This tutorial shows you how to make or create a website. It is intended for the beginner and layperson, taking you step by step through the whole process from the very beginning. It makes very few assumptions about what you know (other than the fact that you know how to surf the Internet, since you are already reading this article on the Internet). As some steps are more involved, this guide also links to selected relevant articles on thesitewizard.com that you will need to click through to read for more information.
The first thing you need to do before anything else is to get yourself a domain name. This is the name you want to give to your website. For example, the domain name of the website you are reading is "thesitewizard.com". To get a domain, you have to pay an annual fee to a registrar for the right to use that name. Obtaining a domain does not get you a website or anything like that. It's just a name. It's like registering a business name in the brick-and-mortar world; getting a company name does not magically grant you the shop premises to go with it.
You can find a detailed step-by-step guide to getting a domain name, and the things you need before registering, in How to Register a Domain Name.
If you haven't already decided on a domain name to buy, you may want to take a look at some Tips on Choosing a Good Domain Name. For those who find that their preferred domain is already taken, read Should I Use a Temporary Domain Name Till My Preferred Domain Becomes Available? so that you do not unnecessarily add obstaces to your own path.
It may also be wise to take a look at some of the Important Precautions to Take When Buying a Domain Name, just so that you don't commit the same mistakes that some newcomers make.
If you are tempted to skip this step altogether, read Is it Possible to Create a Website Without Buying a Domain Name?
Those who have more questions about domains may want to take a look at my list of frequently asked questions on domain names.
A web host is basically a company that has many computers connected to the Internet. When you place your web pages on their computers, everyone in the world will be able to connect to it and view them. You will need to sign up for an account with a web host so that your website has a home. If getting a domain name is analogous to getting a business name in the brick-and-mortar world, getting a web hosting account is comparable to renting office or shop premises for your business.
There are many issues involved in selecting a good web host. Read up on the things you need to look for in the article How to Choose a Web Host.
One factor that may influence your choice is the decision on whether to use SSL for your website. A site that uses SSL will have a web address starting with "https://" instead of "http://". In ancient times, webmasters typically only bothered to use it if they were selling goods and services and needed to collect credit card numbers, or if they had some sort of facility that required their visitors to log in with a password.
Nowadays, however, the whole of the Internet is slowly moving to a state where everything has SSL. As such, it is a good idea for new websites to use it from the very outset. This will allow you to avoid the hassle and risk involved in moving an existing website from HTTP to HTTPS, which you may find yourself doing in the future if you don't get it done at the beginning. For more information, please read the first few sections of that article, namely those explaining what SSL is (in greater detail), and the advantages and disadvantages of it.
In general, as far as I know, all commercial web hosts let you install SSL certificates for your site. The price varies, though, from company to company. Some give you a certificate for free. Others will install a free certificate for a one time charge. Some require you to buy a commercial certificate (which has a recurring charge). You may want to factor this when comparing the prices of the different web hosts.
When you have an idea of what to look for, go to the Budget Web Hosting page to look for a web host.
After you sign up for a web hosting account, you will need to point your domain name to that location. Information on how to do this can be found in the guide How to Point a Domain Name to Your Website (Or What to Do After Buying Your Domain Name).
Once you have settled your domain name and web host, the next step is to design the web site itself. In this article, I will assume that you will be doing this yourself. If you are hiring a web designer to do it for you, you can probably skip this step, since that person will handle it on your behalf.
Although there are many considerations in web design, as a beginner, your first step is to actually get something out onto the web. The fine-tuning can come after you have figured out how to publish a basic web page. One way is to use a WYSIWYG ("What You See Is What You Get") web editor to do it. Such editors allow you to design your site visually, without having to deal with the technical details. They work just like a normal wordprocessor.
There are a number of free and commercial web editors available. If you use Windows, one of the best around (free or otherwise) is Expression Web, developed by Microsoft. It was originally a commercial program, sold in shops and the like, but the company eventually made it available for free. It has a full complement of features as well as the spit and polish usually found only in commercial software. My Expression Web tutorial takes you through the steps of building a fully functional multi-page website that is mobile-friendly. By "mobile-friendly", I mean that your site will work well on both desktop/laptop computers and the smaller screens of mobile devices like phones and tablets. Information on how to obtain the editor can be found in the tutorial.
Another free editor, with versions for Windows, macOS, and Linux, is BlueGriffon. A guide on how to obtain and use this editor can be found in the BlueGriffon tutorial. Like the Expression Web guide, the tutorial shows you how to design a multi-page, mobile-friendly website with the software.
If none of the above suits you, you can find tutorials for other WYSIWYG web editors here, including one for Dreamweaver, a commercial web editor, and KompoZer, another free (though very outdated) web editor. There are also numerous other programs listed on thefreecountry.com's Free HTML Editors and WYSIWYG Web Editors page.
