Building Websites

Squidoo is a great place for would-be webmasters to get to know the online publishing process. Squidoo is totally free (Hey, you could even earn a little money!) and it allows you to build an interactive web page without any sort of experience or technical knowledge.

LensMasters use a simple browser-based editing interface. Adding page elements and modifying text is as simple as point, click, save! In fifteen minutes, you could build your own web page and this is actually a good introduction to privately hosted and more expansive website software. Many of the best web site builder programs use browser-based interfaces - and once you've seen how easy it is to do on Squidoo you might be ready to take the next step and set up a blog, discussion forum, or social bookmarking network. You could even integrate these into your Squidoo Lens as a way to keep it up to date as you publish more and more!

Squidoo and Blogger are great examples of "free hosting" or a way to publish websites without having to pay. As great as these choices are, they don't help if you want to have your own domain name or a specialized type of website like forums. If you're ready to move onto your own custom domain name and build a bigger website, you'll need to consider shared hosting or even dedicated hosting (if you think traffic and resource usage is going to be huge.)

A good website host will include features like auto-installation of software so anyone can set up a website quickly, without any previous knowledge or experience.

Bluehost and Dreamhost are among the best shared hosting services. One year of hosting runs about $100 including one free domain name of your own choosing. The only limit on your domain name is to find one that hasn't been taken yet!

Both providers offer automatic install of website software. Anyone can set up a blog, forum, or even easily set up a news or link submission community (Dreamhost is better for this last one).

Bluehost seems to be a little faster, but it is also a little more expensive and has slightly more strict terms of use.

Dreamhost is definitely cheaper if you use a discount code (Dreamhost coupon codes) like Saves50 to get $50 off 1 year of hosting. This brings the cost of Dreamhost below $6 a month.

Read my full review of Bluehost vs Dreamhost if you're thinking of choosing one of these two hosting providers. Make sure you get the best options for your unique website building plans.

There's no need to reinvent the wheel. Thanks to the generosity and crowd-driven power of open source software, you can quickly and easily install some of the most popular websites directly on to your hosting account. Once you've installed the blog or forum or bookmarking files into your public directory and set up the proper databases (most of this can be done automatically with various installation scripts - at worst, you might have to unzip a file and upload them through an FTP or control panel file manager!)

Once you've got the CMS set up and running, administering the website can be as easy as following a browser-based interface. Without ever learning to code yourself, you'll find that there are hundreds of software platforms to design a site concept around and there are even thousands of different free designs and templates allow you to put a personal touch on some already popular website formats.

Of course, as you spend more time looking in to the files that make up your content management system - and as you debug and make small modifications to emphasize your personal web building goals, you will continue to learn more about the process of coding and developing a site from scratch.

SEO is a process of building links to your website in order to rank higher in the search engine results. There are many attributes of a link that should be considered, because there are "good links" and links that might not be worth so much.

The basic concept is to get links to your website from other well-ranked websites about the same topic. The words inside the link (ex. Website Building) should be the words you want to rank highly for. If the link says 'no_follow' it might not help you very much in the search engines, but it could still be a good source of direct traffic.

There are a lot of subtleties to how search engines work, so people are always discussing the details and trying to get a better understanding of specifics that are not made public. Interacting with other experienced web masters and research will help you avoid any mistakes like paid link farms, link exchange schemes, and automated traffic. Some promises are too good to be true, and these can hurt your website in the long run.

Link sales, excessive link farms, and elaborate link exchanges can mark your site for a search engine penalty or outright ban and index removal. Large changes in link quantity can signal suspicions with the search engine bots.

If anyone is promising a service or method with "instant" or "guaranteed" results, they might just be selling SEO snake-oil. Always check references, successful prior projects, and make sure you understand exactly what their plan is for your website.