How Do I Create A Website

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How Do I Create A Website - Introduction

This is an art related website, so some of the information on this page may refer to art or artists, but everythying covered relates equally to any subject, business or website. As someone who spent over a year getting this website off the ground, I learnt a huge amount during that time.  I want to share some of that experience with others, because if I were starting again now with the benefit of hindsight, I would go about things very differently! Hopefully you can learn something from my mistakes.

How Do I Create A Website – Free Websites and Hosting

I think websites are quite simply an essential promotional tool for any kind of business today, including artists.  A web presence opens up the possibility of getting your product or ideas in front of a potential audience of thousands of people who would otherwise not see them.  There are various options for getting a web page or mini-site free of charge.  The problem with these is that you have very little control, and you are always just a tiny sub section of some great big animal. You have little or no control over the aspects of the site which you need to control in order to achieve good search engine rankings (ie you can't carry out search engine optimization).  Your pages are also likely to be covered in adverts over which you have no control and from which you get no income.

If you are an artist, for example, you might have experimented with some of those huge gallery websites for artists, which feature hundreds or even thousands of artists.  While this kind of web site does get you a couple of pages on the net, the chances of being noticed in such an environment are extremely small, and more importantly, you are never likely to get visitors from search engines using such sites.

You need to have a website where you can control not just the information on the page, but the domain name, URL and all the off the page information that makes such a big difference to the search engines. Only when you can control these aspects of your website will you have a chance of showing up in the search results for your chosen subject.

How Do I Create A Website - Domain Name Registration

To register a domain name is really easy.  You have to do it through a domain name registrar, of which there are thousands.  Go to their website, do a search to check if the name you want is already registered, and when you find one free, just grab it.  In terms of getting the best search engine results, it is best to stick with .com or .org endings, but failing that, a geographically specific one is OK (such as .co.uk).

If you are an artist, using your name makes a lot of sense, but you will get a search engine advantage if your domain name includes the term that people will be using when they search for artwork.  In other words, if you want to target people searching for ‘pencil portraits’ you would be better off registering pencilportraits.com than your name.

Most web hosting packages will include the registration of a domain name in the price, so you just enter the domain name you want when you sign up for the hosting plan. For further information on Web Hosting see my Web Host Review page.

How Do I Create A Website– The Hard Way

When I started building this site, my knowledge of website design was absolutely zero.  I had no idea about building a website, choosing and registering domain names, finding a web hosting service, marketing the website, how to show up in search engine rankings, or anything else for that matter.

I had to learn everything by scouring the web, following tutorials, trying out different bits of software, reading blogs and webmaster advice (usually full of sound advice that was completely contradicted by another 'expert' five minutes later).  Most of all though, I learned by my mistakes.  On more than one occasion I had to re-do all  my website pages, after discovering something that should have been done differently at the start.

I also spent weeks trying to figure out how to get search engines to acknowledge that my site existed, or (to my absolute horror) why my site would start getting decent rankings, then suddenly disappear off the radar.

My site now ranks very well in competitive fields for my chosen keywords, but it has been a long, slow, often painful process, involving many, many hours of work.  Every hour you spend pulling your hair out in front of a monitor is an hour less spent on your core business or other things you would rather be doing.

What Do I Need To Design A Website?
What I Wish I Knew When I Started

It is fair to say that when I started down this road of website design and web hosting, I had no idea what I was getting into.  All I was thinking about was the physical design of an artist’s website, not realising how many other related areas of skill and knowledge were an essential part of this.  You can design a website that looks fine, but if you haven’t considered all these other areas it will never bring you any visitors that do not already know that your website exists.

Your site must be designed FROM THE START with search engines in mind. If it isn't, you'll just have to do it all again when you realise your lovely new site is getting no visitors. This is known as search engine optimisation (SEO), which is covered in considerable detail on my Search Engine Optimization pages.  This is a huge industry in itself – not least because so many people design their website just based on what it looks like, and then have to pay handsomely for expert help to get any visitors to it.

With most standard web design programmes, to a greater or lesser extent you will need to learn a bit of HTML (HyperText Markup Language) and CSS (Cascading Style Sheets).  This can understandably put people off, because this is generally not an option unless you have an awful lot of time to spare.  For this reason my recommendations below focus on options which mean you do not need to have any great understanding of these languages.

What Do I Need To Design A Website?
Get It Right And Your Website Will Make Money

The biggest thing I wish I knew earlier is the extent to which you can 'monetize' your website, and that this also must be considered FROM THE START. Read my page on How To Make Money From Your Website to find out more. If your website is designed, built and promoted properly, there is no reason why you shouldn't be able to earn enough from your site to make a healthy profit, even if you don't sell anything!  Read that again because it is one of the most important things on this page.  Your website should be an income in its own right - not a drain on your resources.  If your website attracts visitors, you can get an income from your site.  The other side of this of course is 'no visitors = no income' – hence the importance of search engine optimization.

