How to Start a Business Website

You need a domain for your new business website. If you choose Mochahost for your website hosting you may be offered a free domain depending upon the package and payment plan you decided upon; I usually don't go for these types of offers because I have a lot of domains and I like to keep them all in one convenient place. If your business site is the only site you will have to worry about for a while, go for the free domain if it's offered with your hosting package. I keep all of my domains at GoDaddy.com, because that's where I started keeping all of them and I didn't want to hassle with moving the domains somewhere else. Other sites where you can register your domain name are:

• Namecheap.com


• Register.com


• Moniker.com


• Regselect.com - This is actually a domain comparison shopping site.

While you are registering your domain, make sure you change the nameservers while you are in the registration process, this will save you from having to wait for things to propegate over the web. The nameservers for your webhost should be in your welcome email and they like somewhat like this:

ns##.mywebhostingsite.com
ns##.mywebhostingsite.com

Originally I was going to have this as step 2, but I forgot that you need a domain to make the hosting purchase process easier. If you get your domain free from your host then you can just skip to step 2.

This is a step by step process which can be made a little easier if you have your tools in place before you get started. Here are the items that you will need.

1. An FTP Program. I use CoreFTP, but I've been having problems with the software lately so I may be switching soon. For purposes of this tutorial, I will be using CoreFTP because that's what I already have ready to go. Other popular FTP programs are FileZilla and SmartFTP. Keep in mind that if you use either FileZilla or SmartFTP that your screen may not look exactly like mine, but the programs are all fairly similar.

2. A webhost. I recently found a gem in Mochahost not too long ago and I have been using them for all of my new sites ever since. Their uptime is almost perfect and customer service is next to none. I think this is a reflection on the fact that they are big enough to have the space and features that I need, but small enough to pay attention to their customers. I currently use their "business" plan and pay $7.95 a month, but the price for this plan comes out to $4.75 if you prepay for 3 years. For the time being and purposes of getting things going I would go with their "SOHO" plan for $4.95 per month. I'm not going into all of the gory details here, but the main features of this plan include the following:

• Unlimited bandwidth (traffic)


• Unlimited disk space


• 1 Site


• Unlimted Domains


• Unlimited Subdomains


• CPanel control panel

If one site is all you are going to ever build, then the SOHO plan is all you should ever need, if you plan to build more sites later than you can always upgrade to the business hosting plan.

Make sure you save your introduction email, you will need this information when you purchase your domain name and for uploading your files via FTP onto the server.

3. Wordpress - I am familiar with Wordpress and I use it all of the time. Of course, since I haven't used any other open source software at this point of time, we'll be using Wordpress for this tutorial. It's extremely simple with tons of plugins available to do almost anything you need. Just download Wordpress and unzip it into a folder named after your website on your hard drive for use later. Once you have working with Wordpress down to a science, you should be able to set up other content management systems without any problems.

The next step is quite easy, you will need to set up your FTP Software. Install the software of your preference if you don't already have it installed. Open the software; if you are using CoreFTP at this point in time the "Site Manager" box will pop up. Click on the "New Site" button at the bottom and you will then need to add the FTP information that you set up through your webhost. The fields in CoreFTP are as follows:

Click image for larger picture

Site Name - Enter the site name, this is for your reference only.
Host Name - Enter your site name - mybusinesswebsite.com for example.
User Name - This is the name you set up when you registered for your hosting package.
Password - This is the password you set up when registered for your hosting package.
Port - Change this to 21 if it's not already there.
Timeout - This can stay at the default.
Retries - This can stay at the default.
Connection - Leave set to FTP.

Hit the connect button and you should be connected to your website.

First of all, login to Cpanel through the link your webhost gave to you using your username and password. Once you are in Cpanel, scroll down until you find a link that says "My Database Wizard" and then go ahead and click on it.

In Cpanel, you are looking for the second icon shown above.

You should now be seeing a field asking you to name your database, go ahead and enter the name you'd like to use for your database. You will then need to add a user to your database which can only be seven characters max. Then you will need to enter a password, use the password generator if you would like, but I would change the number of characters from 12 to something like 20.

Once you are happy with the password, click on the button at the bottom and you are then taken to a screen asking about privileges for the user you just set up. Click on the "ALL PRIVILEGES" check box at the top and everything should fill in. Then click on the next step button.

