How to Create a Website; The Do-it-Yourself Way

So you have a product, service or information that you feelthe whole world should know about. But you aren't quite sure how totell them? Fortunately, for you it's the 21st century and we have theinternet.

By using this short article as a reference we will have you creating your own website in a matter of hours.

Thefirst thing you will need is a website. There are many options forgetting a website, some expensive and some are even free. Depending onwhether you are selling a product, service or providing informationwill determine which option you should choose. Personally, I recommendthat if you intend on making any profit from your website that you hirea web design company or (often far cheaper) a web design freelancer. Ifyou just want to share some information online then you will be finedoing the design yourself.

If you are on a tight budget, thenyou may wish to use the do-it-yourself methods described below insteadof hiring a web design company. However, once you do make any profityou should invest the money into a professionally created web sitedesign.

Methods for creating a website

If you areunfamiliar with HTML, you will have to use either an online websitecreator or what is called a WYSIWYG (What you see is what you get)editor. The former option is available with almost all online hostingcompanies so I won't go too much into detail on them. However, I dorecommend SiteStudio as one of the best in this category. SiteStudio isavailable through nearly every web hosting company that uses H-Sphere.H-Sphere is a full featured web hosting control panel (I will gofurther in detail in the choosing a web hosting company section).

Macromedia Dreamweaver MX

Thelater option will give you a lot more flexibility; however it will costsome money. The flexibility that you will get will far outweigh thecost in some of the software packages listed below. Some of the largestbenefits include the ability to easily modify your website, have aunique web-site tailored to your design requirements, you created it!,and if you do a good job there really isn't a need for hiring a webdesigner at a later date to redo your website.

Here are some of the most popular WYSIWYG editors:

- Macromedia Dreamweaver MX
- Adobe GoLive CS

- Microsoft Frontpage

Irecommend that you avoid Microsoft Frontpage, while it is easy to useand fairly popular, it isn't standards compliant. If you are going tolearn how to create a website you should learn how to do it right.

Choosing a domain name

Oneof the hardest things you will have to decide, yet almost moreimportant than any of the others is choosing a domain name. A domainname is what people will type in the address bar of their browser toget to your website. For example, google.com, yahoo.com, amazon.com,and ebay.com are all domain names. If you will be selling a product,service or if the site is business related try to stick to a .com or.net top level domain (tld) extension.

When choosing a hostingcompany avoid choosing a company that offers free domain registrationwith hosting (or do not accept the free domain registration) becausewhat they often don't tell you is that you can't transfer the domain toanother hosting company or even that the next years fee due will be ahefty one.

Domains are typically renewed yearly and the pricingranges from around $8.00 to $35.00 each year. The cheaper domainservices typically don't offer as many features as the more expensiveones.

I recommend the following companies for domain registration:

- Register.com - Expensive, but a well featured control panel.
- GoDaddy.com - Cheap, yet full featured.
- Enom.com - Also a cheaper alternative.

Irecommend that you avoid Network Solutions, while they are large andhave a big budget they are often criticized for doing shady things.

Choosing a web hosting company

Nowdays hosting has become a commodity item. There are literally tens ofthousands of hosting companies, most offering exactly the same featuresand most of them perfectly fine for your new website.

Whenchoosing a hosting company you should try to compare features, notnecessarily price. The end result is to have a website online with yourproduct, service or information for everyone to see right? Often thecheaper hosting companies lack the redundancy required to ensure thatyour website is available 24/7. If this is a business venture you donot want to miss any potential customer due to the dreaded 404 errorpage. However, if you are just going to be providing information youcould choose a cheaper host as you don't intend on making a profit.

Some of the features you should consider when comparing hosting companies are:

- Disk Space - This is the physical amount of space that the host allocates to you for the files that you upload to the server.
-Bandwidth - Bandwidth is the amount of space that you have available totransfer files from your website to another end-user of your websitescomputer.
- Windows, Linux or BSD? - While a user of Windows XP maythink it is preferable to use a windows host, in actuality it reallydoesn't matter. In-fact a hosting company that uses windows as ahosting platform sacrifices themselves a little bit on reliability.Choose a Linux or BSD hosting provider, they are typically much morereliable and often cheaper too.
- Email accounts - If you're onlineyou probably already know what an email account is, make sure you getsome with your hosting account.
- Control Panel - Make sure thatthey offer a control panel. CPanel and H-Sphere are both popular oneswith hosting companies. H-Sphere hosts will typically be more reliablebecause it distributes your website to various application specificservers. Cpanel hosts typically have everything on one server, so ifyour websites down your email is too.
- Finally, if you chose to usean online website creator above for cost or usability reasons; makesure that the host has an online website creator.

Avoid hostingcompanies who offer unlimited in any of the above categories. Irecommend and personally use MegaHosters.

If you build it, they will not come - how to promote your new site

Oneof the biggest errors many people make is the thought that all you haveto do is build a website and people will come. This is completely wrongand if you follow this thought it won't be long before you give up onyour new website.

You have to promote it, then promote it some more and once you think your done doing it twice over, promote it again.

Thinkof it like this, a website is like a business placed a half-mile offthe freeway, while you may occasionally get visitors (2-3 times monthfrom type-in traffic) you will never be successful unless you can moveyour business closer to the freeway, promotion does this. Every timeyou promote your business you move it a few feet closer to the freeway.

Sincethere are literally dozens of ways to promote your new website I willnot go in detail on them here, but I will provide a brief list of someof the more common methods.

- Pay-Per-Click (PPC) advertising - a very quick way to get targeted visitors from search engines to your website.
-Forums - Forums are a place that you can go and write with other peopleabout various subjects. Chose one similar to your website andparticipate often. Make sure not to directly post about your site; butif you provide good information in your posts people will visit yourwebsite. (How will people know what your website is if you don't tellthem about it? Put a link and a short descriptive text in what iscalled a signature).
- Search Engines - submit your site to searchengines (Manually, one at a time. Never use the submission tools thatsubmit your site to dozens, or even hundreds of search engines. Searchengines forbid automated submission tools and may even ban you fromtheir index - very bad.).
- If you're a business put your websiteaddress (or URL) on everything that anyone can see (e.g. your car,letters, email signatures, business cards, invoices, packaging,clothing, etc.).
- Reciprocal links - find other website that wouldcompliment yours and offer them a link on your website in exchange forone on theirs.
- If you have employees, hold a contest with them to see who can get your website address shown in the most prominent place.

Avoid the following when trying to promote your site as they will never help (never).

- FFA - Free for all link exchanges
-Spamming in any form - Sending unsolicited emails, posting unrelatedmessages about your business in forums, Usenet, or in IRC.

Inclosing, this overview of how to create a website leaves out manyimportant details to consider; primarily on the different promotionalmethods and on some additional alternatives for each of the sections.However, it was intended to only address the essential portions ofcreating a website.

This article should have helped you tocreate a website, buy a domain name and promote the website, all ofwhich are essential to the success of your website.

Remember youhave to promote your website, then promote it some more and once youthink your done doing it twice over, promote it again. It is the onlysure-fire way to ensure that your website isn't like many of the othermillions of websites that are closed each year because of lack ofvisitors/sales.

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