How to Get a Website Up and Running in Non-technical Terms

There are three main things you need to be aware of when trying to set up your website: the domain name, the host, and the design/building of your site. This is an extremely non-technical overview of these things.

Domain name: simply put, this is the name of your website- example: www.reginamilton.com Note: you can buy your own domain name but without a company hosting the site (explained below) you'll just have rights to the name you purchased but you won't be able to display a webpage. If you own a domain but don't have a hosting plan, you can forward your domain name to a specified website (I'll explain this more later). Here are a few places you can buy a domain from.

• www.godaddy.com: around $10/yr.

• smallbusiness.yahoo.com/domains: around $10/yr.

• Click here for a list of sites you can purchase a domain from

Hosting company: the company that actually has space reserved on the Internet to display your webpage

• www.godaddy.com: around $5/mo.

• smallbusiness.yahoo.com/webhosting: between $10 and $13 per month

• www.register.com: around $9/mo.

• Click here for a list of other hosting sites and their prices

Building: the software, code, or WYSIWYG (what you see is what you get) editor that you actually use to design your website. Some options you have are

• HTML, CSS, etc. You can code out your own website. This can be a lot to learn but is a fun experience.

• Dreamweaver or FrontPage (if it still exists) or some other software that helps you build your site by drag & drop but also lets you code.

• www.weebly.com; www.yola.com; www.webs.com are all sites that allow you to build a website by using drag & drop editing for free. You can upload music, videos, documents and so much more using these sites. They also host your website for free. Their extension will be on the end of your website (ex: www.reginawrites.weebly.com) so you'll want to forward the domain name that you own to the site you build with these free. I bought www.ReginaMilton.com for $10/year, designed a page for free at one of the aforementioned sites, and then forwarded my domain to it...hence; I don't pay any hosting fees.

• www.blogger.com or www.wordpress.com: both of these sites allow you to design a blog or webpage that they in turn host for free. When you build a free blog with Blogger, the ".blogspot.com" extension will appear after the name you select. However both Blogger and WordPress offer a domain name purchase feature in which you can buy your own ".com" through a third-party (and they'll take care of all the technical details for you). At Blogger, it will cost you $10/yr. and the blog, www.reginarhythm.com, is an example of such. At WordPress, it costs $15/yr. but is very easy to edit and preferred by many. If you wish to use your blog as your website you should look into getting a slightly more unique template (by clicking here). Make sure (as an artist) to build some static pages like "About", "Contact", "Writings" or "Resume" so people can find out more about you easily. A good example of a well-organized blog/webpage is Quiet Like Horses. Her blog is a personal blog but she has added tabs at the top for easy navigation.

If you found this article useful you may want to read: How to Make a Great Artist's Resume and How to Build the Best Business Card (for Artists) or Creating and Maintaining a Blog that Attracts Followers.