Congratulations! You’ve decided to build your first website!
A website is your identity and brand on the Internet, so it’s important to make it just the way you want it.
If you’re worried about where to begin or intimidated by the complexities of web building, don’t be. We’ll walk you through the process of building your website in the clear and easy steps outlined below. You’ll learn the basic elements of a unique and impactful site for business or personal use.
Basics first
Building a website
All websites begin with three basic elements: a domain name, hosting, and a platform.
- Your address on the web. It’s the part that comes between “http://www.” and “.com”.
- Where all the data and information about your site is kept. If the domain is your street address, hosting is your house.
- The tools with which you make your website and the space in which it’s created.
Domain name
Domain basics
Every website needs a domain name. Your domain is like the street address for your house. It will allow people to find your website and link to your website.
But what should your domain name be? If you have a business, that should be an easy question to answer, since your website should match your business name. If you’re creating a personal site or blog, though, you can get a little more creative with your name.
I already have a domain name. I want to learn about hosting →
How to choose a domain name
A domain name will look something like http://www.yoursite.com. It’s common to use your organization or business name here. For example, if you own a bookstore, you might choose thebookstorename.com. The same format would work for pretty much any other business name.
If you don’t already have a business name, it’s a good idea to choose one based on what might be available as a domain. This is a great opportunity to match up your business and online identities from the start.
Curious to see if your ideal domain is available? Go ahead and type it in here: Domain Search
Web Hosting
Website hosting overview
Web hosting is an online service that makes your website’s content accessible on the internet. When you purchase a hosting plan, you are renting space on a physical server to store all the website’s files and data.
Web hosts provide the hosting technology and resources required for the effective and secure operation of your website. They are responsible for keeping the server up and running, implementing hosting security measures, and ensuring that data such as texts, photos, and other files are transferred successfully to the visitors’ browsers.
The server that hosts your website is a physical computer that runs continuously to make the site available for visitors all the time. Buying servers for web hosting will allow you to store all the data of your website in the servers of your provider.
Once a user enters your domain name into their browser’s address bar, the web host’s server will transfer all the files necessary to load your website.
You can host a website yourself, but it requires extensive technical skills. Self-hosting entails setting up and configuring a web server from scratch, including the equipment, infrastructure, hardware, and software. Furthermore, you will also have to handle all the ongoing maintenance.
A web hosting service provider ensures that your website performs optimally and with better security protocols. In addition, it simplifies the many complex aspects of hosting a website – from software installation to technical support.
With numerous web hosting options available, it can be challenging to determine which one is best for your website.
Most web hosts offer different hosting packages for different types of customers – from business website owners to personal blog creators.
Ideally, you should start with the simplest hosting solution. Once your site gets more traffic, you can upgrade to a more advanced plan. Feel free to check our hosting prices to get a general idea of the different types of hosting and their costs.
Let’s take a look at some of the most popular ones available.
Shared Hosting
With shared hosting, multiple users share the same server resources, including memory, processing power, and storage space.
Because of its simplicity and affordability, shared web hosting is an excellent solution for small businesses and personal websites that do not require advanced configuration or higher bandwidth. Hence, shared hosting is an excellent choice for beginners who need inexpensive hosting to start.
Pros:
- Cost-effective, ideal for small-scale websites
- Technical expertise is not required
- Pre-configured server options
- No need to take care of maintenance and server administration
Cons
- Minimal access to server configuration
- Increased traffic on other websites can affect your website’s speed
Virtual Private Server (VPS) Hosting
With this web hosting type, your website also shares a physical server with other users, but the web host creates a virtual partition for each user. Thus, a site hosted on a virtual private server get an allocated amount of resources.
VPS web hosting is a great option for medium-sized sites, eCommerce shops, and large blogs with a rapidly growing number of visitors.
Pros
- Dedicated server space
- Increased traffic on other websites has no impact on your site’s performance
- Root access to the server
- Highly customizable
Cons
- Users need technical expertise to manage VPS Hosting
- Even though it’s relatively affordable, some users may have to hire a developer to manage the virtual server, increasing the overall costs
Platform
Websites started out as a page of text written in HTML, but have evolved into more dynamic interactive websites. The more dynamic and interactive the more effective the website is for marketing, selling or promoting products and services. Visitors want to explore the content of attractive websites. The website platform will directly affect the presentation of the content. Interactive media, animation, and elegant looking themes will boost the appeal. We will now look at the available platforms and tools to build a website.
Starting with the right platform is important since everything moving forward will use this platform. Consider these before committing to a website builder.
What is the purpose of the website?
Business, e-commerce, blog, or personal website.
Will the website need to be updated with additional functionality?
Starting as a business website later an online store.
Regularly update content or the website theme.
There are many things to consider when starting a website project. A website builder or platform is one of the first things to decide. An easy drag and drop style website builder is available with features that vary in easy to use, all of them will require learning. Most web hosting companies offer a website builder to build a simple website quickly. The website builder option will be a good fit as long as the limitations of the website builder are not exceeded.
Website Builder
The website builder hosting option is a cost effective option when building your own website.
Pros:
- The website builder with hosting is inexpensive.
- Quickly build a functional website.
- Easy to update content.
- Good option for a small website.
Cons:
- Limited functionality
- Limited in website server resources
- Could be locked into one web hosting service provider
WordPress
Content management systems (CMS) provide a way to expand a website beyond the ability of a website builder. The WordPress platform is a CMS which is widely used and supported with plugins and themes. Web developers love WordPress because of its versitility from a blogging website to a full e-commerce website processing payments and tracking inventory of products. A WordPress website can be built by a web developer, while the content is updated by a beginner who may have never managed a website.
WordPress is completely customizable with plugins and themes to make the website look the way you want and do the things you need. Thousands of themes make it possible to build completely unique websites.
Let’s look at some benefits vs some drawbacks from using WordPress.
Pros:
- WordPress is widely used for all types of websites and support is readily available.
- Thousands of WordPress themes are available from many sources.
- Plugins provide additional functionality to WordPress not available with other website builder options.
- WordPress is free to install and use on any website.
- Web hosting for WordPress is inexpensive.
- WordPress websites can be moved between hosting service providers.
Cons:
- Requires learning WordPress to get things started.
- Themes and plugins will need to be installed.
- Themes and plugins may not be free, (but many have free options).
Other available platforms
Joomla is an award-winning content management system (CMS), which enables you to build Web sites and powerful online applications. Many aspects, including its ease-of-use and extensibility, have made Joomla the most popular Web site software available. Best of all, Joomla is an open source solution that is freely available to everyone.
Abante Cart is a free PHP based eCommerce solution for merchants to provide ability creating online business and sell products online quick and efficient. AbanteCart application is built and supported by experienced enthusiasts that are passionate about their work and contribution to rapidly evolving eCommerce industry. AbanteCart is more than just a shopping cart, it is rapidly growing eCommerce platform with many benefits.
Concrete CMS makes running a website easy. Go to any page in your site, and a editing toolbar gives you all the controls you need to update your website. No intimidating manuals, no complicated administration interfaces – just point and click.
Dolphin is the world’s most advanced community software. Open-source, independent, downloadable, scalable, customizable, full-featured, free software for building social networks, dating sites and web-communities. Loaded with video chat, recorder, video player, forums, groups, events, video messenger, mailbox, desktop app, video sharing, photo sharing, iPhone app and much more. Build your own business or advance your hobby with Dolphin!