Starting your own website tutorial
So you want to start your own website, huh? Starting your own site is a fun, exciting, confusing, and frustrating endeavor all wrapped in one. This site will show you how to start or create your own website and help make the whole process a very easy one for you. Starting your own site should not be very difficult IF YOU KNOW THE RIGHT PROCESS. Most of my frustrations came from the fact that I was going down the wrong path – the goal of this site is to save you from making the same mistakes I did.
Follow this tutorial for step by step instructions on how to make your own site. There are also plenty of links to other relevent articles on SiteForStarters. Good luck!
HOW TO START YOUR OWN WEBSITE TUTORIAL
Let’s get right into the most important question right now:
WHERE DO YOU START?
1. GET YOUR DOMAIN NAME
The very first thing to do is to get your domain name. Your domain is really nothing more than the name you will give your site. In my case, the domain name of the first site I created was “philsbaseball.com.” You can register your name through sites like GoDaddy and you will pay a fee in the range of $10 per site per year. Although it is one of the simplest steps in this entire process, there are a few things to think about.
First, read the Introduction to domain names article for general information on domain names.
Information on choosing a domain name can be found in the article, How to choose a good domain name.
Once you decide on a name, you can find a step-by-step guide on how to register your own domain name.
Finally, you might want to read Important warnings about buying a domain name so you can avoid making some beginner’s mistakes.
2. CHOOSE A WEBHOST
Once you have created your site to your liking, you need to choose a webhost to get it out on the web. There are many commercial and free web hosts to choose from. If you are serious about your site, you probably should look at the commercial sites, because I think you get what you pay for with web hosts. The cheapest commercial hosts I found were as low as $5 per month and up to $100 or more for the really top end versions. Generally speaking, for a new site you should be spending 5 to 20 dollars per month. I paid around $10 for my first host, FutureQuest, and am paying $6 for my current host, HotDrupal. There are certain things you need to be looking for in choosing your host and you can find those options in the How to choose a web host tutorial.
3. DECIDE WHAT TYPE OF SITE YOU NEED
At this point in the process, you may not know exactly what direction your site will take you, but it is important to decide what type of site you need and how you plan to create it. Listed below are three different options you can use to create your site.
Use a Blog host
If you are planning on creating a simple blog site, you may want to simply choose from many blog services that make it a breeze to set up your site quickly and easily. There are many free services to choose from that you can find in the Free blog hosts article. Or, pick from others who charge a fee such as TypePad (starting at $4.95/month) and SquareSpace (starting at $8/month). When I started a blog, I chose to use Blogger and all I needed to do was sign up, decide on a name, and I was up and running. It is very easy to do and requires no technical knowledge whatsoever. It doesn’t give you much flexibility to change the look and setup, but if you don’t want to spend many hours designing your site, this is the way to go.
Use a CMS (Content Management System)
USING THIS OPTION COULD BE THE BEST DECISION YOU MAKE. Maybe I am just revealing my ignorance, but I thought that in order to create a website, you needed to use a program like Dreamweaver to create your site on your own, from scratch. That does not necessarily need to be the case. CMS (Content Management System) programs are software packages that allow you to create and maintain websites easily. Similar to blog services, they take care of all of the complicated “back-end” stuff so that all you need to do is plug-in your information and modify the site to your liking. Most of these packages are free and require very little technical knowledge. If you don’t want to get heavily involved in the design and coding involved with your site and these packages suit your needs, these can save you hours of time. You can find a list of CMS programs in the Free Content Management System (CMS) article. I have also created detailed reviews of two programs in the Review of WordPress and Review of Drupal articles.Design your own siteIf you decide not to choose either of the above options and decide to create one yourself, you can use a web editor. More information on that in the next section.
4. DECIDE HOW TO DESIGN YOUR WEB PAGES
Now that you have picked a domain name, a web host, and decided on your type of site, it is time to actually design the web pages!
- When designing yourself, your best bet is to use a WYSIWYG (What You See Is What You Get) web editor to do it. There are many commercial and free web editors around.
- If you are willing to spend a little (OK, a lot) of money, the most popular and probably the best WYSIWYG web editor is Dreamweaver (which is what I used), which you can purchase for around $400 dollars. Yes, that is a lot of money to spend, but with how complex it can be, it is probably worth it.
- But Dreamweaver is not the only one. There are plenty of other free web editors you can use. You can find a list of several possiblities along with my comments in the article, Free web editors and site builders.
- You are almost ready to get started, but don’t rush into is just yet. There are a few things you need to think of BEFORE you start designing. My first suggestion is that you read the article Important web design considerations. It will help you realize that the way your site looks is only a small part of creating a quality site.
If you decide to use Dreamweaver, please read the following article: Starting a Site with Dreamweaver
5. DECIDE WHERE TO TEST YOUR SITE
When deciding where to test the pages of your site, you really have two options: test on your local computer (the computer you are using) or test on your webhost’s server. Another option is to use another computer on a local network, but that process is much the same as with using your local computer.
First, the word server has a very broad meaning, so before we move forward let’s look at what everything means. The specific meaning of a server is a computer that stores files (like web pages) and “serves” them to other computers, known as clients. This is the basic process that happens every time you visit a web page. Think about what happens when you visit a web page: Sitting at home, your computer (the client) requests a web page (the file), and the server computer “serves” you that page.
