How To Build A Website

The first step is to register your domain.

The World Wide Web is a huge network linking one website to another and so on and so on.

Your website can be identified by its URL or Uniform Resource Locator.

That's just tech speak for website address. for example squidoo address is www.squidoo.com

Once you have decided upon a good name for your website, check with a registrar to see if that name is available.

If so, the same registrar should allow you to purchase that domain name.

Usually, you purchase the name for a set period of time, 1 year, 2 years etc. You should have the choice.

The cost is quite low, usually aroudn $7-$10 per year. This changes only if you are trying to register a "premium" name.

Here is a list of three places that you can go to now to register your domain (then come back for more instructions)

www.GoDaddy.com
www.WhoIs.com
www,GKG.net

Ok, so now that you've gotten yourself a domain name, that is a URL, for your new website, you have to open an account with a internet hosting service.

Your internet hosting service will allow you to upload files that will be visisble on the web. Many will also allow you to create email accounts using your domain name.

I represent www.HostGator.com as I host my websites with them I know how good their service is.

You want a hosting account that is meant for the non-techie user.

Make sure that it has features that allow you to create everything you will need with just a few clicks of the mouse. Otherwise, you will wind up paying programmers everytime you need somethign done.

www.HostGator.com has a few features that will help you to make changes and additions to your website without having to pay for outside help.

Fantastico is a system designed to make installing popular scripts easy. That means, with just two or three clicks, you can easily download platforms that will help you to create your website like, wordpress, joomla and other easy-to-use user interfaces.

You should expect to pay anywhere from $8-$15 per month for hosting. Whichever level you choose, make sure that you have fantastico

Now that you have registered a domain name and purchased a hosting agreement, you need to point your URL to your new hosting service provider.

To do this, go to the welcome email that you will have received from your hosting provider when you opened up your new account.

you will find information in the welcome email telling you the custom name servers that they have alloted to your account.

It may look something like this:
AB1.SERVER-00.com
AB2.SERVER-00.com

Once you locate this information in your hosting service provider's welcome email, go over to your domain name registar account.

Navigate to the section where you can enter domain name server information and paste this information into that area.

You may have to wait up to 48 hours, but you will eventually see that the domain is being pointed towards your new server.

HTML stands for HyperText Markup Language. It is a kind of code that website editors use to create the pages you see when you surf the web.

To aid those of us who are not necessarily tech people, there are many HTML editors that simplify the process by using a WYSIWYG format. That stands for What You See is What you Get.

This is great for us tech people because it means that we see an interface designed to be userfriendly and on the back-end, the editor creates all of the complicated code needed to make our webpage look the way we want it to.

You can find many free HTML Editors available on the web. Just go to a search engine and type in "free html editor."

If you want a more professional look, you can purchase a html editor, something like microsoft frontpage, or adobe contribute.

I like to use a free interface called Wordpress. We will go into more specifics in the section below.

You may find some who disagree, but I believe that wordpress is easy and very versatile webpage software to use.

Many will jump up and say "but wordpress is meant to host blogs" and they are correct, however, a few plugins allow me to use it as a webpage as well.

As I said in the section above, you can any html editor, you can even purchase a more professional type of editor.

I am going into a little detail on wordpress purely because that is what i use most often.

1) the first thing I do is logon to the control panel of my hosting account and click on the fantastico icon.

This will take me to a page that allows me to use fantastico to download wordpress (or a number of other programs) with just a few mouse clicks.

Follow through the process providing usernames and passwords whenever you must.

2) The second thing I do is prepare to upload a few plugins that will allow me to use this blog interface as a webpage builder.

This starts with making sure that I have FTP access. FTP stands for File Transfer Protocol. This is an interface that allows you to upload files to your website.

Mozilla firefox has a great FTP function that I use all of the time. It is easy to install and easy to use.

Once you have secured an FTP, you can move on to the next step.

3) The next step is to locate and install a few plugins.

I have been using plugins from a great program called semiologic.

Go to www.semiologic.com and download the following:
a) semiologic classic theme
b) semiologic static front page

Once you have these items saved on your desktop, open up your FTP server locate the files and transfer them over to your wordpress wp-plugins folder.

4) Now all you have to do is login to your wordpress account, go to the plugins folder and hit the activate key next to the two items mentioned above:

a) semiologic classic theme
b) semiologic static front page

You will find it very easy to navigate your way around wordpress.

When you begin to write your homepage, do the following to allow the static frontpage to kick-in (rather than the blog feature that the software is known for)

In the section marked "slug" type the word "home" In this case, by slug they mean name of the URL (www.mydomain.com/slug) when you say "home" whilst also having activated the static front page feature, you will be ensure that you page remains the homepage for your website.

You will now have a very simple and easy to use WYSIWYG editor, if you feel daring, you can switch over and enter some code.