Build Your Own Website

One of the services I offer is building you a website.  Letting me get your site started may save you alot of headaches.  I am generally very inexpensive, and would love to help you, but for those of you who want to try your hand at it alone, I provide this tutorial.  If you find it helpful, please consider supporting me.

Step one is to obtain the domain name (also called the web address or URL) that you would like for your website.  Example: nayjevin.com.

There are many places where you can register a domain name, including Moniker.com.  Many hosting providers include one as part of the cost of the hosting contract (more on this in step 2).  If you already have hosting, you may be able to register your domain for a reasonable price through your host.  It should be about US$10-15 per year.

In some cases, it may be advisable to register your domain name outside of your hosting company.

“My personal preference is to register the name directly with a domain name registrar rather than through my web host. I’ve heard stories, in the past, of less-than-reputable web hosts that registered the domain under their own name, making them the owner of the domain rather than you (although I don’t know if such web hosts still exist today). Registering with a domain name registrar allows me to make sure that I am registered as the owner, the administrative and technical contacts.” Source: TheSiteWizard.com

Most major webhosts should be safe from this type of unscrupulous behavior, but buyer beware.  Also see some tips on picking a website url and other great information from The Site Wizard.

Once you have a Registration Service Provider, that provider will show up in a WhoIs search for your domain.  WhoIs results are public information about any web domain, sort of like a searchable yellow pages for the Internet.  Try a WHOIS search for google.com (or whatever you’d like) to see what I mean.

More tips on domains:

- Choose your URL extension.  .com is generally for business, but doesn’t have to be.  .org is generally for non profit, but doesn’t have to be.  .net, .info, and .tv are widely used, but to a lesser extent.  .biz may look ’scammy’ to many Internet users.  In most cases, you only need to choose one, but be aware that someone else could buy yourdomain.net (or others), come up higher in search engine results, and fool folks into thinking they are you.  This is not at all common for new websites, but happens to celebrities and popular businesses altogether too often.

- Even if you know you won’t be ready to build your website for quite sometime, it may be worth a few bucks a year to make sure your choice of address is still available when you are.

- Search engines use the words in your address to determine what your page is about, and a more descriptive address can put you higher on the list, getting you more visitors (traffic).  Choose a domain name that fits what you will have on your site.  For instance, mystuff.com is not as good as sellingbooks.com, as far as search engines (and marketing) go.

- As soon as you purchase your domain, consider securing that name for major networks you may use to market it in the future.  For instance, get FaceBook.com/yourname, twitter.com/yourname, yourname@gmail.com, myspace.com/yourname, digg.com/yourname, etc.  In addition to reserving the accounts for future use, this can help keep others from having sites that come up high on search engines when people are looking specifically for you.

Step two is to get a hosting plan. When someone types in your website in their computer, the browser goes out onto the internet to find the text, pictures, etc that make up your website. A hosting plan is a place to put those files, on ’servers’ that will serve it out to the world.

The following are honest recommendations for major webhosts.  In the interest of full disclosure, you should know the links are affiliate links*, meaning I get paid if you sign up through them.  It doesn’t cost you extra though, so I’d appreciate the referral.

* There are many hosts I could sell, these are the ones I honestly choose – based on experience, price, quality and/or reputability, not size of commission.

JustHost – has a very low monthly cost, with a 1 year minimum signup.  You get a free domain name for life, which means you don’t have to pay the $10-15 a year to keep the address ‘yourwebsite.com’, it’s included in the monthly cost.  With JustHost, you can host unlimited domains too – if it turns out you want several websites.  You have to buy the extra domain addresses, but you don’t have to pay an additional monthly charge.  I use JustHost, and customer service leaves something to be desired (all too common these days), but I feel I get what I pay for.

HostGator – HostGator’s basic package is $8.95/month if you pay by the month, or $4.95/month if you pay 3 years up front.  I have not personally used HostGator, but have a friend who just switched to them.  From what I can tell in my research they are reputable and reliable.

