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You want to set up your own website and want to get it online, but how do you start?
To set up a website you will have to think about the following:
- What is your website going to offer – what is the purpose?
- A domain name, such as www.yourwebsitename.com;
- Web space also called hosting – a home for your website’s files, provided by a hosting company; and
- The website itself – a collection of pages and images, linked together to make a complete site.
Just read on to get an answer to your question: ‘How do I set up my own website’.
1. What is your website going to offer – what is the purpose?
What is the purpose of your website? Do you have a existing business that you would like to bring online? Do you want to support a group, charity or purpose? Or do you want to learn how to make money online?
The key question is: ‘What are you passionate about?’ What will give you the motivation to keep adding content to your website and keep promoting your website?
It is important to have a clear purpose for your website and decide what product you are going to promote and to which niche, especially if you would like to make money! To speak with Stephen Pierce – “if you want to go broke, market to all folk, but if you want to get rich, market to a niche”.
In his book ‘Make real money on the internet‘ (which you can get for just postage and packaging) – Stephen’s sets out step for step how to choose the right product and market.
2. Domain name
The next step in setting up your website once you have chosen your product, is deciding on your domain name(s).
It is great to have a name that links to your company name or sounds great (like funinthealps.co.uk), but it is usually not very easy for people to find you.
It is better to have a domain name that links to your product and what people search on such as ’self catering accommodation France’.
Google has a great free tool to help you find what people search on: https://adwords.google.co.uk/select/KeywordToolExternal
When you have some keywords that people search on and you want to have in your domain name, you will have to find yourself a domain name that is available.
When you have a lot of keywords: go to BuyBuyDomainNames.com – bulk registration and enter all your keywords – you can easily find which domain names are available.
When you have just a few keywords – go to BuyBuyDomainNames.com, enter your keyword and press search. You will receive a list of available domain names with your keywords.
If you have a local product, it is best to buy your local domain name (ie .co.uk / .nl / etc) and the .com version – when people cannot remember what your domain name was, they will try the local and the .com first.
3. Hosting
The next step in how to setup your webiste, is to arrange hosting. You get web space on a computer owned by a hosting company. It is set up so that anyone who types your domain name into their browser will be connected to your website.
BuyBuyDomainNames has an Economy hosting plan (from only $3.99 per month) that will support all your needs as a starting web designer. There is also a great special offer for your domain name when you get a hosting account.
4. Your website
Now you have set up your hosting and domain name you can think about the design of your website.
I personally love wordpress – once it is setup, the back office is very easy to navigate. For the look of your website, you can choose from many designs or you can design your own look. You can add your own pages, categories and blogs, and make all the changes and add pictures without having to know html coding – it is just like changing a word document and this is all done online – so you can manage your website from any computer in the world!
You can read in this article how to install wordpress on your website.
Once you have installed wordpress you need start with your design. Your design is based on a theme. You can read here how to install a wordpress theme.
When you find it more difficult to change the templates to create a good look for the website using the themes, you can get someone to help you set up your design. Once the theme has been set up in the layout you like, you can do all the changes yourself.
I use a company called Lifenzyme. They are great in all kinds of admin support and design and graphics. If you prefer help with setting up your website, please contact Michael: michael@lifenzyme.com
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