Building Your Own Website Is Easy

Website building, web development, how to build a website, domain name, hosting, web design

The reader will learn here how to build his own website even he is a newbie in web development.

Building a simple website is easy, even for non-IT people. If you have the following basic requirements, then you can create your own website.

Basic Requirements:

Basic knowledge of HTML
Computer set & Internet Connection
Website Design Layout or Template
Website Content
Domain Name and Web Space or Host

Let me explain to you each of the above requirements:

Basic Knowledge of HTML:

A website is composed of one or more web pages. A page layout is produced by using html codes or tags. HTML means Hyper-Text Markup Language and tags are enclosed by ‹ and › signs. If you have zero knowledge of html, well here is the outline of a web page:

Outline of a web page:

‹!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Transitional//EN"
"http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-transitional.dtd" ›

‹html›

‹head›

‹title›

Here you will place the title of the page. The texts here are displayed at the topmost left of a browser or web page.

‹/title›

‹meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=iso-8859-1" /›

‹meta name="keywords" content="you must type here the main keywords of your content like this keyword1,keyword2,keyword3,etc. Words that are frequently used in this page content must be included here for search engine optimization." /›

‹meta name="description" content="You must type here the summary of this page content using the page's main keywords for search engine optimization" /›

‹meta name="author" content="Your name here" /›

‹meta name="copyright" content="The year you built your website" /›

‹style type="text/css"›

This is the place for Cascading Style Sheets or known as CSS. CSS defines the styles you will use in your web page such as font color and size of the text, background image, boxes, etc. These are effected in the body but most of the style definitions affects only those areas where you use them.

‹/style›

‹/head›

‹body›

Here you will implement the layout using style definitions you have made in the "style" section. Without putting anything here the page will be blank except for the title that will appear at the topmost left of the page. You will also place here the content of your website. It may be mixed of texts, images, audios and videos.

‹/body›

‹/html›

The above must be saved as a html page with extension of html or htm. Your homepage or the starting page must be named as index.html or index.htm. When you open a site like this site, http://www.freetipsandwits.com, it will automatically search and open the index page.

To see it with your two eyes, copy the above html codes from ‹html› to ‹/html›, then open your Notepad and paste it. In the Notepad or its equivalent, Click File - Save - Type mywebpage.html or mywebpage.htm - Click All Files - Click OK. Then in the Windows Explorer or its equivalent, find the the file and open it...See the power of HTML. That's your first web page. With those few codes, you can create your own web pages. For more basics of creating a web page, click here.

Computer set & Internet Connection:

This is a computer equipment (desktop or laptop computer) that has a modem and internet connection (Dial-up or DSL). This means that you can access or surf the web. You will be using an internet connection to upload your web page files and to browse your website in action after uploading. You may use your own computer or you may rent in internet cafe, whichever is more comfortable to you.

Website Design Layout or Template:

Website Layout Design is the graphical presentation of your site in a web page. Like in http://Freetipsandwits.com, the page layout is composed of header box, right box, left box and footer box. The design layout will be your guide where to place your content in every web page.

If you don't have time to learn html or let's say, you are not interested in learning html, you still have options to have your web design layout. Buy or get free web templates from the web. If you have a budget and you want to have a design based on your preference, you may hire a coder or simply buy a web template.

Website Content:

This is the meat of the website. Your website is nothing without a content. It is like a house without people and furnishings. People are looking for contents. They want something from your website.

The content is the physical presentation of the purpose of your website. It may be personal (about your personal life or life of other people), community (a forum or discussion of a group of people), free or non-profit services (a directory, educational, tutorial, freebies, etc.) or commercial (for selling or marketing products or services).

Your content may include texts, graphics, sounds, videos, programs, etc. depending on your purpose or on what you like other people or visitors to see in your site and on the available materials with you. But, putting sounds, videos or softwares make require an advanced knowledge of html and scripts.

You may source your content materials from the web, free or priced. Check our directory of freebie sites or use Google and type "free web templates", "web templates", "web template freebies" or other keywords that are appropriate based on your need:

Domain Names and Web Space:

Domain Name:

A domain name usually consists of two or more parts, separated by dots. This is the unique text name corresponding to the IP address of the website. Example is http://www.ezinearticles.com. The rightmost label "com" is what we called the top-level domain (TLD). Other TLDs are .com, .net, .org, .biz, .ws, .tv, .info,etc... Sub-domains are the labels on the left next to TLD and are dependent on the domain to the right. "ezinearticles" is the sub-domain (second-level domain) and dependent of the ".com" domain.

Choose a descriptive name for your site to give short information to your target visitors on what your site is all about. You may use your own name too if you want to. For search engine optimization, it is advisable that you name your site with descriptive keywords. Each word must be separated by hyphen or dash like "best-online-business-ever.com", "affiliate-marketing-guide.com" and "affiliate-program-reviews.com".

To have your own second-level domain name, you have to pay for registration on a yearly basis with ICANN-accredited website-registrars but you may register a name for a number of years paying the equivalent amount. TLD's have different prices some are cheaper than others.

You may also go for free sub-domain with sites offering free hosting but it will be a third-level domain like in geocities, your website address will be http://yourchoicename.geocities.com or in tripod, it will be http://yourchoicename.tripod.com. Your domain name will be depedent of geocities or tripod.

If you really want to build a website using your own tradename and would like to earn profit from it, it would be better to at least invest a little amount of money. You may check if the name you plan to give to your site is still available by using search engine and type "domain name registration" or "register domain name".

Web Space and Hosting:

The next thing you need is the web space where you will place your registered domain name and other stuff for your site. Normally, domain names are offered with web space. If you register a domain, you will be given a free but limited web space.

Usually, a free web space is ad-supported and subject to a number of restrictions. Meaning, the hosting site will put an ad to your site without paying you and it will not allow you to do or put some stuff.

So, if you want a clean web space where you can do whatever you want "legally", it is advisable that you lease your own web space. It is also offered on a yearly basis but you may also lease it for a number of years.

You may buy or lease domain or web space separately. You may register a domain name from one website and lease a web space from another. If you register domain name separately from web host, then you need to link the namservers from your host to your domain name. The nameservers will be given to you by your host and you need to enter this to your domain DNS (Domain Name Servers) setup.

For more paid and free domain name registrants and web hosts, use search engine and type "domain name and webhosting" or "domain name registration" or "web hosting".

The following are the easy, simple and complete procedures to build your own website:

Determine your purpose of your website.

Prepare all the materials to be placed in your site as your website content.

Plan the lay-out or design of your site. Get free or buy template.

Create web pages. Learn our tutorial on creating your own web page or use ready-made web templates.

Name your site with keywords relevant to your site content.

Check the availability.

Buy domain name and web space or get free web-space.

Upload your web pages. You may upload your web files by web browser or by ftp. Check your with your host for instruction on how to do it.

Check your website live. Check all the links if all are working fine.

Submit your site to search engines and directories to inform the world that you have built your own website.

Now you build your own website and start making money online.