Websites are a must-have for anyone these days that has a specific talent, interest, or product to share. Websites have many benefits including a global market, which you can’t get by advertising a service with banners around your neighborhood. Websites also have a very low startup cost (less than 100 dollars) which includes hosting for up to two years. The only thing holding people back from becoming part of the resources and markets on the web is that they don’t know how or what is involved with making a website.
This article explains the basics behind making a full website. For free alternatives such as blogs from Wordpress or Blogger click here.
People often associate websites with being complicated and needing to know some type of weird programming language to make the actual site. Quite the opposite in fact. There are three major components of a website:
1. Domain name: You notice the url (or the words in the box at the top of your web browser) right? In this case the url should be http://anythingtech.net/tutorials/create_website. The domain name is simply the first part that ends with .com, .org, etc. The domain name for this site is then anythingtech.net. You cannot have a website without a domain name, so this is the first decision in making a website. What should the domain name be? Make it catchy and incorporating words that apply to the content of your site will help give your site better rankings when searched for.
-Note, avoid buying the domain name until you have decided who the hosting will be done by. It is often much easier to buy the domain with the hosting company since the domain will start working almost automatically (within 24 hours) and domains often may not transfer well to a new hosting company. Stay on the safe side and just hold off on this step.
2. Hosting company: This may be the most confusing part. Who should I have to host the site? Hosting the site means that you upload your website content to them and it is stored on one of their servers which “hosts” or runs the website. One alternative to paid hosting is to make your own web server, this can be done with almost any computer as long as they meet some fairly basic requirements. For more information on this check out this site. Other than hosting your own site, the options can seem overwhelming. In reality there are expensive bad hosts, and inexpensive good hosts. Try Googling “Top Rated Web Hosts” or “Web Host Reviews”, for some additional advice. A couple factors to look for are uptime, MySQL support, and every host should have e-mail accounts standard. Emailing someone who owns a site through a gmail or yahoo e-mail just doesn’t seem professional.
I may be biased but one of my favorite hosting companies is hostmonster. They are fairly cheap (down to 5 dollars a month), have all the features anyone needs, you have the ability to host unlimited domains from the account, and they are overall a very good company to deal with. So if you are unsure of who to go with, hostmonster is always a good bet. GoDaddy is overrated, their service isn’t all that great, its more expensive and lacks many features that are considered “standard” in a hosting package.
3. Creating the webpage: The most respected name in web-design programs has to be Adobe Dreamweaver. The program is very intuitive, comes with a lot of support, and can customize a webpage in almost any way imaginable. Dreamweaver does require at least some basic HTML knowledge though as some of the site may have to be done by hand. However, for a simple site with a background, links, and text almost no HTML knowledge is needed. Dreamweaver also comes at quite a price though which can add to your website start-up costs. Believe me though, if you know how to use HTML, CSS, and Javascript Dreamweaver works beautifully. There are of course the free web-design programs that came with your hosting package. For someone that doesn’t really need a super nice looking website and just needs the basics this might work out. However, there is a much better free alternative. It is similar to Wordpress but is more customizable, and it has a huge community backing it. Its called Drupal. For example, this site is run with Drupal, and it works out great. For an article on this site about Drupal click here. Whatever program you choose make sure it fits your needs, and additional programs and advice can be found on Google.
The final part to having a website is putting the content on the host server to be shown on the internet. To do this you need a FTP Program. A good list of programs can be found here. Macintosh users should check out Fetch. You have the option to buy it, but try it first to make sure you like it and I guarantee you’ll love it. Check with your host for specific connections settings, but all an FTP program does is transfer files. The folder containing your website will be uploaded to the server and from there your website is online!
