How to make a website | Website basics

Here on how to make a website, we have a lot of articles, tutorials and website creation tips. If you are planning to create your very first website, then the following website basics will help you.

There are a lot of links to click on so read and check out all the links to get a good grasp of how to make a website, step by step.

Before we start building anything, we should have a plan of action or a blueprint in place. The following is what you will need to make a website.

Condensed steps of how to make a website

1. Register a domain name
2. Choose a web hosting company
3. Create your website
4. Upload / FTP to hosting server
5. Promote your website

Complete steps of how to make a website

A website starts with a idea. Let's start of by asking a couple of realistic questions.

• Why do I want to create a website?
• What are my interests and hobbies?
• What type of website do I want to create?
• What is the purpose of my website?
• Who is my target audience?
• Do I have a budget?
• ..........

read more about - conceptualization and how to make a website

After the conceptualization phase comes the planning phase. Before you build anything you will need to have a plan of action in place.

Question that will be addressed in this phase include:

• What is my budget?
• Where is my site going to be hosted?
• Goal setting
• ..........

read more about - website planning

A domain name is like buying real estate with a physical address. The only difference is that the address is virtual property.

Now you have a couple of choices:

1. Register your own Domain Name e.g. www.seono1.co.za
2. Get a free subdomain on somebody else's domain www.seono1.co.za/yoursitename

It would be better to register your own domain name, because there are benefits of having your own one.

register a domain name here

read more about - registering a domain name

Your website will need to be hosted on a server somewhere. So all your HTML pages, images etc. will be located on a server.

You have the option of hosting your website(s) yourself or by utilizing a website hosting company to host it for you.

Then you have choices:

• Pay for your website hosting
• Free website hosting

I would recommend that you pay for your hosting, because there are benefits by doing it this way.

read more about - website hosting

Website layout is basically the way your site is going to look on the page. Will it have banner, navigation, footer etc. and where on the page will it be.

Where is your data and articles going to be on the page?

read more about - website layout

HTML - Stands for - HyperText Markup Language

Basically it is a programming language that are used to make WebPages.

Now you've got a couple of choices:

• Hire a programmer to do it for you
• Learn HTML and do it yourself
• Buy a ready made website

If you decide to do the coding yourself then you can you use one of the following programs:

• Notepad (Ms Windows)
• MS FrontPage
• Dreamweaver

read more about - html tutorials

As the old age saying goes "Content is King!". Depending on what type of website you are creating. If you decide to create a blog, forum, information website etc. then you will need quality articles.

Ways of getting quality articles:

• Hire a copywriter to write articles for your website
• Write articles yourself
• Use free articles from e-zine websites

read more about - writing articles (copywriting)

SEO - Search Engine Optimization

Basically if you apply SEO to your WebPages then you will make it search engine friendly.

SEO can help your website to rank higher in search engines for your respective keywords.

read more about - SEO (search engine optimization)

You've created your website and now you decide to make some business to cover costs of your website.

There numerous ways of making money on line. I'm just going to mention a few in this brief introduction.

• Google Adsense program - Earn money when people click on advertising on your website
• Clickbank - Become an affiliate and promote other peoples products on your website
• Amazon astore - Have your own e-commerce store promoting Amazon products and earn a commission.

read more about - how to make money online

You've finished your website and monetized it. The next step will be to upload the code to your hosting server.

You will use FTP software to upload your site to the server.

read more about - how to upload (ftp) a website to a server

How are people going to find your website?

You can submit your website to be indexed to various search engines and directories.

Some of the most popular search engines are:

• www.google.com
• www.yahoo.com
• www.live.com

Some of the most popular directories are:

• www.dmoz.org
• Yahoo Directory

read more about - how to submit a website to search engines and directories

So you have finished your website and uploaded it to your hosting server. Now what?

The next step will be to further promote your website. There are lots of ways to promote your website.

I will mention a few of them below:

• Word of mouth
• Newsletters
• Viral Marketing
• Writing articles and submitting it free to e-zines to distribute to webmasters to publish on their sites
• Pay for exposure on high traffic websites
• ..........

Next | how to promote a website