This is a step-by-step guide to creating your own website. There is a
lot of information to cover here but I’ll try to make it as simple and
information-rich as possible.
Before starting, you should know your total cost for the first year will be around $55
1) Choose a domain name
A domain name is the URL or web address on which you run your site, eg. highexistence.com. There are a few key things to consider when choosing a domain name:
a) Search Engine Optimization (SEO)
You’re going to start hearing this term a lot — it is the process of
making your website more likely to be found on search engines like
Google, Yahoo and Bing. For domain names, it is smart to include a
keyword that people might search to find your site. For example if your
site is about waffle recipes, a domain like JordansWaffleRecipes.com would be good for SEO.
b) Simplicity
At the same time, you should also make your domain name as short and
catchy as possible. Depending on the type of site you are starting, it
might be more beneficial to forget about including keywords in order to
make the domain name more simple. It doesn’t even have to be a real
word eg. Twitter, Vimeo, Posterous. Continuing with the waffle site example, a good domain name might be Wahfulls.com.
c) Meaning - Try to choose a name that I visitor can
look at and instantly know what your site is about. This isn’t
necessary because you could just as easily put an explanation at the top
of your site, but it would be helpful.
Domain names are registered for anywhere from $2-30 per year. I
always use GoDaddy.com for my domain names because it is the cheapest at
$11.99 for a .com domain (different extensions like .net or .biz are
cheaper than .com)
2) Purchase a Hosting Account
The job of a hosting company is to store your website content on
their servers and makes sure it is constantly available for download.
They also do a lot of complicated things you do NOT want to do yourself
that I won’t go into. Just know that you cannot do your own hosting
unless you have very advanced knowledge.
There are different kinds of hosting for different sized sites, but for your first site a shared hosting
account will work just fine. It is called a shared account because you
share the server bandwidth with other accounts based on moment-to-moment
needs. You can easily upgrade to a faster, dedicated account later when
your site attracts more traffic. This will run you $8-15 per month and
most cheap providers will ask you to buy a year of service upfront.
I have tried Bluehost, HostGator and GoDaddy and absolutely hated all of them. My sites were down all the time and their customer service wasn’t too great either.
My favorite hosting provider is VMStorm,
which is what HighExistence runs on currently. They have
extraordinarily cheap plans at $8.97 per month, and do not make you pay
for a year in advance like the previously mentioned hosts. That price
includes full managed service, meaning they will help you out with any
server issues you run into. Note: I do not receive any kickbacks if signing up with VMStorm, they just rock!
3) Get to Know Your cPanel
When you log into your hosting account, it should take you to your cPanel automatically.
This is the back end of your hosting account where you can create email
addresses, change settings, manage domain names, create new FTP users,
etc. It looks really complex right now but I promise it will become easy
soon enough.
3) Download the Necessary Applications
You need 1 or 2 different applications to start a website depending on what you want to do.
1) File-Transfer-Protocol (FTP) + Code Editor Program
This is an absolute must because it allows you to edit and transfer
files to and from the hosting server your just purchased. They are very
easy to use once you get it to connect to your server. If you’re having
trouble setting it up, contact your hosting provider.
a) Coda (Mac only) –
by far the best app out there but will run you $99 (unless you use a
little site called PirateBay to get it for less, wink wink).
b) Aptana Studio 2 (Mac/Windows/Linux) – a free application that does almost everything Coda does. It’s a little less polished but it will definitely get the job done.
2) Digital Design Program (optional)
If you would like to design elements like the logo for your website yourself, you need one of these fun applications.
a) Adobe Photoshop and/or Adobe Illustrator–
the industry standard for digital design. Illustrator is more targeted
at designing things from scratch as opposed to photo editing, but
Photoshop will have everything you need. Every single graphic and most
of the images you see on this website has been created in Photoshop.
Both of these apps cost $199 BUT Adobe also offers a 30-day free trial,
no credit card required.
b) InkScape –
the free alternative to Adobe Illustrator. I have no used this program
but it looks to have everything you would need to design a logo.
3) Download the Necessary Applications
You need 1 or 2 different applications to start a website depending on what you want to do.
