When people ask me what I do for a living and I awkwardly attempt to tell them without making their head explode (you'll know if you work in SEO) one question that always seems to come up is:
"How do I create a website?"
The answer I give is normally the same:
"Depends what kind of website you want to create."
Most of the people I talk to just want either a very simple website about their business to give them an online presence or a blog-like set up to voice some personal opinions. With these people in mind, here's a step-by-step.
There are other ways of doing it and I'll undoubtedly have developers jumping all over me with better methods, but this is how I created my first website and I've enjoyed a decent level of success with it.
I'm writing this guide assuming that the website you want to create is your own i.e. with your own address and with you fully controlling the site. However, if you want to create a website for free then you can use resources like Blogger or Wordpress.
Website Checklist
In order to start your website, the first two things you need are a domain or address e.g. www.yourwebsite.com and a hosting package.
What is hosting?
The host is where your website lives if you like and stores all of the content you add to your site.
Fortunately, to avoid confusion you can get both of these things (your address and hosting) from the same place.
Where are the best places?
There are hundreds of companies offering hosting and the choice can be confusing. The best company I can recommend is the company I use, which is Bluehost. There's another reason I recommend this company (or ones similar) which I will explain shortly.
I think the total package of address and hosting comes to something like $80 or £40, give or take. This sets you up for a year and you don't have to pay anything else until its time to renew, so that amount should be your only outlay.
How do I pick a good website address?
Again, this depends on the website you're setting up. However, the advice I always give is to have the main product or topic your website is about in the address.
So, if your website is all about monster trucks you want an address like www.monstertrucks.com or www.monstertrucks.net.
Unfortunately, addresses as simple as this are always taken so you have to get slightly more creative. Carrying on with the monster trucks idea you might try something like www.monstertrucksrule.com or www.monstertruckskickass.com...you get the point.
If you've got a brand you're trying to promote then you might try and include that in the address. So if your monster truck company was called Awesome, the address you might go for might be www.awesomemonstertrucks.com.
.com, .net, .org, .co.uk - which do I choose?
People always get confused about these different addresses and worry about which one to choose i.e. monstertrucks.com or monstertrucks.org etc.
The best advice I can give you is to always go for a .com. They're the easiest to remember and people all around the world can view these addresses.
.org is normally reserved for educational, references and other authorities so best to stay away from them unless that's the kind of website you're creating.
.co.uk and other regional addresses are OK but are more targeted to one specific region than the whole of the web.
Next Steps
So you've registered with a host, got the address you're happy with and now you're thinking, 'What the hell do I do now? I don't know anything about creating a website.'
Well, fortunately in this day in age you don't have to.
Just like you'd use Microsoft Word to write something or Excel to do your tax return there is easy to use software to create your website. This software is called a CMS or Content Management System....don't be scared.
There are many content management systems but the best ones are Drupal (which this site is created with) and Wordpress. Drupal is better for more advanced website developers but Wordpress can be just as effective despite being far simpler to use.
Getting Started with Wordpress
Installing Wordpress onto your website can be quite daunting if you don't know what you're doing. Fortunately, hosting services normally offer a 'one click installation of wordpress' which does what it says on the tin.
This quick-fire installation is done using software called Fantastico. Many advanced website developers don't like using this as they believe it causes problems when they're trying to mess with the software themselves. However, for a simple beginners website it is a very handy tool and I personally have never had a problem using it on my Wordpress websites.
If you took my advice and used Bluehost, then all you have to do to add Wordpress to your website is:
Once you've done this, Fantastico should do the rest.
We're Live!
It might take a few minutes but eventually you can visit your address and Wordpress should be successfully installed.
The default Wordpress page is always the same with a blue banner at the top and a simple white background.
Down the right of the site, you should see a 'Log-in' link - click on it.
Now you enter the username and password you selected and log-in to what is known as the 'Dashbaord' of your website where you can edit everything to do with your site from how it looks, to what is displayed on the home page.
Its a good idea to familiarise yourself with the Dashboard as you'll be using it an awful lot. You can also learn more about using the software from the official Wordpress site, where they obviously explain things a lot better than me.
Signing off
This is where I'm going to end this post on creating a website, but it will continue where we left off in my next post, Starting out with Wordpress.