Starting A Successful Business Online: Build Your First Website

Building a website is not as difficult as it sounds. The most important thing you need to do when first starting off is to learn the terminology of building websites: terms like HTML, PHP, scripts, etc.

The problem most newbies make when starting a business online is that they don't learn the basic business building blocks first. Then when they fail, they call it a "scam." If you really want to succeed online though, the key is to do your homework first.

The first step in building a website is to decide whether or not you need one first. There are quite a few ways to build a business without building websites: Squidoo, Hub Pages, Wordpress free blogs, Blogger, and others.

These are good options if you want to get started quickly, and you already know the topic you want to write about. The biggest disadvantage though is that these solutions don't make you look as professional as you would if you owned your own domain and hosting.

Also, if you violate the terms of service for these sites, it's likely your content will be deleted. You are also more limited in the content you may include here, so you want to make sure you read the terms of service first.

Once you've decided you want to build a website then decide what type of website you want to build. You may build a content website or a mini site. A mini site is usually a sales letter, lead capture page, or some other type of one page website. The type of site you build depends on the purpose of the site.

Next, choose the software or script you will use to build your website. You have a lot of choices here because there are a lot of scripts available for free that work really well for building websites.

Search for open source scripts that offer demonstrations so you may try them out. You want a script that you find that is easy to work with. An open source script is usually a free script that is developed by volunteers. Many of these volunteers work in the computer programming field.

If your hosting offers Fantastico, you will want to check to see which scripts are available. Fantastico helps you quickly install scripts without having to know how to install scripts. All you have to do is choose the directory where you want to put your new site in and click install.

If you choose to build one page websites, do a search for HTML editors. There is also a lot of software available to help you build lead capture pages, as well as build one page websites. Many of these programs are free, so you'll want to do a search in your favorite search engine to find them.