How to Start / Create Your Own Website

How to Start / Create Your Own Website: The Beginner's A-Z Guide
by Luke, AKA West Side, WWW.sythe.org

This tutorial shows you how to make or create a website. It is intended for the beginner and layperson, taking you step by step through the whole process from the very beginning. It makes very few assumptions about what you know (other than the fact that you know how to surf the Internet, since you're already reading this article on the Internet). Since some steps are more involved, it also links to selected relevant articles on thesitewizard.com that you will need to click through to read for more information.

The Essential Step-by-Step Guide to Making Your Own Website

Get Your Domain Name ---

The first thing you need to do before anything else is to get yourself a domain name. A domain name is the name you want to give to your website. For example, the domain name of the website you're reading is "thesitewizard.com". To get a domain name, you have to pay an annual fee to a registrar for the right to use that name. Getting a name does not get you a website or anything like that. It's just a name. It's sort of like registering a business name in the brick-and-mortar world; having that business name does not mean that you also have the shop premises to go with the name.

Detailed information on getting a good domain name can be found in the article Tips on Choosing a Good Domain Name.

After you read that, you will need to know the steps to registering a domain name and the things you need to look out for when registering. You can find a detailed guide in the article How to Register Your Own Domain Name.

It may also be wise to take a look at some of the Important Precautions to Take When Buying a Domain Name, just so that you don't commit the same mistakes that some newcomers make when buying a domain name.

Choose a Web Host and Sign Up for an Account
A web host is basically a company that has many computers connected to the Internet. When you place your web pages on their computers, everyone in the world will be able to connect to it and view them. You will need to sign up for an account with a web host so that your website has a home. If getting a domain name is analogous to getting a business name in the brick-and-mortar world, getting a web hosting account is analogous to renting office premises for your business.

There are many issues involved in finding a good web host. Read up on the various things you need to look for in searching for a good web host in the article How to Choose a Web Host.

After you have an idea of what to look for, you can search for one from the Budget Web Hosting page. You can also find out which web host I'm currently using from the Which Web Host Do You Recommend? page.

After you sign up for a web hosting account, you will need to point your domain to that account on your web host. Information on how to do this can be found in the guide How to Point a Domain Name to Your Website (Or What to Do After Buying Your Domain Name).

Designing your Web Pages ---

Once you have settled your domain name and web host, the next step is to design the web site itself. In this article, I will assume that you will be doing this yourself. If you are hiring a web designer to do it for you, you can probably skip this step, since that person will handle this step.

Although there are many considerations in web design, as a beginner, your first step is to actually get something out onto the web. The fine-tuning can come after you've figured out how to get a basic web page onto your site. One way is to use a WYSIWYG ("What You See Is What You Get") web editor to do it. Such editors allow you to design your site visually, without having to muck around with the technical details. They work just like a normal wordprocessor.

There are many commercial and free web editors around. For those who don't mind spending money on a good commercial web editor, one of the most highly-regarded WYSIWYG web editors is Dreamweaver. If you are planning to use this editor, thesitewizard.com has an online tutorial on How to Create a Website with Dreamweaver CS4 (Dreamweaver Tutorial). The tutorial takes you through all the steps of creating a fully-functional website with multiple pages and a feedback form, and provides you with the theoretical and practical foundation that will help you create and maintain your site.

If you prefer to use free software, you can find a complete tutorial on using KompoZer, a free WYSIWYG web editor, in the article How to Design and Publish Your Website with KompoZer. Like my Dreamweaver tutorial, this one also guides you through the process of creating a website that has a home page, an about page, a site map, a links page and a feedback form. It also shows you some of the main features of the KompoZer software so that you can go on improving and updating your website on your own.

There are many other web design software around. If you prefer not to use either of the above, you can find some others listed on thefreecountry.com's Free HTML Editors and WYSIWYG Web Editors page.

After you have followed my tutorial, and are on the way to designing your website, you might want to read the article Appearance, Usability and Search Engine Visibility in Web Design as well. The article takes a brief look at some of the real world issues that every web designer must deal with.

