In years past launching a web site required knowing the technology to actually write “code.” These days there are incredibly powerful tools – called website builders – that allow almost anyone to create a website.

“These days there are incredibly powerful tools – called website builders – that allow almost anyone to create a website.” 

What is a website builder?

A website builder is a piece of software bursting with different tools and features which are used to create a variety of websites, for a variety of purposes in a simple, easy and enjoyable way. Benefits of a website building include:

• Templates and Add-Ons. Website builders work on the principle of simplicity, it is simply a matter of selecting one template from a vast library of templates, then adding your own information such as images, texts, graphics, etc. It can be as simple or complex as you want it to be and you can add lots of standard features such as shopping, payment processing, blogs, social media and communities.
• No Coding Experience Required. Anyone with basic understanding of how to use a computer can create professional looking websites in the comfort of their own home. To create a great website using a web builder, you don’t need any coding experience at all, you just need to be able to use a mouse and keyboard and the dream website is simply clicks away.
• Ease of Use. Website builders are becoming increasingly popular across the internet, due to the great ease of use. Website builders can be used by anyone for any purpose – whether that’s making the next big thing, making an online portfolio, starting an online business – the possibilities are endless.
• Integrated Hosting and Maintenance. A good website builder will also provide hosting and maintenance support, meaning there is no reason why you could not be creating and running a successful website from your own bedroom! There are many different plans which include different levels of additional services, complete with different – simply choose the one which suits you best and you will have a host of features to get you on your way.
• Low Cost. Cost is not a big factor when it comes to website builders. A simple website can be built and maintained for next to nothing – as soon as you need to grow, you can opt for a package which will allow you to do so with more features.

Overall, a web builder is a piece of software that will allow anyone, of any age and skill ability to make websites for a huge range of purposes.

Steps to Setting up Your Website

There is a robust community of freelancers that provide turn-key support for any or all of the functions outlined here if you don’t feel like doing it yourself. But if you do here is a step by step guide.

To set up your web site, there are a few main steps:

• Select a domain name (www.mysite.com) and service to host your site
• Choose your website builder platform to build your website
• Setup and launch your website
• Modify and improve your website design

Step 1: Domain Name and Hosting

To get a new website online, you’re going to need a domain name (a web address like mywebsite.com) and a hosting service (a service that puts your website on the internet).

• Where do you get a domain name and hosting? There are multiple services that provide domain names and also provide hosting service including Blue Host, Go Daddy, register.com and Internic (among many others).
• Cost. Domain name (with hosting) will cost you around $3 – $5 a month. Included with your domain name is often an email address tied to your site. (you@YourSite.com). This is better to use for your business than a generic Gmail or Yahoo address.
• New Extensions. Domain names usually end with .com, .org or .net, but in recent months, a huge amount of domain extensions (the end part of the web address, like .com) have come out, ranging from .agency to .pizza. Avoid these weird extensions and go with .com, .net or .org. Local domains such as .co.uk for UK or .es for Spain are preferable. Avoid local domains like .uk.com
• What kind of domain name should I pick? The domain name should closely resemble the name of the business or person around which the site is focused. Here are some tips for thinking up a really good domain name for your site.
  • It must be memorable. Will users remember it? If it requires a lot of effort to type correctly, due to trying to spell it, the length or the use of un-memorable words or sounds, you’ve probably kissed goodbye to a good portion of your branding and marketing value.
  • It must be unique. Does it stand out from the crowd? Never buy a domains that are simply the plural, hyphenated or misspelled version of an already established domain.
  • Use Your Top Keywords. Think of about 10 keywords or terms that describe your website in the best way possible. Mix them up, add prefixes & suffixes to create some really cool domain name ideas.
  • The Shorter the Better. It’s easy to type and easy to remember. It gives the possibility of using more characters in the URL in the SERPs and a better look and fit for offline marketing material.
• Watch Out For Copyright Infringement. Check that you’re not infringing on anyone’s copyright with the name of your website. To do this head over to copyright.gov and search before you buy your URL name.
• Don’t Use Hyphens or Numbers. It makes it difficult to give your domain name verbally and it fails the easy to remember or type test.
• What if I already have a domain name? This is no problem at all. If have a domain and hosting, feel free to skip this step and move onto Step 3, where I’ll going to explain you how to set up a website.

Once you’ve bought your domain name and set up your hosting, you’re ready to build your website.

