How To Create A Website
This website is a simple step-by-step website with information & resources on how to create a website by yourself (using the simplest of methods, without needing any professional skills at all).
What’s more is we’ve decided to offer free website design packages, thus making it even easier for you (or your business) to get online as quickly and professionally as possible.
1. A Domain Name
This essentially tells you, and your customers, where your website is located on the Internet – it’s like the physical address of homes and businesses (but now, this address locates websites on the Internet). An example would be the domain name of this website (which is www.howtocreateawebsite.co.za) or it could be any name you choose like www.yourbusiness.com (you do have to check if the name you want is available – one good place to check is 'HERE').
The cost of a domain name is payable yearly (some website hosting companies provide this for free).
If your website name is not available then you’ll need to come up with a different one or consider using a different domain name extension.
A domain name extension is the part of the domain name that goes after the main part of the domain name. In the above examples of domain names, the extensions were ‘.co.za’ along with the second one being ‘.com’.
Some popular internationally recognized domain name extensions include ‘.com’, ‘.net’, ‘.org’ and ‘.info’ among others. There also exists domain name extensions that indicate that the website is centred around a specific country, such as ‘.co.za’ being centred around South Africa and ‘.us’ being centred around the United States (just about every country has their own domain name extension).
Recently, a whole lot of new domain name extensions have been released and they offer endless possibilities. Some new extensions include ‘.online’, ‘.website’, ‘.club’ and ‘.guru’ to name a few – so your domain name could be ‘www.yourbusiness.online’, if you wanted it to be.
Cities have even started releasing their own domain name extensions so keep your eyes open for domain name registrars that offer all of the above possibilities.
Domain name registrars are the companies/businesses that are authorized to register domain names for clients like you and me. These domain name registrars can choose which domain name extensions they want to offer to their clients so you’ll often find that different registrars offer different domain name extensions. These registrars are also able to set their own prices which they charge to register domain names for you.
You may often find that website hosting companies (also called ‘web hosting’ companies or just ‘hosting’ companies) allow clients to register domain names through their websites as well so that clients can manage both their domain name (or domain names if you have many) and their hosting in one place, thus making it very convenient.
This brings me to the next essential thing (website hosting) you absolutely need, in order to get a professional website up and running.
2. Website Hosting
Website hosting, also called ‘web hosting’ or just ‘hosting’, is simply the place where you store all your website files on the Internet.
If this is all new to you, you might think that a domain name and website hosting are the same but in fact, they are not. Basically, website hosting allows you to store your website files on a hosting server (a hosting server is like a computer that’s connected to the Internet all the time – it has a hard drive so that you can store your files on it).
A domain name tells everybody where the website, and its files, are located on the Internet.
Your domain name and your website hosting are linked together (well, they need to be linked together in order to work correctly – linking them together involves changing a few setting which we talk about 'HERE').
Getting reliable hosting might seem simple but it’s actually not. You can’t just pick the cheapest web hosting company because you need to realize that when hosting companies charge you less, web hosting companies have to cut costs! What costs do they cut? Well, the answer to that could involve customer support costs or even hardware costs among other things – this leaves your website vulnerable to failure (meaning your website could go offline at times and won’t be accessible when you type in your domain name) and maybe even hacking.
Website hosting is usually charged for on a monthly basis but different companies have different payment options available.
There are many factors to consider but we’ve put together a minor list with the hosting companies we have found reliable ('HERE') – it includes the hosting company we use as well as another reputable company that costs a bit more but has received a lot of praise from web developers & designers.
To get our ('FREE WEBSITE DESIGN') package, you’ll need to get hosting from the company we use or from our second recommendation (this website design package is actually a premium package but we’re only offering it for free if you get the hosting we recommend – this offer is also only available if you're a new customer to the website hosting company and if we have time so check 'HERE' to see whether or not we have available capacity).
The reason for only making the website package free when using our recommended hosts is because we tend to run into errors or terrible support with other hosting companies and apart from that, our web design processes are streamlined for these two companies owing to their reliability.
We've actually used both companies that we recommend, so we do have huge faith in their capabilities!
If you still want our website design package but you want to use another host, we may be able to accommodate you but we will charge the full amount of the respective website design package.
3. A Professional Website
This is the final step in getting your business or personal site up and running. The first two steps above are pretty much essential no matter how you look at it but when designing a website, you have a few options. There are website designers that offer custom solutions and this is the most expensive option (it can be worthwhile if you have a large business with a healthy web design budget).
The second option you have is to create a website using a website builder. These are usually cost effective in the short-term but will usually require you to pay for your website for as long as you use it – this will usually add up to a large amount of money in the long-term. Also, although website builders claim to be super easy, they do require you to learn how to use their various tools or instead, they offer you templates that are easier to use (only in some cases) but aren’t very customizable.
However, there now comes a third option – from us! We plan to offer a free website design package that allows for a great deal of customizability as it’s built by a real designer (yes, a real person will be designing you a premium professional website – for free).
You’ll be able to select a foundation and then pick the customizations you would like made. What’s more is we’ll be utilizing a popular content management system (CMS) called Joomla (a content management system is basically software that allows you to manage or update your website without really needing to code).
If you’d like to know more about the different content management systems out there, then you can read this comparison 'HERE'.
All you’ll need to do is get web hosting (by following the link we provide) from the company we recommend and then get a domain name – once done, send us the details we need via our form 'HERE' and we’ll design you a premium website, for free. You won’t need to lift a finger!
This offer will also depend on the time and resources we have available because it would be impossible for us to design, for example, a 1000 websites in a day but you can check if we have capacity 'HERE'.
If you see the green signal, indicating that we have capacity, then register for hosting as soon as you can before submitting the design form 'HERE' (the design form requires your hosting & domain account details so that we can set everything up on both your hosting & domain name accounts if they’re separate – don’t worry about security, you can contact your hosting & domain name registration companies to change all your passwords after we’re done)!
If the signal is red, indicating no capacity, then sign up for our newsletter so we can notify you when to register for hosting before placing your order for our free website package.