1) File-Transfer-Protocol (FTP) + Code Editor Program
This is an absolute must because it allows you to edit and transfer
files to and from the hosting server your just purchased. They are very
easy to use once you get it to connect to your server. If you’re having
trouble setting it up, contact your hosting provider.
a) Coda (Mac only) –
by far the best app out there but will run you $99 (unless you use a
little site called PirateBay to get it for less, wink wink).
b) Aptana Studio 2 (Mac/Windows/Linux) – a free application that does almost everything Coda does. It’s a little less polished but it will definitely get the job done.
2) Digital Design Program (optional)
If you would like to design elements like the logo for your website yourself, you need one of these fun applications.
a) Adobe Photoshop and/or Adobe Illustrator–
the industry standard for digital design. Illustrator is more targeted
at designing things from scratch as opposed to photo editing, but
Photoshop will have everything you need. Every single graphic and most
of the images you see on this website has been created in Photoshop.
Both of these apps cost $199 BUT Adobe also offers a 30-day free trial,
no credit card required.
b) InkScape –
the free alternative to Adobe Illustrator. I have no used this program
but it looks to have
everything you would need to design a logo.
5) Pick a Design
WordPress, Drupal and Joomla all work with themes, or templates that
dictate how your site will look. There are literally thousands upon
thousands of themes on the internet for you to choose from.
If you’re tight on cash, there are plenty of free, beautiful themes.
However if you have an extra $20, it’s definitely worth it to buy a
premium theme. The advantage is premium themes usually come with a whole
bunch of custom settings that make them more customizable than free
themes. Some premium themes even come with free support so you can go in
and ask the developers how to change certain things.
Premium: ThemeForest | WooThemes | StudioPress
6) Choose a monetization model
If part of your goal in creating the site is money, you should start
thinking early on how you want to go about generating income. There are 5
basic revenue models for you to choose from:
a) Advertisements
Depending on the ad service you use, you will get paid a certain amount
per 1000 impressions/pageviews (CPM) or per click (CPC). CPM rates can
vary from 10 cents to $25 or more while CPC can vary from 1 cent to
multiple dollars. It seriously depends on the quality of the ad network
you use.
Options: Google Adsense | BuySellAds | Chitika | Kontera
b) ProductsYou can also sell your own products online such as an eBook, CD or
your brand of energy drink. Digital products are the best to shoot for
because you don’t have to stock inventory, ship items or deal with
returns. Here are a few e-commerce options to choose from:
WordPress Ecommerce Plugin - A free plugin for setting up an online store if you went the WordPress route
Network Solutions Ecommerce Shopping Cart - an all-in-one domain, hosting and ecommerce solution for any sized online store
c) Affiliate Products
Don’t have your own product idea? Just sell someone else’s and get a share of the profit! Sites like Clickbank make
it easy to find other people’s products to sell on your website. You
simply place affiliate links that have your unique affiliate ID and if
anyone clicks on them and purchases the product, money is immediately in
your account.
d) Premium Membership
Some sites offer extra content or privileges to users if they purchase a
premium membership. For example, Amazon.com offers a ‘Prime’ membership
for $60 per year that gives members free 2-day shipping on any
purchase. Another example would be a site that only shows normal members
half of their blog posts/forums/pictures and charges $5/month to see
everything.
7) Learn some code
I swear coding for websites is not as hard as it sounds. HTML is the
most simple coding language out there and CSS can’t even be considered a
language. Here’s a quick example:
<p style=”color:blue; font-size: 20px;”> Hello everyone! </p>
<p> stands for paragraph. As you can probably guess, that
paragraph would be colored blue and have size 30 font. Of course it’s
not all that simple but I wanted to show you that it’s not beyond your
capacity to learn.
Learning HTML and CSS will give you the ability to make your website
look however you want without paying someone $50/hour to make the
changes for you. It is well worth your time and it’s fun too, I promise
:)
Check out the tutorials over at Tizag.com in
this order: HTML –> CSS –> PHP –> Javascript (the last two
aren’t necessary unless you want to get into creating custom
functionality in addition to design)
8) “…but I have more questions!”
Google is now your
best friend. If you have ANY question about anything, just Google and
you will most likely find some forum where someone has asked the exact
same question.I learned everything I know about websites through Google.
No books, no class, no teachers or webinars… just Google.
If you can’t find the answer anywhere, create an account on StackOverflow.com and ask the experts. You will get an answer back within minutes.
If all else fails or it’s a very general question, do feel free to ask in the comments section below.
Happy Web Designing!!!
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