The above image is what the privileges box looks like. The next step button is what you click to move on in the process.

Make sure you make note of all of the info for your new database because you will need it in the next step.

One thing to keep in mind when you are setting up your website is how you organize your files on your local hard drive. I recommend setting up a separate folder in My Documents and naming it the name of your site. Any files you change or backups you make will be saved in this file.

If you haven't unzipped the last version of Wordpress that you just downloaded, go ahead and do it now. To keep things simple for yourself, unzip Wordpress into the new website file you just set up for yourself. This is the basis of your website on your hard drive and as I said earlier, it will keep your organized. I have to admit that keeping my local changes and files organized for my sites is one of my biggest problems.

There is one more step you need to do before uploading your files; under your Wordpress files that you just unzipped, you will need to find the following file name:

wp-config-sample.php

Then you want to open this file because you need to make some changes to it. About half way down the file you will find some code that looks like this:

/ ** MySQL settings - You can get this info from your web host ** //
/** The name of the database for WordPress */
define('DB_NAME', 'putyourdbnamehere'); You will add your database name here

/** MySQL database username */
define('DB_USER', 'usernamehere');You will add your user name here

/** MySQL database password */
define('DB_PASSWORD', 'yourpasswordhere');You will add your database password here

You shouldn't need to make any changes to the settings below
/** MySQL hostname */
define('DB_HOST', 'localhost');

/** Database Charset to use in creating database tables. */
define('DB_CHARSET', 'utf8');

/** The Database Collate type. Don't change this if in doubt. */
define('DB_COLLATE', '');

Simply fill in the information for the database that you just set up. Keep in mind you will need your main account username before all of the information you set up. For example, if you just set up a database named "aaaaaaa" with a username of "bbbbbbb", the DB_NAME you fill in here is cpanelusername_aaaaaaa and the DB_USER is cpanelusername_bbbbbbb. You do not need to do this with the password you added for the user. Then you will leave everything else as is and save your file as "wp-config.php", taking the sample off of the file name.

By this time your FTP software may have logged you out, simply hit "reconnect" and log back in. On the right hand side of your FTP software, double click on the "public_html" file. This is the directory where you are going to be uploading Wordpress because it's going to be the backbone for your business website.

On the left side of your FTP software, go to the directory where you unzipped Wordpress and go into the folder. Upload everything but the license.txt file and the wp-config-sample.php file if you haven't deleted it yet. You should now be ready for step 6.

You are almost done, I promise.

Go to the following URL: http://mybusinesswebsite/wp-admin/install.php, please replace mybusinesswebsite with your own domain, I'm only using this domain as a generic example for everyone. This URL should set up the tables in SQL for you and your site. If it doesn't work, make note of the error and either go to the forums at Wordpress.org or run a Goolge search on the whole error that you received. Just a side note, if the error states something about user, db name, or password, then you will want to make sure the information you just added to your wp-config.php file is correct.

If you don't receive an error, then go to your web address to see your new site. It's probably not much, but it's yours to tweak and work with as you'd like through your admin section.

The default themes (def) that come with Wordpress are pretty boring, so you're probably going to want to try to find a new theme. There are a lot of free themes out there that are truly great and definitely worth looking into. Now is the time you may want to think about the layout you would like for your website. Do you want one, two, or three columns; do you want a large banner across the top; do you want a light or dark background? These are all things you want to consider before searching for a theme.

Many of the these websites have an option to narrow down your search, so having a rough idea of how you'd like your site to look is extremely important. Once you find a theme, download it to your hard drive, upzip it to the themes folder in your local folder on your hard drive, and FTP the whole file to the themes folder on your new website. Then login to the admin area of your site, click on "appearance" in your admin section, then find the theme you want to use over on the right. A box will then popup previewing the theme on your site for you. Click "Activate this theme" over on the top right and you are all set.

Your content will be written in the pages and posts of your site. Your pages are subjects like "about", "privacy policy", and "sitemap". Your posts will be features about your products, services, employees, news, or anything else you want to tell people about your business.

Wealthy Affiliate is not only for affiliate marketers; the tips and ideas taught can be used for any small business owner to get traffic to their website.