A Step-by-Step Guide to Making an Interesting Website

This guide will help you learn to make a website. It is a step-by-step article that takes you through the main process of creating a website from the beginning till the end.

Step 1: Choosing the Best Website Building Platform

Before you start worrying about domain names, content type or color schemes, you have to decide the type of website building platform you are going to use to build your website. Until 2004, most websites were built using CSS, Flash or HTML codes. It required one to learn and master these markup languages of describing web documents. It required one to master coding language and design skills, and this took a lot of time to do so. Creating a website is no longer a hassle. There are several content management systems (CMS) that have made the art of creating a website easier than a bunch of loose markup languages. Some of the top CMS platforms include WordPress, Joomla and Drupal. These systems are totally FREE with a plethora of layouts to choose from. They are extremely beginner-friendly with a huge support community.

Step 2: Getting a Domain Name

After selecting your preferred website building platform, the second step is to register a domain name. To own a domain name, you have to pay an annual fee to your registrar. There are several unscrupulous domain name registrars out there that you need to avoid. These registrars are known for front running and bad domain registrars scams. Only register your domain name at the reputable registrars. Acquiring a domain name does not mean that you have a website. It is like registering a business name in the brick-and-mortar world. After registering a business name, it does not mean that you have a premise to conduct your business. You will need to follow other steps in this guide.

Step 3: Choosing A Web Hosting Company

The next step is to select a web hosting company and sign up for an account. Getting a web hosting is like renting a shop premises to conduct your business. There are many issues involved when choosing the best web hosting company. You will need to choose one that goes with your budget. After creating your web host account, you will need to point your domain name to your web host account. You will need to find the list of name servers used by your web hosting company. The name servers will be something like ns1.yourdomainname.com. Enter these name servers into your registrar’s system.

Step 4: Designing your Website

Once you have obtained a domain name and pointed it to your registrar’s system, the next step is to design your website. You can design it by yourself or hire a web designer to do it for you. If you want to do design it by yourself but you don’t have the required skills, this is where website building platforms come in. These platforms have hundreds of free customizable, mobile-friendly themes that you can upload to create your website with ease.

WordPress is the most preferred site-building platform that many people use to design and manage their sites. It is a popular CMS (content management system) that allow beginners to easily build a professional-looking website without prior design skills and technical know-how. One thing about WordPress is that there are costs of downloading and installing it. It is completely free.

Step 5: Improve Your Sites Usability And Appearance

An interesting website is the one with improved usability, functionality and appearance. When it comes to making a site have an interesting look, there is a broad range of factors that will influence the overall results. For example, if you used WordPress website building platform, factors such as the number of images used, how well the website was cached, how well the theme was written and the types of widgets and plugins loaded will determine if your site is interesting or not.

If you want to use widgets and plugins, there are several options that you can choose to customize your website to improve its usability, functionality and appearance.

Step 6: Testing Your Website

This process does not stand on its own. Testing a website should be done throughout the web design process. You will need to test your website in major web browsers such as Firefox, Chrome, Internet Explorer, Safari and many others. Testing your website directly is the only way you can be sure it is found by search engines. There are several articles on how to test a website on various browsers. If you want to make sure that your website will work well in all future Internet browsers, it is recommended you validate web page codes.

Step 7: Getting Your Site Noticed

Once you have designed your site and tested it on various browsers, it is time to submit it to various search engines such as Bing, Yahoo or Google for indexing. If your website is linked to by other sites, there is no need to submit it search engines for indexing. Top search engines will follow those links, find your site and index it.

Besides submitting your website to search engines, you can also decide to promote it using other avenues such as advertising on forums or discussion sites. Advertisement using Google Adsense, Yahoo or Bing is a sure way of putting your site on the first page of search engines. Also, there is a broad range of companies out there that you can hire to help you get your site noticed by your visitors.

Step 8: Collecting Credit Card Information

If you are building an e-commerce website, you will need to look for a way to process a payment. Collecting credit card information requires you to comply with PCI requirements. This involves signing an agreement to uphold the Payment Card Industry Data Security Standards. You can choose a secure company to collects credit card information on behalf of your business. A good company uses secure payment hardware and software that makes it harder for hackers to get other people’s credit card information.

Conclusion

As you can see, this tutorial is not exhaustive. It features only some of the essential steps that can help you learn to make a website. If you are searching for detailed info on how to create a website, you can also read other articles on this site.