Sunday, September 9, 2007

How to Make a Website - Step 8

Step 8 - Publish your site

The final step in how to make a website is the easiest - Just publish! Most sitebuilders will have a publish button. When you click it it'll ask you if you want to put your site online, you say yes and wham you're done. You've got an Internet presence. Take a few minutes to enjoy the moment. You're done! I hope this blog will help you in your quest in how to make a website.

How to Make a Website - Step 7

Step 7 - Add content, pictures, proof read add your logo.

Ok you are almost there with your how to make a website marathon. Right now you should be looking at the sitebuilder software, yeah there are a lot of buttons in online website builder pages, try not to get caught up in figuring them all out stick with doing only what you need to do. Most of these builders also have pretty decent documentation too.

Go ahead and fool around get all your pages the way you want them or as close as you can for the time being. Remember you can ALWAYS come back and change things, including your template if you want. I really like this type of site building because you can change things so easily. Also don't be afraid to use the preview button it will allow you to view the site before it goes live so you check the placement of your page elements. Somewhere there will be a page button you click on a page and a properties tab that is where you can put in your search engine optimization from Step 4. Site builder may have already asked you this but in case it didn't - depends on the type of software, you'll have an idea of where to look.

Even if you make a critical mistake and delete a page or mangle something so bad you can't get it back to looking good you can delete your whole site and start over. Which is why I had you write your content and save it in a separate file. If I had a dollar for every time someone deleted a page they shouldn't have I could probably retire right now.

How to Make a Website - Step 6

Step 6 - Website builder

The next step in how to make a website is using your hosts website builder software. Usually hosts have and will allow you to use their Website builder plan included in the hosting cost. The website builder software generally offers you a couple of different ways to build the site either with a wizard or on your own, if you do it on your own it will be a bit more complicated. The first thing you'll do is choose your design it's generally broken out per industry so just pick your business category and pick out a design you like.

A lot of people will say that using templates is BAD and it makes you look like everyone else. Well there is some truth to that but we're talking building a website without a developer and on a budget. So what kind of design would you be willing to pay for and then you have to put it together yourself, not a real easy task trust me. So keep your chin up at least you'll have a website to start with, most get caught up in what they want it to look like and never actually put it up. So you'll be a step ahead of everyone there.

From this point forward you'll be pasting in your content that you took the time to write ahead of time. Most site builders are a enough different from each other so I won't be going into depth about them in this article.

How to Make a Website - Step 5

Step 5 - Web hosting- the last step before it comes together

This step in how to make a website deals with hosting. To have a website online you will need web hosting. Basically, it's a computer connected to a really big broadband connection it has a bunch of extras that allow the data - your website - to be up almost all the time 24/7.

I'll give you two different hosts to look at as I think they have great deals on inexpensive quality hosting. ($3.95 and $3.99 per month) They also have some form of website builder software so if you don't want either of these choose a host that offers a site builder plan.
The best deal out there in my opinion is 1&1 hosting I use them myself for my smaller sites. They actually give you two domain names with their basic plan. Click here to go to their site. The other site is ix hosting and they have similar deals you can pick either Linux or ms windows hosting I would probably go with Linux hosting only because of the component availability.

I mean, if you want to add more functions to you website later - like e-commerce, email lists etc you can usually find those components written in PHP a programming language for free.

How to Make a Website - Step 4

Step 4 - Develop search engine stuff

This step of how to make a website is really important for the search engines to find your site. If your site is a hobby or family website then it doesn't matter so much. Somewhere in your content documents from step 3 you'll want to decide on a title for you page make it descriptive you've got about 60 characters to do it in don't use Home, About etc.

Next would be Keywords, try to think of about short phrases or single words that describe your business. If you do dog grooming - keyword samples would be "dog grooming, dog trimming, dog washing" etc.

Next Description - A SHORT description of the main point of your site/ page get your the main focus of your site in first then backfill adding location and secondary goals.

How to Make a Website - Step 3

Step 3 - Write the content for all pages!

The next step in you how to make a website process is CONTENT. Content is King, you may have heard this before, I hope so. The bottom line is content, your content must be original, and useful. Good content will keep users coming back to your site time and time again. Obviously, writing content is the hardest and most critical part.

Use your site map and using Word, Google Docs, even Notepad write the content for each of your web pages. Make sure you save it in a couple of different spots, you never know what can happen and there is nothing worse than trying to recreate killer content! Write your content and proofread; you should reread and edit your text at least twice before going live.

How to Make a Website - Step 2

Step 2 - Develop a Sitemap, Develop Navigation


Step 2 in how to make a website will be to develop a sitemap, just a rough list of what pages you will have in your site. Think about what your major sections will be. Consider future expansion. Resist the temptation to add everything you are thinking about (unless you know you can complete all the pages). Nothing screams amateur like "Coming Soon" or "Under Construction" there are circumstances where that might be acceptable but generally it's bad form.

Developing a sitemap will save you serious time later. A sitemap serves 2 purposes it helps you organize your thoughts and focus your vision. Having that document will also help you write the content you need for your pages. It will also help develop your navigation.