Step 2: Choose a Web Site Builder Service

Before you start worrying about color schemes and domain names, you’ve got to decide what platform you’re going to build your website with. What do I mean by “platform”? In 2019, content management systems (CMS) like WordPress have made creating a website accessible to everyone. To put simply, a content management system (or website building platform) is a user-friendly platform for building websites and managing your own online content, instead of using a bunch of loose HTML pages.

There are three main content management platforms that most of the world’s websites are run on. WordPress, Drupal and Joomla.

• WordPress – 50.07% of websites are run on WordPress
• Drupa – 17.01% of websites are run on Drupal
• Joomla – 6.44% of websites are run on Joomla

OpenSourceCMS.com

Building out your own a fully functioning and nicely designed website is quite easy actually, even for a complete novice Some platforms require you to know a little bit of HTML / CSS or other coding languages, so you really need to decide where you are at in terms of website building ability. If you are a beginner then you would be best to choose WordPress.

WordPress is the most widely used platform. Why?

• Free with Many Options. WordPress doesn’t cost a dime to download or install, and there’s a huge community who have designed beautiful themes and templates, making it easy to get going fast. You’ll never run out of uniqueness…
• User Friendly Even for Newbies. The WordPress platform is easy to use. It’s intuitive and if you know how to use standard Microsoft programs such as Word or Excel, then chances are you’ll already know how to publish your own content on the site you’re about to build. Another great thing about WordPress is that it can be easily customized with plugins, that can pretty much do anything to your site and make it exactly how you want it.
• Scales from the Simple to the Complex. From basic blogs to beautiful business sites and online stores, WordPress can handle just about any kind of website. WordPress is used by eBay, Mozilla, Reuters, CNN, Google Ventures and even NASA.
• Responsive (works on mobile/tablets). The website you build will instantly be responsive, looking great on every mobile device, smartphone and tablet.
• Large Support Community available to help. WordPress has a large community of developers who will be happy to help you out should you get stuck with anything to do with your WordPress site.

Drupal is a very powerful platform that is popular with web developers and experienced coders, but it comes with a very steep learning curve that makes it a bad choice for beginners.

Joomla is similar to WordPress and works great for websites too, but you’ll need at least a little bit of technical coding to make it work the way you want.

Step 3: Setting up Your Website

Setting up your website involves using your website builder and following some steps. Here are the steps for setting one up using WordPress.

• Installing WordPress. Most web hosts will have the 1-click-installation integrated as standard within their dashboard. These are the steps you need to follow with the “1-click-installation” process. This will be the same or very similar on all of the other major web hosting companies websites.
  • Log in to your own hosting account / control panel.
  • Go to your control panel within your hosting account.
  • Click on “1 Click Installs”
  • Find the “WordPress” icon and click.
  • Choose the domain where you want to install your website.
  • Click the “Install Now” button and that’s basically it! You’ll get details of how to access your new WordPress website.
• Choosing a Theme. Website builders like WordPress uses the concepts of “themes” – which are prepackaged looks and functions organized into a theme. A “Theme” in simple terms is a collection of files that you can download from WordPress that work together to produce the front end styling of your website. WordPress themes mainly contain the following:
  • complete design or style of your site
  • font design
  • color themes
  • widget locations
  • page layouts (or templates)
  • styles for blog posts and blog archives
  • additional stylistic details
  • menu styles / structure
  • Responsive design

WordPress, like other web site builders, provide you with a generic theme to start with but there as many themes to pick from – many of which are free. WordPress automatically installs a very basic theme – called Twenty Fifteen – to get you started. It looks like this…

You probably want to find your website’s own identity and go with something that not many people have. With WordPress you have access to literally thousands of themes designed by WordPress developers to help you make your site look great. To find a theme:

• Login to your WordPress Dashboard. You can do this by typing your web address along with /wp-login (Example: https://yoursite.com/)
• Type in your username and password and then you’re in.

Once you’re logged in, this is the view of your WordPress dashboard.

Once you spend just a few minutes exploring the WordPress dashboard, you’ll understand how everything works.

• Getting Started With Free Themes. WordPress has thousands of FREE themes that you can access via the “Appearance” section on the left of the dashboard.
  • Click “Appearance” then “Themes”. This will take you to the main page for WordPress’ free themes section.

