So, you have wandered down the path of free blogging services and are now ready to take it to the next level. Your very own website. The great news is that there are many options to getting your own website up and running. The simplest is to save your time and pay someone else to do all of it. The next best step is to do it all yourself and save yourself some money. Either way, you will be on the path to having your very own website up and running in no time! Below I will list the steps needed to have a great website with little cost, provided you are willing to do it all yourself. If it’s too much for you – contact me.
Step 1 – Getting Your Domain Name
Choose a unique domain name for your business. If you have a product, it should be productname.com. If you are a photographer, you can either have yourname.com or yournamephotography.com. Once you have chosen a cool name you need to see if it is available. I would head to here (in this example Hostmonster.com is our website hosting company). Once there, click on DOMAIN CHECK, type in your domain and see if it’s available by clicking NEXT. If not, go back and try other alternatives until you find one that is available (try to avoid dashes and hyphens in your domain name e.g. www.johns-photography.com – Keep it as simple as possible).
Next, fill in all your account details and passwords. Also, you will want the Domain Privacy (in this case it’s free!) and choose your website plan. What plan you choose will be billed upfront year by year. So if you choose 12 months @ $5.95 you will be charged $71.40 in total. This will also include the domain name and setup fee.
Step 2 – Installing Wordpress
After you have got into the back-end of Hostmonster.com (using your domain name and password) you should see a screen with lots of little icons. For now, we are going to jump straight into installing Wordpress which will be the basis on which our website is displayed.
Click on the Wordpress icon (it will redirect to Simple Scripts), then click on INSTALL, Choose a name for your blog, Username to log into Wordpress and Password to log into Wordpress. This username and password will be used often to add new posts, pages and change your website so remember it! Then click Automatically create a new database and click I have read the terms and conditions. Then COMPLETE. You should receive log in details once it has installed Wordpress onto your domain – again, write these down for future use.
If installed correctly, you can access your website by going to yourdomainname.com and to access the log in area just add /wp-admin (which stands for Wordpress Admin) to the domain name. So it should read like this: www.yourdomainname.com/wp-admin. Then you can use your Username for Wordpress and Password for Wordpress (see image above) to log in.
Step 3 – Creating Your Website
So, you have signed up a domain name and have installed Wordpress. If you wanted to, you could get started right away using the standard template that wordpress shoots out. But, we are going to download a free template and make our website look sexy. Keep in mind that Wordpress can be a basic blogging platform or a very detailed and fully functioning website due to the plugins and modifications available. So, for that reason I am not going to go into depth of how to modify templates and plugins etc instead just brush over them.
When you log into your admin area (in the above image I am logged in to mine) you will be confronted with lots of info. Do not worry, there are only a few things that you need to worry about at this stage. The RED arrow points to the shortcut menu, which is handy if you just want to create a post or upload an image really quick. The GREEN arrow points to the Sidebar, in particular the Posts section. This is where you can add and edit posts. There is also much more on the sidebar, but for now lets focus on the BLUE arrow. The Blue arrow points to Appearance, where you can change the look of your website. Click on Add New Themes and follow the prompts to install a theme of your choosing or upload one you have downloaded. As there are many paths you can take, and the prompts along the way are quite well done, I will leave you to figure out how to add themes.
Step 4 – Themes, Plugins and Modifications
There are many free Wordpress themes available on the Internet, and also paid ones. You shouldn’t have to pay for Wordpress themes unless there is an amazing one that isn’t replicated as a free theme (just like Pay TV).
Once you have the new theme installed, check your website in a new tab or window (much easier than reloading the admin area each time).
From this point on, you have a fully functioning website ready for posting, images and anything else you can throw at it. Due to the sheer amount of Wordpress themes, plugins and modifications available on the Internet today, you shouldn’t have a problem keeping busy when updating and changing your website!
A few things you might want to remember when setting up your website:
- Keep the domain name as simple as possible (avoiding hyphens and dashes).
- Take note of the username/passwords you use for your hosting account (I recommend Hostmonster.com) and also the username/passwords you use for Wordpress.
- You don’t have to use Wordpress if you don’t want to. I just find it extremely useful, fun and simple to use for any type of website.
- Get familiar with the words ‘post’, ‘page’, ‘tags’, ‘dashboard’, ‘columns’, ‘hosting’ and ‘domain’ and learn what they all are.
- Take notice of websites you like the design of and use those ideas as a design template for your website.
- Favicons. Learn what they are and why you need one.
- Use Google for any questions you have while designing your website. He is a helpful fellow.
- If the above is too much work for you or too confusing, call a professional who can design a fully functional website for you.