If you test through your webhost, you will use their server. When you test locally, your computer acts as the client and the server, so in a sense you are “serving” the web pages (files) to yourself. Therefore, when I refer to testing locally, it also means using your local computer as the server.
When people refer to a server, they are including all of the software that helps process everything to “serve” the files. In the previous example, the “server” computer is known as the file server, since it is used to physically serve the files. However, to allow this to happen there also needs to be a web server (like Apache), and if a site uses a database (which you will with Drupal) there needs to be database server (like MySQL), and sometimes other programs need to be used (like in our case PHP).
How to decide where to test
Now, let’s examine the differences. When you decide to test on your local computer, you basically will create the pages on your computer first without anyone seeing them, and when you are ready you will upload/transfer your pages to your webhost to make them live on the internet. When you test on your webhost’s server, anything you create will be immediately seen on the internet.
Points to consider
Any pages you create and changes you make will go straight to the web if you test through your webhost’s server, and if you are not comfortable with that you probably want to set up locally.
If you have a dialup internet connection, it will be much faster to test locally first and not have to wait for each page to load. If you have a high speed internet connection, the webhost’s server is probably a little slower but not enough to matter.
Setting up locally will not be affected by any disruptions to your internet connection.
If you decide to set up locally, you will not need to pay your webhost fee while you are testing.
Although it is not very difficult to set up a local test environment, it is a little more complex to test locally.
If you decide to test through your host’s server, you will obviously need to choose a webhost right away, but if you test locally, you can wait until your site is ready to go.
Drupal users: I felt that setting up Drupal directly through my webhost was MUCH easier than setting it up locally. Drupal.org strongly suggests that you test locally, but I would suggest that you do it through your webhost if you are using Drupal. For specific instructions on setting up Drupal on either your local computer or through your host, see the article Starting a site with Drupal. There is no need to read the two articles referenced below if you will be using Drupal. *The local computer section is not available yet, but it should be by the end of the week at the latest.
If you decide to test through your webhost, read step 4 of this section and then read the article Testing on webhost’s server. *This article has not been created yet, but it should be by the end of the week at the latest.
If you decide to test locally, skip step 4 for now and read the article, Creating local test server. *This article has not been created yet, but it should be by the end of the week at the latest. The article on installing Apache has been created and is available, and articles on installing PHP, MySQL, phpMyAdmin, and Filezilla.
6. TEST YOUR WEB SITE IN THE DIFFERENT BROWSERS
Something you may not consider when starting a web site is that your web pages display differently in each of the web browsers. You should therefore test your web pages in all of the major browsers: Internet Explorer 6, 7, and 8, and the newest versions of Safari, Firefox, and Opera. The good news is all of these browsers are free to download and install. However, Internet Explorer can be a bit of a problem because the newer version will overwrite the earlier one. In order to do check all of the versions, you should read the article Checking your website with multiple browsers on a single computer.
Since web browsers are constantly updating, you will want to help ensure that your website will work in future versions. You can do that by validating the code of your web pages. More information can be found on that in the How to validate your web page article. You can also find a number of web page validators in the List of HTML, CSS, and link validators.
7. GETTING YOUR SITE NOTICED
Now that you have your site ready, it is time to have people see it! At this point, you will want to submit your site to the search engines like Yahoo!, Bing, Alta Vista, Lycos, and especially Google. Click here for a huge list of search engines. Most of these search engines make it pretty easy to submit your web site, so I won’t go into detail with that.
To submit your site to Google, go to www.google.com and click the “About Google” link towards the bottom of the page. Then look for the “For Site Owners” section and click the “Submit your content to Google” link. Then in the “Web” section, click “Add your URL.” Now you just need to add your full URL address and any comments that describe your site if you want, and that’s it.
For the most part, this step does not matter that much. Google will probably find your site when they crawl the internet anyway. And just because you submitted your site does not guarantee they will add it to their index. At this point, you need to focus on creating good content and getting other sites to link to yours. Getting those links is one of the big keys to getting your web site noticed. Even if Google adds you to their index, you aren’t likely to be highly ranked without any links to your site.
It is at this point that promoting your website is important. Networking and using “word of mouth” is one way to promote your site. Another option is to consider advertising on places like Google, Yahoo!, and Ask. You might also want to learn more about How to Improve your Google search engine ranking to help get yourself to the top of Google’s list.
Those aren’t the only ways, however. You can also use Other creative ways to promote your website.
8. AND FINALLY…MAKING MONEY WITH YOUR WEBSITE
For many of you, this is the part you have been waiting for. Let me tell you right away that you should not expect to make big bucks right away (and there’s a good chance you will barely make any money at all. But it can be done. First you should read How to make money with your website to get started and Making money with your website using affiliate programs. You can also find a list of advertisers and affiliate programs at Free affiliate programs and advertisers for your website.
If you plan to sell anything through your website, you will need a way to accept money. For information on that, read Accepting credit cards on your website. You can also find an article on Placing an order form on your website using PayPal.
GOOD LUCK
There is a lot involved in running your own website, and this tutorial barely even touches the surface. But it should help you get your site up and running on the internet. For more information, there are plenty of other articles to help you along the way on SiteForStarters. And don’t hesitate to ask any questions using the “Contact Us” form. Enjoy yourself, and GOOD LUCK!
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