If designing a website using a web editor seems very daunting to you, another alternative is to create a blog, which is basically a website where you post articles using your browser alone (ie, no editor needed). If this appeals to you, see How to Create a Blog for details. Note that in spite of its name (which implies an online diary or journal), blogs can also be used for commercial websites where you sell things, so don't rule it out as an alternative.
As you design your website, you may want to read the article Appearance, Usability and Search Engine Visibility in Web Design. It takes a brief look at some of the real world issues that every web designer must deal with.
An integral part of web design is search engine readiness. Search engine promotion does not start after the web site is made. It starts at the web design stage. The article 6 Tips on How to Create a Search Engine Friendly Website is a must-read. Moreover, How to Improve Your Search Engine Ranking on Google is also important for the simple reason that Google is the most popular search engine around, at least at the time this page was written.
There are many other issues regarding the design of web pages. The above will get you started. However, if you have the time after you get something out onto the web, you may want to read my other articles on Web Design and Website Promotion and Search Engine Ranking.
Although I list this step separately, it should be done throughout your web design cycle. I put it here to give it a little more prominence, since too few new webmasters actually perform it adequately.
You will need to test your web pages as you design them in the major web browsers. These days, this means checking your site in Chrome or any of its derivatives, Firefox, as well as your mobile phone. The newest version of Microsoft Edge, released on 15 January 2020, also qualifies as a Chrome derivative, so if you have that, you can use it instead of installing Chrome. The desktop browsers (Firefox, Chrome and Edge) are all available free of charge.
Note that different brands of mobile phones do not actually have the same browser. Alas, unlike the desktop browsers, phones aren't normally free. As such, just test your site with whatever phone you happen to have. That said, if you have access to both an iPhone as well as an Android, check your site with both.
For those who have the time, you may also want to test using Internet Explorer 11, which is still in use by some people (such as those using Windows 8.1 and earlier). For those who don't have the required Windows version (for example, because you use a Mac or a later version of Windows), you can get a piece of software called a virtual machine, which mimics a completely separate computer running within your real computer. Microsoft provides packages containing both the required Windows version and different versions of Internet Explorer and Microsoft Edge, free of charge, which you can run in your virtual machine to test your site. If you are interested in doing this, read in the article How to Check Your Website with Multiple Browsers on a Single Machine for more details.
If you want to improve the chances that your website will work in future versions of all web browsers, consider validating the code for your web pages. In layman's language, this means that you should check that the underlying code of your web page, called "HTML" and "CSS", has no syntax errors. You don't actually need technical knowledge of HTML and CSS to validate the page, since you can use one of the numerous free web page validators around to do the hard work. On the other hand, if the validator tells you that your page has errors, it may sometimes be hard to figure out what's wrong (and whether the error is actually a serious one) if you don't have the requisite knowledge. Having said that, some validators actually make suggestions on how to fix the error.
If you are selling products or services, you will need some way to collect credit card information. If so, take a look at How to Accept Credit Cards on Your Website. I also have a step by step guide on How to Add an Order Form or a "Buy Now" button using PayPal to a Website for those using PayPal.
If you need advertisers for your website, you might want to read How to Make Money From Your Website and the follow-up article How to Increase Your Website Revenue from Affiliate Programs. A list of advertisers and affiliate programs can be found on Affiliate Programs: Free Sponsors and Advertisers. Those companies are on the constant lookout for new web publishers to display their advertisements.
When your site is ready, you can submit it to the search engines. To do this, you will need to create a webmaster account at both the search engines, verify that you own the website, and submit it there. It's free.
In general, if your site is already linked to from other websites, you may not even need to do the above. The search engines will probably find it themselves by following the links on those places.
Apart from submitting your site to the search engines, you will probably also want to promote it in other ways, such as by announcing it on your social media accounts, as well as the usual way people did things before the creation of the Internet: advertisements in the newspapers, word-of-mouth, etc. As mentioned in my article on More Tips on Google Search Engine Results Placement, you can also advertise in the various search engines. Although I only mentioned Google in that article, since that was the topic of that discussion, you can also advertise in other search engines like Bing. This has the potential of putting your advertisement near the top of the search engine results page, and possibly even on other websites.
There are also less obvious ways of promoting your website, which you might want to look into.
Naturally the above guide is not exhaustive. It is a distillation of some of the essential steps in getting started with your site. If you want more information, you should read the other articles on thesitewizard.com. However, the above tutorial should be enough to help you put your website on the Internet.
Copyright © 2006-2022 Christopher Heng. All rights reserved.
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How to Make / Create a Website: The Beginner's A-Z Guide
