When starting your own website business, unless you are a website designer, you need some direction and support to jump through the hoops to get your website business up and running. When I started my first website, I was lucky enough to have stumbled across Wealthy Affiliate and I have used them ever since for all my website needs, but that may not be what you are looking for, so I will go through the process you need to do to establish your website business. Whatever your business you are wanting your business for, this blog will navigate you through the process.
Practical Aspects Of Building
In order to start up your website, you need three things:
Domain Name – This is a web address like www.yourwebsitename.com You will need to think about what you want to call your website business. There are tools to help with this, so you get a really awesome domain name.
Web Hosting – This is the service that hosts and connects your website to the internet. It stores your images, content and website files. Without any of this, no one would be able to find your website.
Content Management System – This is the interface that you will use to create your content for your website. If you are a whizz at websites, you will be able to write your own html, but as Im not, I use WordPress. It is a free management system that requires no coding at all. You can write just like I am here and it turns it into code without you breaking sweat!
You can get a website through a hosting company such as Wealthy Affiliate – they offer you a free website on their hosting site. The domain would be a siterubix domain which to start with is ideal. Many use it as a starting point but then convert to a .com domain when they are up and running. A .com website does look more professional but they do cost money (not much). You can start with a .com domain right out of the blocks if you want.
How Do I Register My Domain Name And Find Webhosting?
To be totally transparent, I earn commission for any referral to Wealthy Affiliate or Bluehost. This does not increase the cost to you, but I have presented their services in an unbiased way as possible.
Use this link to hop over to Wealthy Affiliate and start your website today. You can sign up for a free week to trial the whole package, then the first month being $19, it gives you full hosting, domain name, plus all the support you might want to make your website successful.
If you want to know more about Wealthy Affiliate and what it can offer, you can read my review – Wealthy Affiliate Review for 2019. Wealthy Affiliate is the perfect choice if you have no previous knowledge on setting up a website and managing it. You need no html knowledge for these websites.
If you have reasonable knowledge about how to set up your website, content writing, keyword research etc then try Bluehost. Bluehost will host your website for $2.75 a month for the first month, then it goes up to $8.99 a month for the most basic package, which is perfect if you know what you are doing. This wasn’t me, having come through school before computers were thing, I had to learn from the ground up.
Both Bluehost and Wealthy Affiliate will allow you to purchase a domain name and web host at the same place so it avoids you having to get involved with setting any of the hosting parameters. They will do all that for you. There are other websites that offer similar support as Bluehost and WA, but none offer the support you get from Wealthy Affiliate. But don’t worry, whichever you choose to go with, you won’t have to write any code. Follow on with this article to learn what to do next.
How To Add Content – Blogs, Articles, Images.
You have your website domain name, you have your website hosting sorted out, what do you need now?
So the next step is to install the content management system. With Wealthy Affiliate, you have no choice as to the management used, it is installed as soon as your website is up and running, so about 3 minutes after you purchase your domain name. They use WordPress which is probably the most well known system in the world. It works by using templates to set the theme of the website, there are literally thousands of free themes to choose from, all of which can be customised by you, to suit exactly how you want your website to look.
This website uses DIVI which is a paid theme I decided to use. It’s still a template based website but more advanced. This is my second website, so I have some experience with WordPress themes available. It has not been easy for me to get it working well, so I would recommend using a standard free theme to start with rather than paying for a theme – go with a free theme and customise it. You can always change it later if you decide you want more features that are under your control.
You might find some themes called … lite, like Divilite – these are free themes that follow the paid them but all the features are not open to you. This is also a great way to start to see if you are going to get on with the theme before you purchase it. Having said that, the purchase is not that expensive – $40-$50 in average. But not worth it at the start out, you don’t want to be outlaying too much before you start earning from the site. I found Divi to be very problematic at the start and opened it in a test site until I got used to how it worked.
Below are some examples of themes available on wordpress, WordPress is free – there is no charge for its use. With thousands of themes, there area few features to look for when choosing one.
When the website is up and running, you will simply go to themes and choose the one you want to use. WordPress do all the installing and you are good to go. There are few features to consider when you first go to customise your theme.
Each Theme Varies, But There Are Basics To All Themes.
So don’t get frustrated, these are my suggestions to avoid that feeling of being overwhelmed.
- Check out the theme on Google, there is sure to be documentation around, that will help you with the set up of your theme and show you the possibilities for customisation.
- Most of the homepages using wordpress work with widgets – these are defined spaces on your homepage that take up a particular spot and they are unmovable. Having said that, you can choose mot to use them at all if you prefer. There wont be a gap. In this sort of instance, you will need to set your home page as a static homepage. This means that it will not move, that whatever information you put into the widgets will always be in that place on your home page.
- If you are used to building websites, you will be up and away. If you aren’t, I would recommend going to Wealthy Affiliate to build your website with support within the WA community.
