Starting Your Own Website in ONE DAY!

If you are starting a small business, such as online web marketing or an offline business; or have joined a volunteer organization or club, and would like to create a new website for your business or club, here are some suggestions. You can, of course, pay a webmaster to put a website up for you, at a cost. But, you can save your resources for other priorities and build the website yourself with relative ease.

The nice part is that you can do this in a day (or less), or at most, a couple of days depending on your level of computer knowledge and experience. You can also do this at very little cost. You do not have to be a computer wizard at all. Even with basic computer knowledge, it is not that difficult to build your website.

Following is a step-by-step summary of creating your own website:

1. Establish the purpose of your site and decide what basic content you want on your site.

2. Choose a name (domain name) for your site.

3. Register the name of your website (your domain) on the world wide web. To do this, you will need to use a Registrar where you purchase (register) your name, giving you exclusive rights to that name on the world wide web. Use Google to find a Registrar - I registered with GoDaddy (cost of $10.56 CAD per year).

4. Host your website with a hosting company. “Google” free hosting companies on the web. I would suggest searching several companies before signing on. Find out what they offer…are there any hidden fees, can you add additional domains, is there a cost to adding additional domains? If you want to use a larger, well known hosting company, and can afford to spend a little money, this might be where you want to pay for hosting. You may get better ongoing service and perhaps get a little more reliability. GoDaddy offers hosting for $6.99/month USD. Another solid recommendation is HostGator.

5. If you use two separate companies for registering and hosting your domain, you will need to “inform” your Registrar which hosting company you are using. This is very easy to do, and is referred to as changing name server.

6. Find a web template that you like. Search Google for free web templates.

7. Find a free web editor using Google and download. I use Kompozer, which is popular, reliable and very user friendly.

8. Using the template you have selected and downloaded, enter the content you wish to have on your template using the web editor you downloaded in step 7 above.

9. Upload your site to the world wide web using File Transfer Protocol (FTP) software. I use Filezilla to upload my site to the internet (again - free and very user friendly).

…your done!

Sounds complicated? Believe me…it isn’t. The language at first causes one to feel “information overload”, but once you go through it step by step, you will find that it is not all that difficult nor complicated.

You will not only have a website for your business, organization, or club on the internet, but you will have a real sense of accomplishment and pride in creating and achieving something that you thought you never could.

Good Luck!!