Are you trying to build your first website? It’s likely an exciting time for your company as you start to make your online presence known, offer your product for online shoppers, or you’re simply just starting your company and you’re trying to make your first company website.
It may seem like it’s going to take a lot of work to get done being just the beginning, but there are so many great tools and tutorials out there that almost anyone can build their first website from scratch in no time at all. While you may be tempted to hire a professional website designer, you can really handle it all on your own by learning the basics. From setting up your hosting to choosing a site builder, here is a look at how you can build your first website all on your own.
Where to begin
The very first thing you’ll want to do is setup your hosting and domain to build your website. You have to purchase these items and sometimes you can get a package that contains both. Purchase the domain and hosting from a reliable source and find out if they offer you any website-building tools. Otherwise, choose who will host your website and who will sell you a domain in which you’ll have to determine your domain name.
Build the website
Next, you’ll need to choose who you’ll work with for the website framework. This could be a website builder, a content management system, or you could build one from scratch if you want a DIY approach. Building one yourself from scratch will involve a great deal of experimentation, patience, and time as you do a lot of trial and error.
Doing it yourself from scratch will allow you to really personalize your website, where you’ll learn the basics of coding, the languages of HTML, CSS, and PHP, and get to make your website exactly how you want it.
If you’re not as tech-savvy, you’ll love using a website builder with an online business that provides this service. You could setup a website in literally minutes. Sometimes a shared hosting service will offer a website builder as a part of your package for no extra charge. You would just have to choose your template in the site builder, customize it to your business, and save it. It’s as easy as can be which is perfect for many busy people that just want to get their business online.
A great in-between option is a content management system, like WordPress, in which you get to have a site put together easily with a great deal of customization available to you. You’ll need to be a little bit tech-savvy for this option, knowing how to install the CMS, how to customize it with free and low-cost themes that make sense for your purposes, and then how to customize your theme to your needs. Then you’ll need to understand how to navigate your theme and how to maintain it.
Determining the best options for first website
With all of these options at your disposal, it can be overwhelming to decide which ways to go when building your first website. For businesses that are full of tech-savvy individuals, you may want to build your first website from scratch and not worry as much about hosting companies with packages that offer these types of services.
On the other hand, since you are new at this process, you may want a hosting and domain package that includes a website builder, which will make your life much easier right now. For those companies that want to get the ball rolling but want some more of the customization possibilities, a content management system may be a great option, since you can always buy themes and other great options at a later time. Consider if you are more of a DIY person, if you need to be able to grow you company with a CMS, or if you prefer a website building tool for the simplest solution.
Use this guide to understand the basics of building your first website and you’ll be off and running with your new website in no time.
