time at all. We have all been new at this at one time or another, you are not alone. Just remember there is more help out there than you will know what to do with.
Please feel free to take a look around my website for many other tips and tricks from choosing the right web hosting company, to dealing with the search engines once you get your web site up and running. Here is a very short list of quality web hosting companies below. I use and recommend both of them.
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