How to Create a Website

Most probably you've been lead here with a bit of an interest, if not an extreme desire to put up your very own and grandiose website, and like most other, myself included, have been intimidated by not knowing the whole process. Less rants, more on the topic.'

First Step to Create a Website -- Decide How To Create Your Website

Yep. First thing is to figure out how to build your fancy website. Creating the site can be one of three: a) Hire a programmer to make the site for you, or b)Find an easy point-and-click website builder software, or lastly, c) code the website yourself.

I prefer the later. Since, being able to code my websites from scratch, myself, gives me the fullest control over it. Specifically I meant being able to put up videos, customized styles, and my favorite JavaScript scripts -- to make slides and other fancy animations with menus and stuff. In shorter terms, coding a website from scratch is the best but hardest way possible.

A: Hire a Clever Programmer to Code your site

Just my opinion, but wits on programming, its better than any skill or experience. Dealing with codes is like making something out of lego pieces, or even sand, then make an empire. It's a matter of a programmer's appoach to coding your webite, so chances are, you will get better quality, easier to maintain, and user friendly websites. However the otherwise also applies. Going overboard with a website's features (keep in mind) compromises the performance of the said website. More Features equals, larger files, more complicated codes, lots of memory, equals Slower Websites.

Most that was stated also applies to optionC: coding from scratch. For starters, if you just want a website, no fancy stuff, I'll say go to w3schools, a pretty much standard place to learn HTML for beginners. Within days to a week, you're good to go. If you wanted more complex CSS and JavaScript, or even, CGI, Perl, PHP, and so on, it'll take maybe months. But don't ask me, I basically bored myself to this for years.

But then again, there's always easy mode to everything. Get a WYSIWYG (mouthfully short for "what you see is what you get" software), shorter: point-and-click software to create your website. You simply just point a rectangle, drag-and-drop, draw a little here and there somewhere, type in contents, no codes whatnot, in thirty minutes you have a website!

Step Two to Create a Website -- Domain Names and Web Host

The three essentials to creating a website are;

1. making the website

2. registering a domain name, and,

3. uploading to a web host.

A domain name is www.yoursite.com, www.domain.com, which isn't free. Todays prices are bound to $10 give or take for dot com websites. If you don't want to pay, you may find subdomains a safe haven. Subdomains are like www.sub.domain.com, www.yoursite.blogspot.com. Another one which is very popular nowadays is called, "URL Forwarding". These are sites that allow you to use their subdomain to redirect a user to your real website, not much difference to subdomains, except names go like these: www.yoursite.co.nr, which is cooler. www.mysite.co.cc, looks more professional, than something like www.mysite.someothersite.com. And best of all, url forwarding is free!

Get a webhost. Hosting is expensive, especially if you upload large files, such as videos and graphics to your site. Prices play neatly about $30 more or less. Again, the free option. Find a free webhost.

A good free webhost will have features including, FTP (file transfer protocol) to upload your files, Scripting supports (so you can use cool and fancy scripts for your website), PHP support (few will offer this), large space, and a lot of bandwith.

Just a quick note, I always believed that people get what they pay for. Sometimes these free hosts will place advertisements on your website, sometimes not, but the hosting quality and features may fall apart somewhere.

To end this, I do really suggest you try it out first using a no-cost self-made-website, in a free subdomain, and a free host. Because you reading this far on the article kinda tells me you're a newbie, or not even a programmer. And it's the best option to first get used to being a webmaster before you pay for these kind of stuff. Always risky.

Hope it helps. Best of Luck!