If you are in the process of evaluating where you are and where you want to be, you may have decided to reinvent yourself a bit. If a website is part of those plans, but you don’t know where to start. How do I start my own website? These are the basic steps, just so you understand the process. Keep in mind that this is a very simple look at a very complex topic, so it’s just an overview, so you can see the big picture before you start:
Step 1 – You need a domain name. What is a domain name, you ask? I like Wikipedia, its definition is “A domain name it is an identification label that defines a scope of administrative autonomy, authority or control on the Internet. In short, when you write
Step 2 – You need a place to host your site. Web hosting services are companies that accumulate many servers in a building and offer them to individuals and companies to host their websites. They do this for a monthly, quarterly, or yearly fee. This type of business usually bundles service packages and charges monthly, quarterly or annually for the service. The web host I like is a company based in Houston, which is very competitive and growing, which means they must be doing something right. That site is hostgator.com. They are a turnkey site and can help you with all aspects of hosting whatever size website you want to create, from small to large.
Step 3 – Now that you have a domain name and a place to host your site, the hard stuff begins. The next step in the process of getting your own website up and running online is creating an attractive website that people want to visit and possibly buy something from. I know that both hostgator and godaddy.com have site builders or tools that allow you to create a site and be online immediately! Talk to them if you want to discuss their services. You can also create your own site using software from any number of companies, one of the most widely used and probably one of the largest being Adobe’s Dreamweaver.
Step 4 – Now let’s say you have a site built and ready to go online. The next step is to transfer the files you created, i.e. your website, and place them within the server space you are renting from the web host in step 2. If you create the website at home using your own software, you must create the files on your computer and transfer them to the web hosting provider’s computer to put them online. The software has built-in tools that help with this, using the name and address of the server that you will get from the web host. Once the file transfer is successful, your site will be ONLINE! Every time someone, who has access to the Internet, enters your web address, they will be directed to your web host’s server and then to your place within that server where your files reside and see your website online!
step 5 – The last and continuous step is to keep the content on the site. If you created it with in-house software, you’ll use that software to keep the site current with updates, when needed. One of the most important things you can do to be successful online is to create a site with current, interesting, and relevant information. When you make a change to the site, it will transfer the files to the hoster to “update” the files on the host server. When done correctly, anyone who accesses your web address will see the new and updated files. If you use the hosting provider’s software to create the site, you will return there to make changes and send them to the hosting provider’s server. Once the change is made and successfully transferred, the online site is updated. The host’s server will now send the newly updated pages, when someone connects and types in your web address.
conclusion – Regardless of what you are doing, there is always something easy and then something difficult. Sometimes choosing easy is the best to meet your needs right now, and you can switch to hard later, but there are trade-offs. Easy, when it comes to website creation and updates, it’s best handled by someone who knows what they’re doing and can do it right and take the headaches out of you. That may cost you up front in terms of a fee (paying someone for their expertise). These people don’t work for free and you usually get what you pay for. One suggestion, if someone else is making your website, make sure you keep the rights to the website they are creating for you. Make sure they give you access, to make changes on your own, and a copy of the files they’re transferring, whenever they make updates. That way someone can come in after you’ve left and make changes to the website. You’re not stuck with a website that’s online, that has to be completely reworked, if you have to fire it for some reason, or it disappears on you.
The hardest and cheapest way would be to learn how to use software like Adobe’s Dreamweaver to create your own websites. You will have full control over your website and can make changes easily and cheaply. The hard part is that there is a learning curve associated with learning how to use a software package designed to create websites. There is also a learning curve, to understand how to make a great website that looks good and that search engines can find.
When you hire someone to build a website for you, you should hire someone who is experienced and has built other websites that drive traffic to them. Part of designing a website is creating the back-end HTML code, which makes it easier for search engines to find you. That process is called search engine optimization, or SEO. HTML stands for Hypertext Markup Language.
This is a very broad topic, but I wanted to give you some basic steps that you must follow to have a website on the Internet. Maybe in future articles, I’ll take each step, expand on it, and go into more detail. Anyway, here you go, hope this helps. A website can be a great way for someone to reinvent themselves. It’s quite a complex task to put together, but when all the pieces that make up a website are put together, the results can play an important role in the process of reinventing itself.
