Starting A Website From Scratch

If you are looking to start a website from scratch, then there are a few steps that you need to look into to get started the right away. The four steps to starting your website are to get a domain name, get hosting, point your domain name to your hosting, and install a content management system. Read on for instructions on how to do this at every step.

Getting a domain name

A domain name is what you type into your web browser to go to a certain website. You will need one of these when you first start out. The normal price of these is around $10 for an entire year. You can often find a coupon that will give you a domain name for an entire year for as little as a dollar. If you sign up with many of the hosting sites at http://hostingtavern.com, many give you a free domain when you register. This can help keep your costs low.

When picking out a domain name, it is important that you choose something that is very related to your business. If your business is about cats, then you should include that in your domain. You want potential visitors to know what your site is about before they even enter. If they have a good idea what it is about they will generally stay on your site longer as that was the content they are looking for.

You can also decide to pick out a name just because it is catchy. This is called creating a brand. An example of a brand is Google. It means nothing but over time they have made this phrase catchy and popular and now everyone knows what Google is. It has even become its own verb!

A final piece of advice on getting a domain name is to keep it short and sweet. It is not in your best interest to have a domain name that is very long. Search engines do not take kindly to that and people do not want to read a super long domain name. You should keep it short and to the point if you want to gain many visitors to your website.

Get a Hosting account

The next step when you get a domain name is getting a place to host your website. A webhost is a company that will provide you a server for a monthly fee. On this server is where your website will sit and be available to anyone on the internet. There are three main types of hosting that you may want to consider. Shared hosting is where you are sharing the server with many other websites. These are generally the best option for a beginner and are often extremely cheap in price. Think of companies such as HostGator and Bluehost that provide this server. The other kinds of hosting are virtual private servers, and dedicated servers. If you are thinking about either of these options, you probably have a lot of traffic to your sites. These options are a bit expensive but are a good option if you are running a big operation.

When you are looking for a webhost you need to evaluate them on a few criteria. HostingTavern does a good job at doing this and steps through each of the top web hosts and rates them based on a few criteria.

Speed: You want to see if the server you are going to be hosting your site on is fast. If it loads slowly, people will often get frustrated and give up on loading your site and move to the next one. This is a priority!

Up Time: Uptime is one of the biggest factors to consider when finding a place to get your website off the ground. If your site does not have close to 100% uptime, you could be losing out on visitors and money!

Usability: Is your server and control panel easy to you? If it is not easy to use, you might be wasting time. We all know time is money!

Guarantee: It is important that your webhost offer you a guarantee. If they do not, then they probably do not believe in their business. Most great hosting companies will give you your money back if you are not satisfied.

Support: If you are having a problem with your webhost, it is important that the company have people on staff to assist you. Live chat has become a norm in today’s web hosting industry so make sure that they have 24/7 live chat to help you solve any problems you may run across.

Point Domain to Hosting Account

The third step in the process of getting a website online is pointing your domain to your hosting account. This process connects the two and allows the site to connect to your domain. When someone types in the domain, it will connect to the site and they can see it online.

To connect your hosting and domain, you will need the name servers of your hosting account. To get these, log onto your control panel with the details that your web host emailed you. Once you have your log in details, log on and scroll around until you find nameservers. You will generally see two of them. Copy them down on a piece of paper or a word document. Then go over to the domain registrar that you registered with. I normally go with NameCheap as I love how they provide free WhoIs Guard. Log in there, select your domain name, and then enter in the custom name servers that you wrote down. That is all that is needed. It can take up to two hours for it to work, but the steps are very simple and easy to activate.

Install a CMS

The final step is to install a content management system. These include platforms such as WordPress, Joomla, or Drupal. I normally suggest to all my friends and clients that they install WordPress first because it is super simple to use and very intuitive.

Installing a content management system is actually super simple because of scripts that your webhost will provide for you. Most of them use QuickInstall or Fantastico. Log into your control panel and find the software section. You should see one of these two scripts. To install WordPress all you need to do is click the script, select WordPress, enter in your site information and click in install.

The process will take under five minutes in total. Once you are all installed, you just need to log into your WordPress. To do this, go to yourdomainname.com/wp-admin and enter in your username and password.

When you are all logged in, you can then start to add content and build your website, the most fun part of the entire process!

Conclusion

Congratulations on setting up your first website. It can be a very daunting task when you first start. I have been in this game for many years so it has become second nature for me. If you sit down and give yourself the chance to learn, these steps will become engrained in your memory as well.