An integral part of web design is search engine readiness. Search engine promotion does not start after the web site is made. It starts at the web design stage. The article 6 Tips on How to Create a Search Engine Friendly Website is a must-read. My article on How to Improve Your Search Engine Ranking on Google is also important for the simple reason that Google is the most popular search engine around, at least at the time this article was written.

There are many other issues regarding the design of web pages. The above will get you started. However, if you have the time after you get something out onto the web, you may want to read my other articles on Web Design and Website Promotion and Search Engine Ranking.

Testing Your Website ---

Although I list this step separately, this should be done throughout your web design cycle. I list it separately to give it a little more prominence, since too few new webmasters actually perform this step adequately.

You will need to test your web pages as you design them in the major browsers: Internet Explorer 8, Internet Explorer 7, Internet Explorer 6, the latest versions of Firefox, Opera and Safari. Since all these browsers are free anyway, it should not be any hardship to get them and install them. The trick however, is testing with more than one version of Internet Explorer since the later version will overwrite the earlier. For that, please see the article How to Check Your Website with Multiple Browsers on a Single Machine (Cross-Browser Compatibility Checking). Although there are two possible ways given in the article, I suggest that you use the emulator/virtual machine method to do this. (It's probably easier.) Read the article to find out more.

One way to improve your chances that your website will work in future versions of the web browsers is to make sure your web pages' code validate as correct (that is, has no errors in its underlying code). You can read more about this in HTML and CSS Validation: Should You Validate Your Web Page? There are numerous free web page validators listed on the Free HTML Validators, Broken Link Checkers, Browser Compatibility Checkers page.

Collecting Credit Card Information, Making Money
If you are selling products or services, you will need some way to collect credit card information. You should read up on How to Accept Credit Cards on Your Website. I also have a step by step guide on How to Add an Order Form or a "Buy Now" button using PayPal to a Website.

If you need advertisers for your website, you might want to read How to Make Money From Your Website and the follow-up article How to Increase Your Website Revenue from Affiliate Programs. A list of advertisers and affiliate programs can be found on Affiliate Programs: Free Sponsors and Advertisers. These companies are on the constant lookout for new web publishers to display their advertisements.

Getting Your Site Noticed ---

When your site is ready, you will need to submit your site to the search engines, particularly Google. You can find the Google submission page by clicking on the "About Google" link on Google, and then locating the "Submit your content to Google" link on the page that appears. However, submitting your site to Google alone is, quite frankly, a pointless endeavour. If there are no other links to your site on the web, Google will be appear most reluctant to index your site and show results that include your pages. If there are many other links to your site, you don't even have to bother to submit it to Google - it will find your site by itself.

This is where promoting your website is important. This involves many things, including the usual way people did things before the Internet: advertisements in the newspapers, word-of-mouth, etc. You might want to consider advertising on places like Yahoo! (which puts your ads on Yahoo!, AltaVista and CNN), Ask (which puts your ads on Ask, Excite, Match.com, Gifts.com, etc) or Google. As discussed in my article More Tips on Google Search Engine Results Placement, ads can be a quick way to get onto the first page of a search engine's results page.

There are also Less Obvious Ways of Promoting Your Website, which you might want to consider.

Conclusion ---

Naturally the above guide is not exhaustive. It is a distillation of some of the essential steps in getting started with your site. If you want more information, you should read the other articles on thesitewizard.com. However, the above tutorial should be enough to help you put your website on the Internet.

 

Very solid guide! I have toyed with creating a BJJ/MMA help website for a while, and this might just force me to do it!

I will try out the methods later, so I cannot comment on the vailidity of the guide, the only suggestion I can give to make this an even better guide is to add pictures for some of the more intricate/difficult steps of the process. I guess a SMALL thing you could add is make each category title in a different color, so it's easier to distinguish between the various phases of the guide.

Very nice guide, I might PM you later if I need any help. Great work!

 

Nice guide. Could use some pictures/colors. 8/10.

 

This guide is a direct copy from http://www.thesitewizard.com/gettingstarted/startwebsite.shtml

I suggest you remove this.
Plagurism is bad.

 

Great find!

On topic: It's obvious you copied even without this because of the failed links. Eg.

The words in Bold should be linked to article. Nice attempt, not.

 

It NEEDS pictures i cant focus on all that at once i need somthing to look at but 8/10 for effort!