Having said that - there is a ton of stuff on the net about how to make a fortune quickly from your website – usually selling some vital 'secret'. DON'T BE FOOLED – there are no shortcuts – and no substitutes for a quality website with content that people find of interest.

What Do I Need To Design A Website? – Where To Start

I am assuming you are not an experienced web designer, otherwise you would not be reading this.  I will also assume that what you most likely want is a way of getting a decent website up and running without having to study html and css for several months.  On that basis, you have several options, depending on your intentions and how much you have to spend.

The cheapest solution to get started is to use a WYSIWYG (what you see is what you get) website building programme.  These are software packages that will allow you to design a website without needing to know any html or have any technical knowledge. A word or warning - there are some free WYSIWYG tools available, but in my experience they are more bother than they are worth. They tend to generate tons of untidy code which makes editing later a real pain. They also tend to have an infuriating way of randomly deleting or corrupting crucial bits of code or text, which just creates a lot more work. For that reason I cannot recommend any worh looking at. The good WYSIWYG tools are just like using a word processing system. You just arrange things as you want them and the system automatically translates your design into html code. You can also choose to work directly with the html code if you pick up bits of knowledge in this area.

What Do I Need To Design A Website?
Recommended Design Tool - 123 WYSIWYG

One of the best value and simplest WYSIWYG packages is 123 WYSIWYG I have chosen it because it is one of the easiest to use and produces the best results in terms of a good starter site. It lets you choose from a wide selection of ready made templates, which are professional looking, but fairly simple, which is what you need.  This package also includes a free guide to search engine optimixation by SEO Elite's Brad Callen (see my SEO Tools section), and a couple of templates that he has recommended. Read my SEO page and you will see that this is worth having.

What Do I Need To Design A Website?
Using Dreamweaver

I mention Dreamweaver by Adobe simply because any information on building websites would be incomplete without doing so.  It costs a lot more than 123 WYSIWYG, but it is an entirely different animal.  It is the choice of professionals and will certainly do everything you will ever need in terms of web design.  For this reason it is quite a complicated tool which will take some time to learn, and may be a bit over the top if you are a beginner. If you don't mind spending the money, and are serious about web design, then it would be a good choice.

Disadvantages of Standard Web Design Tools

You will need to bear in mind that with any website building tool such as the ones above, you will still have lots of other costs to incur before you have a successful website.  Basic essentials are the cost of domain name registration and web hosting.  If you want to find a reliable web host please have a look at my web host review page first.  Other costs you may have could be for measures to do with achieving search engine rankings, such as general SEO tools or costs for directory submissions, keyword research tools, etc.

Top Recommendation - The All In One Solution

While a WYSIWYG package will get you a basic website, if you want a solution that is both straightforward and which means that you will incur no other costs whatsoever, then I suggest you give consideration to a package called SiteBuildIt

The beauty of SiteBuildIt, and its unique advantage, is that it includes not just website design, but web hosting, domain name registration, search engine optimization tools, and more importantly, a step by step development process which helps ensure that the site you create will be one that makes you money. SiteBuildIt is really about creating a successful online businesses by building websites designed from the start to attract profitable visitors. While it is obviously a means of designing professional looking websites, it does too many other things to simply be referred to as website design tool.

I mentioned earlier about my finding out that websites had to be designed form the start with search engines in mind, otherwise you can end up scrapping or completely re-designing them. One of the reasons I like SBI is that their whole approach is built around this concept. It takes you through a step by step process of research before you start creating any web pages, to ensure that you know your concept will be profitable before you spend any time building a site around it.

This process includes brainstorming and keyword research, assessment of each subject area for the level of advertising, what the competition is like, how much information there is for you to draw on to create your pages, what products and services people are prepared to pay for in each field, etc. You can find a breakdown of all the different tools included in SiteBuildIt here.

While SiteBuildIt will cost you more than the standard WYSIWYG design tools I have suggested, it is worth bearing in mind that it costs considerably less than Dreamweaver, which is only a design tool. If you want to compare the costs of using SBI to build a website with the alternative of doing everything yourself separately, take a few minutes to look at this comparison page. The other thing about SBI is that it is not a risky prospect. It is now so well established and has so many users that rave about it, that there is no doubt about the fact that it does what it says it does. They also have a 30 day money back offer so you get a full refund if you decide it isn't for you.

If you happen to be an artist, you already have the thing that other people may have to search for; a good product that you want to sell and an enthusiasm and knowledge of your subject. You will have absolutely no problem coming up with pages of information about yourself, your work and all sorts of related things that interest you. The SBI site has a page about how to use your passion or interest to create your site.

They do quite a useful short Video Tour on their website which is a good way of getting an overview of the system to help you make up your mind if it is the sort of thing that will meet your needs. There is a lot more to it than I can cover here, so it is worth taking some time to explore their website and find out more.

If you have not yet spent lots of money on getting all the separate bits of software and services you need to create a successful website, SiteBuildIt is well worth considering.

Good luck with whatever route you take to getting online, and I sincerely hope this feedback helps you have a smoother journey into cyberspace than I had!