The essential step by step guide on how to set up a website
This tutorial shows you how to make or create a website. It is intended for the beginner and layperson, taking you step by step through the whole process from the very beginning. It makes very few assumptions about what you know (other than the fact that you know how to surf the Internet, since you're already reading this article on the Internet). As some steps are more involved, this guide also links to selected relevant articles on thesitewizard.com that you will need to click through to read for more information.
The Essential Step-by-Step Guide to Making Your Own Website
1.Get Your Domain Name
The first thing you need to do before anything else is to get yourself a domain name. This is the name you want to give to your website. For example, the domain name of the website you're reading is "thesitewizard.com". To get a domain name, you have to pay an annual fee to a registrar for the right to use that name. Getting a name does not get you a website or anything like that. It's just a name. It's sort of like registering a business name in the brick-and-mortar world; having that business name does not mean that you also have the shop premises to go with it.
2.Choose a Web Host and Sign Up for an Account
A web host is basically a company that has many computers connected to the Internet. When you place your web pages on their computers, everyone in the world will be able to connect to it and view them. You will need to sign up for an account with a web host so that your website has a home. If getting a domain name is analogous to getting a business name in the brick-and-mortar world, getting a web hosting account is comparable to renting office or shop premises for your business.
3.Designing your Web Pages
Once you have settled your domain name and web host, the next step is to design the web site itself. In this article, I will assume that you will be doing this yourself. If you are hiring a web designer to do it for you, you can probably skip this step, since that person will handle it on your behalf.
Although there are many considerations in web design, as a beginner, your first step is to actually get something out onto the web. The fine-tuning can come after you've figured out how to publish a basic web page. One way is to use a WYSIWYG ("What You See Is What You Get") web editor to do it. Such editors allow you to design your site visually, without having to muck around with the technical details. They work just like a normal wordprocessor.
4.Testing Your Website
Although I list this step separately, this should be done throughout your web design cycle. I list it separately to give it a little more prominence, since too few new webmasters actually perform this step adequately.
You will need to test your web pages as you design them in the major browsers: the latest versions of Internet Explorer (version 9 at the time of this writing), Firefox, Opera, Safari and Chrome. All these browsers can be obtained free of charge, so it should be no hardship to get them. Unfortunately, directly testing your site in all these browsers is the only way you can really be sure that it works the way you want it to on your visitors' machines.
5.Collecting Credit Card Information, Making Money
If you are selling products or services, you will need some way to collect credit card information.
6.Getting Your Site Noticed
When your site is ready, you will need to submit it to search engines like Google and Bing. You can use the links below to do this.
ON BING http://www.bing.com/toolbox/submit-site-url
ON GOOGLE https://accounts.google.com/ServiceLogin?service=sitemaps&passive=1209600&continue=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.google.com%2Fwebmasters%2Ftools%2Fsubmit-url%3Fcontinue%3D%2Faddurl&followup=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.google.com%2Fwebmasters%2Ftools%2Fsubmit-url%3Fcontinue%3D%2Faddurl&authuser=0
Conclusion
Naturally the above guide is not exhaustive. It is a distillation of some of the essential steps in getting started with your site.
This tutorial shows you how to make or create a website. It is intended for the beginner and layperson, taking you step by step through the whole process from the very beginning. It makes very few assumptions about what you know (other than the fact that you know how to surf the Internet, since you're already reading this article on the Internet). As some steps are more involved, this guide also links to selected relevant articles on thesitewizard.com that you will need to click through to read for more information.
The Essential Step-by-Step Guide to Making Your Own Website
1.Get Your Domain Name
The first thing you need to do before anything else is to get yourself a domain name. This is the name you want to give to your website. For example, the domain name of the website you're reading is "thesitewizard.com". To get a domain name, you have to pay an annual fee to a registrar for the right to use that name. Getting a name does not get you a website or anything like that. It's just a name. It's sort of like registering a business name in the brick-and-mortar world; having that business name does not mean that you also have the shop premises to go with it.
2.Choose a Web Host and Sign Up for an Account
A web host is basically a company that has many computers connected to the Internet. When you place your web pages on their computers, everyone in the world will be able to connect to it and view them. You will need to sign up for an account with a web host so that your website has a home. If getting a domain name is analogous to getting a business name in the brick-and-mortar world, getting a web hosting account is comparable to renting office or shop premises for your business.
3.Designing your Web Pages
Once you have settled your domain name and web host, the next step is to design the web site itself. In this article, I will assume that you will be doing this yourself. If you are hiring a web designer to do it for you, you can probably skip this step, since that person will handle it on your behalf.
Although there are many considerations in web design, as a beginner, your first step is to actually get something out onto the web. The fine-tuning can come after you've figured out how to publish a basic web page. One way is to use a WYSIWYG ("What You See Is What You Get") web editor to do it. Such editors allow you to design your site visually, without having to muck around with the technical details. They work just like a normal wordprocessor.
4.Testing Your Website
Although I list this step separately, this should be done throughout your web design cycle. I list it separately to give it a little more prominence, since too few new webmasters actually perform this step adequately.
You will need to test your web pages as you design them in the major browsers: the latest versions of Internet Explorer (version 9 at the time of this writing), Firefox, Opera, Safari and Chrome. All these browsers can be obtained free of charge, so it should be no hardship to get them. Unfortunately, directly testing your site in all these browsers is the only way you can really be sure that it works the way you want it to on your visitors' machines.
5.Collecting Credit Card Information, Making Money
If you are selling products or services, you will need some way to collect credit card information.
6.Getting Your Site Noticed
When your site is ready, you will need to submit it to search engines like Google and Bing. You can use the links below to do this.
ON BING http://www.bing.com/toolbox/submit-site-url
ON GOOGLE https://accounts.google.com/ServiceLogin?service=sitemaps&passive=1209600&continue=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.google.com%2Fwebmasters%2Ftools%2Fsubmit-url%3Fcontinue%3D%2Faddurl&followup=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.google.com%2Fwebmasters%2Ftools%2Fsubmit-url%3Fcontinue%3D%2Faddurl&authuser=0
Conclusion
Naturally the above guide is not exhaustive. It is a distillation of some of the essential steps in getting started with your site.
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