How to Make a Website – A Step-by-Step Guide

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Gone are the days when creating a website needs to be technical, timely and meticulous. Fear no more. Here, I’ll lay out a straightforward step-by-step guide on how to create a website with no specialized knowledge or skill on coding and design needed. It’s now for everybody. It may even be your first time. 

Let’s break down the process into four.

1. As a springboard, first familiarize yourself with the three terms: 

  • Domain name 
  • Web-hosting service 
  • Content Management System (CMS)

What is a domain name? 

  • Your domain name is like www.websitename.com. It’s your website’s address that you find or type on the search bar.  

What is a web-hosting service? 

  • A web hosting service is a platform that allows you to store your files. It is the place on the cloud that where you land when you type a domain in the search bar. It’s where your house is built on. 

What is a Content Management System? 

  • It is a software that makes it easy for you to put your content into the internet and organize them without coding or programming skills required. 

You can imagine that building a website is like building a house. 

  • The domain name is the address. 
  • The web-hosting service is your lot area. 
  • The CMS is the house itself. 

2. Be creative in coming up with an easy-to-remember domain name. 

Your domain name identifies your website and your brand. It’s what you publicize and tell people to go to. Through it, people are able to access your brand’s online presence. So, it’s only reasonable that you put in a lot of thought into it. It’s your brand’s representative. While being creative is a must, it will tremendously be rewarding that it is relevant to the image and identity that you are projecting. It doesn’t need to be outlandish.

A few things to keep in mind for an effective domain name: 

  • It is recommended that it’s short. One to three words that capture a well-defined thought is excellent. 
  • It needs to stand out and speak directly about your niche. Be bold enough to include a keyword in it. It’s not only friendly to your audience, but it’s also beneficial as well for your online presence. In doing so, search engines can know what your website is about. 
  • Stick with the basic and easily relatable to your brand because you do not want it to mislead. The idea is it needs to be easy to type. 
  • Be particular about website extensions. With that, we mean to say, pay careful attention to: .com, .org, .net, .etc. In most instances, you will want to stick with .com because it sounds more credible. Most popular websites have that, so you might as well jump on the bandwagon. 
  • Last, but most importantly, it needs to be available or at least for sale. What good is it, if someone has got dibs on it? The next thing that you’re wondering about is how to check for its availability. To address that with a short answer, you should be able to check it on where you’re buying it. For that, there’s also a different variety of options. It doesn’t need to be hard to look for it because some paid web-hosting services already offer a free domain. 

3. Sign up for a web-hosting service

Okay, so you’ve got your domain name in mind now. The next stop is scouring for a paid web-hosting service to house your website and its contents. This is another aspect you don’t want to neglect. It may be hard at first to decide on this because many options linger around. The competition is pretty tight in this area. If you stick with me for a few minutes, below are the factors you need to consider. 

  • Security

Security holds the highest place when considering a host. It should be second to none. Remember that your web host houses your files. The hosting service should be able to guard your content. It needs to be fortified with firewalls that block any suspicious and unusual activities.

On top of that, an SSL certificate needs to be present as well. It is a feature that encrypts the pathway that information travels from the server to the user’s browser. It prevents any content leakage or hacking. Most website hosts already offer that. Nonetheless, there might still be a good number that doesn’t have that feature yet. 

  • Speed and support

To supplement the security are speed and support. The speed is for the user experience while the support is to answer to the website owner’s troubleshooting needs. No visitor will ever want to wait a few seconds for a page whose only contents are texts filled with few images. It needs to be instant. Moreover, search engines might find it annoying or even buggy, which can potentially harm your site’s credibility in the long haul. 

  • Paid vs. free web-hosting services

If there’s an option that paying a premium can be avoided, that’s where we will go. Give it a second thought, though. While there are free hosting services, they hamper your website’s full potential. They do not give as much flexibility as paid services offer you. 

Take, for example, website extensions. You can have a web hosting for free, but that doesn’t mean you will be completely off-the-hook.  

4. Install a CMS

Content Management System – from what the name says about itself – is a software that puts everything together when it comes to managing, maintaining, storing and modifying your contents online. It’s the one that bridges you from the back-end to the front-end. It is a platform that allows you to work on the back-end. It transforms your materials from what you can see that your audience cannot respond to what is displayed on the front-end. It makes content production a whole lot easier. You can think of it as a Microsoft Powerpoint. It permits you to work on your raw content, arrange them, and make them visually ready for your audience to see. 

The final thought

Do not let what you’re not familiar with intimidate you. In this age, everything is designed to be fast, efficient, and friendly to all. Those days that the internet belongs only to tech guys have long gone past. It’s more accessible than ever.