• • Then click on the “Add New” button which will take you through to where all the free WordPress themes are.
  • Here you’ll be able to search for themes via a range of really handy filters like: Most popular (Most downloaded + used themes) Featured (Themes chosen by WordPress and featured) Latest Theme (Latest themes to be released on the platform)
  • Then if you click on “Feature Filter” you then have even more options to help you find the best theme for your site.

• Premium Themes. If you’re looking for something a bit more professional, more design led and more robust than premium themes might be what you’re looking for.
  • Advantages over Free Themes. Premium themes have many advantages over Free Themes such as reliable code base and superior support if something goes wrong with your site. Also they just look and function better than the free themes you can pick up on WordPress Theme Directory. Some premium themes are more like web design software, where you can actually design and build your own theme designs and page layouts / templates. This gives you more flexibility in the type of site you want to build.
  • Sources for Premium Themes. MyThemeShop or Theme Forest are two popular sources and both provide support, quality of code, constant updates and improvements of premium themes, MyThemeShop is ideal for the beginner WordPress web builder. Theme Forest is great for the sheer number and variety of themes available.
• How to Install Your New WordPress Theme. Click on the option “Install” then click “Activate”

Feel free to change themes as many times as you wish, as it has no effect on the content you already have on there (blog posts, pages, images). Rest assured they are all safe and won’t be deleted or anything nasty like that.

• How to Add Content & New Pages To Your New Site. WordPress and the themes you select make it easy to create content for your site. This includes pages, blogs, and other features and functions.
• .How to Create A New Page In WordPress. In the WordPress Dashboard sidebar look for the section called “Pages” then go down to the option “Add New”.

• You then land on a screen which will probably look to you a lot like Microsoft Word. It’s very similar in function too. You can add text, images, video, shortcodes and loads more.
• Once you’ve added your text that you want on the page, click the “Save Draft” button on the right menu bar and then click “Preview” to see what you’ve actually created before you publish it to “Live”

• How to Add Pages To Your Menu. To show your new page in the top navigation bar of your WordPress website, you’ll need to do the follow 3 easy steps.
  • In the Dashboard sidebar Click “Appearance” and then “Menus”
  • The page that you’ve just created will be displayed in the “Pages” box to the left of center.
  • Click on the tick box to the pages you want added to your menu, then click “Add to Menu”.In the “Menu Structure” section, you can move the order of the pages around by just clicking and dragging into position.

• How to Create Blog Post Pages. “Posts” are web pages where you’ll publish content via your blog. If your website is going to have a blog section, then “Posts” is where you’ll need to go to publish this type of content. With posts, you can categorize the content really easily within WordPress. If you want to include a blog to your website, you can use different categories and posts. Let’s say you want to create a category named “blog”. To do so, simply add it to your menu and start making posts.Here’s a quick step by step guide on what you need to do:
  • To create a new category for your blog, simply go to “Posts -> Categories”
  • Another way is to create a blog post by doing this…. “Posts -> Add New”. Then with your completed blog post, you just assign it the right category and you’re ready to publish.
  • So you’ve created your category for that particular blog post. You can then just add it to the menu, so that it’s easily accessed by one and all!
• How To Install A WordPress Plugin To Help You Get The Most Out Of The Platform. Plugins are modules or extensions that are installed into the WordPress CMS to increase the capabilities of your website. They add extra features, usability, tools and much more to your site that normally doesn’t come with your WordPress Theme. Plugins help to add functionality where once you would of had to build the whole site again if you missed anything out.
  • Installing A Plugin. To install a plugin, head over to the “Plugin” section in the Dashboard menu and then select “Add New”. Use the search function to find the plugin you want for your site. There’s over 30,000 plugins available, so have a good look around and make sure you read the reviews. Not all of them are great, and you should look to see what people have said about them. Also check to see if the Plugin is still being updated on a regular basis.
• With your theme selected, content added and plugins installed , you now have a fully functional website.

Step 4: Modifying Your Website

You can modify your website in many ways once it is launched:

• Add New Content. you can continuously add new pages, posts, and other content including images and videos.
• Modify Design. your theme will give you options to change colors, fonts, layouts, and other site elements.
• Add Plugins. you can add plugins (some free and some for a fee) that add many functionalities such as shopping cart, social media, list building, portfolios, payment processing and may other common features.

You can always update your website but those should get you off to a really good start.