Web Hosting Info

This step can be quite technical and complicated for users who do not know what they are doing. You should try and contact your hosting company for support with this.

Within your domain registrar’s control panel, you need to find the option that allows you to change the DNS servers. It may be phrased as “Domain Name Server Setup” From there you must enter the name servers of your hosting company. Your hosting company will tell you what they are, usually ns1.hostingcompany.com. You may have to wait up to 48 hours for the changes to take place, then you are all set!

Before you pick a website, make sure that you have everything ready to upload and you have tested your website. You should read our guide on things to do before buying web hosting.

Most people use small hosting packages to host small sites that don’t get many hits. If you expect your site to be small in the beginning, then buy shared hosting package. As your site gets bigger you can increase your hosting needs.

Larger websites use dedicated servers which can handle larger masses of traffic and generally allow for more bandwidth usage. You really don’t need dedicated hosting unless your site is large or you are hosting a lot of domains.

If you are starting out small, you shouldn’t spend anymore than $4-10 a month on hosting. As your site gets bigger, hosting costs will of course increase. Dedicated hosting usually starts at $120+ a month. It’s also important to note that if you are anticipating quick growth for your site, find hosting who offers a 2-6 month contract as opposed to 1-2 years. It will cost a few extra dollars per month, but you won’t be stuck paying $X a month for months you aren’t even using the service.

You may first want to read our guide to buying a domain name here.

If you are creating a website for a business the most obvious choice for a domain name would be your company name . However for some companies their name may already be taken. You must think carefully about the name you choose, once you have picked it, you will have to stick with that domain or face confusing your visitors.

Unfortunately most good domain names with the TLD (the extension such as .com,.net)  .com have been taken so you may want to consider regional ones such as .co.uk for the United Kingdom, .de for Germany etc. .net is a good global one. If you are creating a company website, try stay away from the tld .biz or .info. As these are very cheap to register spammers have purchased them and the general public associate them with a scam and it does not look professional enough.

Try keep your domain name short as it is easy to remember. Also try avoid having dashes or plurals in your name to avoid customers. If you must have a name with a plural, register ones that are similar to avoid people registering that one and stealing your traffic.

Make sure that you buy from a reputable comapny such as Godaddy.com, Namecheap.com or enom.com

Hopefully you have now chosen your website’s subject. You now need to create your website using a web editor. A web editor is a program that helps you create web pages by automatically creating HTML (Hyper Text Markup Language) which is understood by a web browser. By using a WYSIWYG (what you see is what you get) editor, you can create good looking sites without having to learn HTML.

Things to consider:

Content

On the internet, you are not restricted to using words. You can include photographs and music clips. You need to add some words though so that search engines will list your site in their rankings. Give each page a title indicating what information the page contains. To do this add the title within the <title> tag in the HTML.

Make sure that the content is well spaced out and not too long. People don’t like reading lots on the internet so try keep it short and sweet.

Layout

It is a good idea to design your website on paper first. You then have some idea of what you want to create when you get round to making it in a WYSIWYG editor.

Once you have created your pages, save it in a folder on your harddrive. The homepage should be saved as index.htm or .html.

Before you start creating a website you need to pick the subject. There are many reasons people build website for example;

•  Advertise and sell things. Websites allow companies to provide up tp date information about their products and services. Customers can order and pay for things that are advertised on the internet.
• Fan site. Fans and enthusiasts devote their site to places, people, movies or TV shows they enjoy.
• Share the knowledge. Owning a website allows you to share useful information with millions of other people.
• Family. If you have family and friends around the world, you can easily share your pictures and movies over the internet for them to enjoy.

For your first site it is a good idea to pick a topic that you can write lots about and enjoy.