How to Create a Website – The Basics

I'm Rajnish Jaiswal, a professional web designer.

I wrote this beginner's guide to help the large number of people who want to create a website (or blog), but have absolutely no idea of what to do.

In Website Setup Guide, I show you exactly how to set up a proper, normal website with a .com (or .ca, .uk or .au) domain name, from start to finish. You don't need to know anything about computers or websites, to follow this guide and make a website of your own.

Creating a website and running it this way will cost you about $3-4 per month in total. The information in this site is all free.

Since 2009, Website Setup Guide has helped more than three million people around the world set up successful websites and blogs. Most major web design sites now follow the format and recommendations of this site, and an entire industry of sites based on Website Setup Guide has appeared. However, this site remains the simplest and best place to go to set up your first website.

It's easy to create a website by following this guide, but if you ever get stuck, you can email me, and I'll be happy to help.

How to start a website – An overview

Take note of this overview. It's important.

To create a website, you only need to do these two things:

• Sign up for website hosting, and choose a domain name (i.e. something.com).
• Create your website.

In steps two and three of this site, I will explain how web hosting works, and how to create a website. Step 4 (Extra Information) provides lots of general information related to setting up a website. Step 5 (Start Making Your site)covers all the actual instructions you need to follow, to set up your site

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Designing a Website or Blog – How it Works

WordPress

WordPress is the system I recommend you use to design and manage your site (or blog). It's a very popular completely-online system that lets you easily build a professional-looking website/blog without any technical know-how.
There is no additional cost to use WordPress.
Once you've signed up for web hosting, setting up WordPress on FatCow's web hosting is very easy. Full instructions are in Step 5 (Start Making Your Site).

Overview of WordPress

In WordPress, all you need to do is type in the text of your pages, and (if you like) add some pictures. WordPress will create the pages, apply your site's layout to them, and add a link to each one from the menu bar. If your site is a blog, you can easily make new posts. WordPress will add them to the top of the blog page for you, and manage visitor comments (if you allow comments.)

In WordPress, you don't design a layout. You just choose one. You can't edit these layouts, but you can very easily change major features, like the background colour and header picture. This makes things very easy.

WordPress operates from the Internet, through your browser. Because of this, it works on any computer (PC, Mac, etc) or device (smart phones, iPhone, iPad etc.) with Internet access. If you can browse the Internet, you can use WordPress.

What a WordPress Website Looks Like

This is a screenshot of a typical WordPress website, using the default graphical theme. It's very simple and professional.
You can very easily choose a much fancier theme if you like, and change themes at any time. There are thousands of themes to choose from.

Click here to see/hide more themes

    

How WordPress Works

This is a screenshot of WordPress's Control Panel. You get here by clicking a little "log in" link that will be on your site, and then typing in a password.
Everything in WordPress is done from this Control Panel. At the left is a list of all the settings you can change, and things you can do. It's all very simple.

Next step: More Information

You've now read through the important steps of making a website. However, there are lots more important things you probably want to know about, before you start work on your site.

Domain Name & Web Hosting

What is a domain name?

A domain name is the Internet address of a website or blog. (For example, websitesetupguide.com is the domain name of this site.) You'll need to choose a domain name.
If you already have a domain name, that's fine. I'll tell you how to use that.

Some domain name advice

• Your domain name should be simple, obvious, and as short as possible.
• Domain names are unique. You can only register a domain name that no one else has taken. Most good, short names were taken years ago. If the name you want is taken, try adding a descriptive word to the end. For example, foresttrail.com will definitely be taken, but foresttrailtales.com probably won't be. The same goes for greengoose.com. Try greengoosecatering.com instead.

What is web hosting?

Web hosting is where your website (or blog) actually sits, on a computer, in a building somewhere, when you put it on the Internet. It doesn't matter where in the world you're located, or where your web hosting is located.
Web hosting is the only thing you have to pay for, to set up a website. Everything else can be done for free.
Cost: $3-4 per month.

My recommendation for web hosting

Choosing a web hosting provider is not easy. There's a huge number of very similar web hosts out there, and 99% of the information about them is bogus. Feel free to do your own research into web hosting, but I think you'll find it mind-boggling.

Whether they say so or not, all sites that recommend web hosting receive payment from the web hosting company, for the promotion of their product. Because of this, the Internet is littered with sites that promote any and every web host, regardless of the quality of those hosts. Typically, the person making the recommendation has no knowledge of the host. This makes it extremely difficult for a novice to find accurate information about web hosting.

Readers of this guide typically just want me to recommend a web host to them, so I only recommend one host – FatCow. It's the host I use myself. It's simple, reliable, and much cheaper than most alternatives. I also believe in doing business ethically, so I like to be upfront about the fact that this site is supported by commissions from some of the products, including web hosting, that it recommends.

FatCow gives a free domain name (normally $15-20 a year), and also gives visitors to this site a 65% discount off their prices. Signing up with FatCow takes about ten minutes. (This is fully explained in Step 5 – Start Making Your Site, but here's a link to their site, if you want to visit them now.) If you use FatCow, I can tell you exactly what to do, to set up your website or blog.

(Disclaimer: Website Setup Guide receives compensation for some of the products it recommends.)

Next step: Creating a website (or blog)

Now that you know what a domain name and web hosting are, the next step is to learn how you actually make your site/blog.