These two hosts provide the necessary options for the vast majority of needs a new webmaster will have, but be sure and ask the support desk of your potential host before you sign up whether they support the software you will be using.  Here are the hosts WordPress.org recommends.  The links to hosts you find there are affiliate links that will pay WordPress.org if you use them (a good cause in my estimation).

More things to look for in a web hosting plan:

- WordPress support.  WordPress is a wonderfully simple way to build a website, but not all hosts have built in support.

- Fantastico built in.  Fantastico is an automatic software installer which makes installing various open source tools, such as wikis, shopping carts, and WordPress very easy.

- cPanel web control panel.  cPanel is a visual interface that automates many of the functions of building and maintaining a website.  I find this essential in maintaining and operating my website.  For instance, instead of learning Apache and Unix programming, I get to click little buttons to make system changes.  Most hosts have either cPanel or their own proprietary control panel.

* Even if your host does not have the above tools built in, you can install them manually

Other important things to consider in a hosting plan:

- Customer support.  Before you buy, try contacting support and see how well they treat you.

- Bandwidth/infrastructure.  If you plan to have lots of visitors to your site, (thousands per day) and/or are serving videos or other high-resource content, you may need an upgraded plan for a dedicated server, as opposed to a shared server.

- Size of company.  Smaller web hosts and cheaper plans are generally less likely to keep your site up and running smoothly.  Though I’m all about supporting the little guy, this is a case where going with a larger company may be advisable.  The majority of hosts have an ‘uptime guarantee’, which is a percentage of the time your site is guaranteed to be accessible to the world (up).  99.9% is common.

- Reputability.  Google your webhost and do some research before buying.  Be aware that unscrupulous competitors will often publish fake bad reviews of each other’s hosting plans (this is not unique to the webhosting industry).  Sometimes it is necessary to look deeper than the first few results.  Also, some purported ‘webhosting review’ sites will highly rate those companies which pay them the most for referring you.  Look into reputable reviews from respected technology review sites.

- Choose wisely the first time.  It can be a pain to switch web hosting companies down the road.  Your site could be down while you switch, and it’s a bit technical to transfer all of your files.  Consider your price range and needs before you buy, and do alot of reading and research.

- Who do others use?  Do a WHOIS search on websites you trust and respect to see what hosting provider they have chosen.

Step 3 is to begin building your website.  There are many tools for learning how to do so.  Your web host likely has information in support.  Other great resources include forums and good ol’ Google.

For most websites, I highly recommend WordPress.  It is blogging software that makes it easy to build a blog or website – you don’t need to be a programmer.  It is extremely flexible and allows plugins for shopping carts, Google Analytics, and much much more.  WordPress sites do not have to look like a blog.  It’s what I use for this site, and will work well and result in an easily maintaned solution for a huge variety of needs.

These days, I don’t recommend learning HTML, CSS, Java etc from scratch to build a website.  There are so many tools out there to build great websites without having to do so.  But it is still helpful to know the basics, and there is much you can do to modify an existing ‘template’ site if you have a solid understanding.  The best resource I know for learning web design coding is W3Schools.

More considerations when building your website:

- FTP software.  File Transfer Protocol is a way to add files (upload) to your site.  FTP software is a program you run from your computer to upload files to your site.  For instance, you open a program like FileZilla from your desktop.  On one side you will see a directory browser for your computer, on the other you will see a directory tree for your website.  If you have a file called ‘index.html’ on your desktop, drag it over to your website directory.  Now anyone who types in your web address will see whatever you have in ‘index.html’!  Also use FTP software to upload images, videos, WordPress, or whatever content or software you want to show the world from your website.

Hopefully, this tutorial has provided a good starting point for you to enter the wonderful world of owning your own website.  If you get stuck, you can always contact me.  If this seems a bit too intense, maybe it’s best if you let me get your site to the point it’s easy to maintain.  Don’t be scared — have fun!