How to start a website?

Starting a website is one of the easiest things to do and in fact there are a lots resources online for you to get started RIGHT AWAY. If you contact web-development companies, they will make it sound like there is no way you will be able to build and release your website without their help or without them doing it for you for thousands of dollars.

Start a website

For those who don't know how the web works, let me explain. The Internet or the web is nothing but computers connected to each other such that they can share information. This information can be pictures, sound file, text file, encrypted documents or anything that can be packaged into digital format. When you go to a website, your browser displays the website as presented by the server. In reality, what you see on your computer when you go to a website is not how the server sees it when transmitting the website. All it sees is bunch of characters or texts and numbers. Your browser takes all that information and renders it according to the HTML markup language.



So, how do you start a website?

1. You need a computer and an Internet access.
2. You need a server to serve your website from. Today, you don't need to have your own server to start a website. There are plenty of free web-hosting services online for next to nothing. Just go to Google and type $1 dollar web-hosting. If you don't feel like paying, then simply start a blog for free just like this one and post your content.
3. Once you have a server, now you need to build your website. There are plenty of free website templates online - flash, html, or PHP websites. You just need to choose the website template that you like for your website. If you don't want to start with a template of your own, then your web-hosting company often time will provide you with a FREE website-builder. Just simply run through their wizard to create your new website the way you like it.
4. Once you have your website layout setup, now you need to populate it with your content. In the beginning, you will most likely have very basic content and as time goes on, you will have more content to add.
5. Now, that you have a website build, you need to upload it into your web-hosting space or server. For this, you need a file transfer program like Filezilla or CuteFTP. There a lots of free FTP programs for you to download and install. Once you have your FTP program, point your ftp program to your website server with login credential. Usually, your web-hosting company will give you all this information as soon as you open an account with them. Then, simply transfer the file into your server. Usually, you will have folder called www, public_html or name of your domain name for a folder. This where you need to upload your file into.
6. Now, your website is on the Internet for the world to see. However, it is not ready yet. Nobody knows your website or where to find your website on the Internet. This is where your URL or domain name comes in. URL or domain name is the string of letters you type into your browser to go to a website. As it is right now with your generic URL that you may get from your web-hosting company, the world can still visit your site. However, nobody knows it and an generic domain name won't be unique like for instance www.google.com. If you do need to give your website a unique name and corresponding unique domain name, then you have to register your domain name of your choice with a domain name registrar like GoDaddy.com or FXdomains.com. Often time, the webhosting company will help you register your choice of domain name for your website during your account signup process.
7. Now, you are done. You got yourself a website with unique domain name to be seen by millions of visitors. The only problem is that nobody knows your domain name or your website. This is where you have to advertise your website to the world. So, everyone knows to visit your website. To do this, first you have to submit your website to all the major search engines, web directories, social media and many places on the Internet like Google, Yahoo, Altavista, etc. As you keep advertising your website on the Internet, you will start to see traffic to your website increase over time. The only problem is that advertising step is a never ending process. In other word, just because you got website linked at 50 different places on the Internet doesn't mean you are done advertising. You have to keep on doing everything and anything you can on the Internet to let the people know about your website just like the coca-cola company advertising everyday to once a week...

Now you have a website of your own. It is simple as that. I have bunch of website of my own. www.goody-games.com, www.careylist.com, www.usa-roadtrips.com and others. They only cost me about 40 dollars/year....