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Starting a new website might sound like a daunting task to you, or perhaps not if you believe the slick commercials from Wix or Squarespace; in which case “all” you need is a computer and some creative juices.
Well there is more to it than that, so we’ll try to break it down to bite sized pieces.
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Establish a Domain Name
First you need a domain name, or web address that people will type into their address bar on their web browser (think Chrome, Firefox).
e.g thisgreatwebsitename.com or catsruledogsdrool.org
Note two things here:
1) typing the “www” is no longer needed, it was in the early days, but most web browsers and domain servers negotiate the address without it.
2) the extension, the part after the dot. “com” has traditionally been understood to mean commercial or company, though it doesn’t restrict the type of site you can have with this extension. These days, there are many different extensions available, like .church. net, .tv.
So you’ll pick a unique name that is not already taken by using a domain name provider, like Bluehost or NameHero to register the name. This checks a central database controlled by a nonprofit organization (ICANN) to see if it’s available to use. If so, you sign up, pay an annual fee and it’s yours!
Hosting Provider
Fortunately you can get your domain and your hosting provider all in one place. In fact many hosting providers (like Bluehost or NameHero ) will give you a free domain name for one year when you sign up with their hosting plan. We here at Digi are affiliates of Bluehost, so if you use this link to sign up, we’d appreciate it!
So what’s hosting all about? It’s simply disk space on a hard drive on a server that’s part of a large collection of servers, in a secure building, with great air conditioning and fire protection.
Essentially you are renting this hard drive space; the provider takes care of security, backups, and keeping the operating system up to date.
There are a large variety of packages available depending on the amount of websites or domains you want to ‘host’, the hard drive speed and space you might need, if you want automatic backups, email services, or CDN (content delivery network – fancy term for geographically distributed data centers), plus a host (haha) of other options.
Web Platform
The last piece for a complete picture is the software or platform you will use to build the pages that make your website.
This can be WordPress or Wix or Squarespace or plain old HTML (but why?).
There are many varieties of page builders these days; some easier to use than others.
Most of the ‘drag and drop’ style are appealing to folks who just want to get a web presence and aren’t too techy. The easier the better.
These tools are improving at a rapid pace and the more popular the platform, the more tutorials, resources and forums you will likely find to answer any question that might come up.
And questions will come up! That’s good – it’s a natural part of learning something new.
Ideally though, it all comes together on the “Home” page.
The platform or builder allows you to create at the very least, a “Home” page that is made up of HTML, containing text and images that are served up or presented to the user via their web browser.
One page websites are very popular because of the abundance of mobile devices; one long page has many sections offering different content areas when you scroll down; easily done on a mobile device.
The takeaway here is there are a lot of OPTIONS. And that’s good! Because you will likely be able to find a solution that fits your budget and your web presence needs.