Written by In the next few articles I am going to outline the basic steps that you need to understand on how to build a web site.
These steps include,
- Finding a domain name.
- Registering Your Domain name
- Finding a hosting company.
- Creating your web pages.
- Setting up a merchant account.
If any of this sounds Greek to you, don’t worry I am going to run through each step in detail which you will begin to see is fairly straight forward.
1) Finding A Domain Name
Just to be clear your domain name is what everyone will use to find you on the internet. The domain name of this site your reading now is www.nick-squires.com . You will want a name that reflects whatever your trying to achieve. If its a business to advertise then a domain name with something relevant will obviously be good. Eg: If your a painter then you could choose www. bestpainter.com. Or if your a designer then you may want www. Bestdesigner.com. The problem we have here sadly is names like these have already gone and probably a long time ago.If you do come up with a name and it has gone then you are able to find out who owns such names and then make them an offer.
A couple of companies that will help do this are.
- Afternic www.afternic.com
- Buy Domains www.buydomains.com
Otherwise what you need to do is be more creative.In fact along the whole process of how to build a website, be as creative as you choose. In the example above we could add a name to it so it would look like www. bestpainterjohn.com or www. bestpainter-john.com.I think you get the picture ( no pun intended). Get the juices flowing and see what comes up.
Remember you don’t have to stick with a .com ending. There are many others available that greatly increase your chances of securing your perfect domain name such as,
- .net
- .info
- .org
- .uk
- .us
I would suggest .com if you can but by no means ignore the others.
If after this your still struggling for a name then visit a site such as
- Name Boy www.nameboy.com
here you will be able to see many domain name variations of words you type in and if they are available to use.
One great thing you can do with a domain is have several domains all pointing to the same website. Meaning you could have 2 or 3 domains with slight word or letter variations in them. This will give you more chance of capturing people but will always send them to your one web site.You don’t have to have a web site for every domain name.
Registering Your Domain Name
Now once you have a great name to use the next part of how to build a web site will require you to register and reserve this name. You are going to reserve this domain name for a set period of time so that you and only you can use it.
This is going to cost you anything up to $12 a year to do. Saying that, I have purchased domains that were ending in .info that only cost $0.89 the first year to register.
To register your domain I suggest you use such companies as
They are the only companies I ever use and have always found them to be offering the best service and the cheapest prices around. They will offer deals on multiple registering and will give free add ons such as email with the same name as the registerd domain name. Very useful for business.
Ok that’s it for domain names were now going to concentrate on finding a hosting company
Finding a Hosting Company
The next bit of how to build a website is to have your domain name hosted on the internet. Meaning when someone types in your address the web site that is connected to your domain will actually appear. To achieve this a hosting company is required.
There are many different companies out there offering this service, some paid some free. It all depends on your situation. If your looking to have a website for business then I strongly advise you not using any free service. Two reasons here. First they will put advertisments on or around your web site and second you won’t have a unique domain name. You will have the name of your company but before this will go there name. Eg: www. Hostingcompany.com/yourname. Its far better to use a paid service such as HostGator where you will have full control over what happens on your website, from advertisments to domain name. A basic hosting package will cost anything between $5-7 a month and with the two companies suggested you can expect a lot of extras thrown in for free such as web site builders or some paid upgrades such as credit card processing which we will talk about in a moment.
Congratulations, up to this moment in the process of how to build a web site, we now know about “finding a domain name” “Registering your domain name” and “Finding a hosting company”. We shall now look at “Creating your web pages” and “ setting up a merchant account” .
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