How To Make A Website – Free Step By Step Tutorial
So you have decided that you want to build a website, but your not too sure how to go about doing it?
No problem, you have come to the right place. I will take you step by step through the process of setting up your own website, quickly & easily through the tutorials & screen shots on this page.
You’re about to learn how to create a fully functioning, attractive & professional website in less than 30 minutes (yes you’ve read that right – less than half an hour…) starting right now!
First of all, I’d like to start this tutorial by asking you to abandon all current beliefs that you may have about how hard and tedious it is to make a professional website – because it’s not.
The fact is, even a 10-year-old could create a website by following the 5 simple steps outlined in this tutorial. Don’t worry if you have no knowledge or understanding of websites at all – you don’t need it. I will teach everything you need to know and in less than 30 minutes from now, you can have your first website up and running! This is my promise to you.
There will be no HTML programming involved, no graphic designing, no complicated stuff like that whatsoever. I will show you how to get all of that done for you – for free.
All the steps will be accompanied by screenshot images and instructions so you can’t get lost even if you wanted to. Once you learn how to do this, you will see that it is actually extremely easy. Heck, you can even start selling your services to others for big bucks!
Have I got you excited yet? Great, let’s get started!
STEP 1 – Domain Name & Web Hosting
The first thing we need to do is to register a domain name and then setup a web hosting account.
Every website needs a domain and web hosting in order for people to be able to access your website 24/7 and from all around the world.
I recommend using a company called GreenGeeks.com to host your website, they are an American company and have great services & support at a very competitive price.
So head on over to GreenGeeks.com and lets get going.
When you get there, you should see something like this:
Once you can see the screen above, click on the “Sign Up Now” button and you will then see the page below:
You will need to enter your desired domain in the box to the left and then click “Next”. (If you already have a domain name, then enter it in the right hand side box.
Quick Tip: If your first choice of domain is not available, then just keep trying different variations until you find one that is available.
Once you have found a domain name that you are happy with, you should see the Signup form below. Simply fill out the Order form with all your details, and choose a suitable plan.
Quick Tip: I usually try to pay for at least 12 months in advance, not only will you save a heap of money, but you also get your domain registration for free.
So once you have chosen your plan and filled out the rest of the Order Form, click on the “Create My Account” button at the bottom.
Next you will just need to wait for a confirmation email to come through with your login details. It can sometimes take a few hours to come through, but it generally happens pretty fast.
GreenGeeks may also call you to confirm your order, they have strict security measures in place to protect you (their clients) and their network, So they will just you to confirm a few things, and you will be on your way.
Once you have received your confirmation email from GreenGeeks.com you can continue with Step 2.
Check out these links if you would like to learn more about the technical side ofdomain names and web hosting, from WikiPedia.com
Step 2 – Installing WordPress on Your Site
Remember when I told you that you don’t need any programming or graphic design skills in order to make a clean, professional looking website in a matter of minutes?
Well, it’s all thanks to a free CMS platform called WordPress. This platform actually makes the website for you and all you need to do is to customize it to your own preferences!
Thanks to GreenGeeks’s built in WordPress installer (Fantastico), we can set up WordPress for our site in less than 5 minutes. That’s one more reason why I always recommend this host.
So without further ado, fire up your browser and open up the GreenGeeks Account Manager (the link is below, but you will also find it in your email).
It should look something like this:
Simply enter your email and password (that will be in the welcome email you received from GreenGeeks, and then click Login to Account Manager.
Next you will see a screen where you can manager your website:
Click on the blue “cPanel Login” button.
Once you’re logged in, you will be astonished by the number of features that you can use, but for now, just focus on finding the blue smiley named »Fantastico De Luxe« and click on it.
In the newly opened window, in the left sidebar under the column entitled »Blogs«, click on the link »Wordpress«.
Once you’re here, there are just 3 steps to do:
1) Click on »New Installation«
2) Select your domain in the drop-down menu, leave the »Install in directory« field BLANK (this is very important!) and fill in the details (username, password, site title…)
3) Click Install WordPress!
Once you do that, you will be given some information about your database (which you typically won’t need right now), just press »Finish Installation«.
See how easy that was? I told you a 10-year-old could do it! Now wait a couple of minutes and try accessing your URL, you should see a default (twenty-eleven) WP theme installed:
Congratulations, you’ve now got a real, professional website!
Step 3 – Getting familiar with WordPress
To configure your WordPress site, type /wp-admin after your url and press enter:
www.yourdomain.com/wp-admin
Once again, you will be asked to login. Simply use the information that you chose yourself while using Fantastico Deluxe (in the previous step) to install WordPress.
Welcome to the WP dashboard. This is the main control panel of your entire website.
Everything you will do, you will do it from here. Adding new content, images, videos, installing themes, plugins – it’s ALL done in the WP dashboard.
Let us check out some of the main features of WordPress:
1) Posts and Pages
WP allows you to create 2 different types of web pages: Posts and Pages. Posts are commonly used when you wish to host a blog (instead of an ordinary website).
This means that you can have post previews on your pages, so users can click on the link to read the entire post (this is a default blog layout).
On the other hand, you can also just use ordinary pages and have links to them from your »homepage« (the first page that is displayed once a visitor comes to your site).
Either will work, however, if you’re creating a blog, you will want to get familiar with posts.
2) Media
This is an area in which all of your uploaded images and videos will be stored. You can upload media either here or directly while creating a page, it’s entirely up to you.
Personally, I upload my media right on the spot, and then I can review my media here.
3) Links
WP also allows you to create various link categories which you can then populate with all sorts of links of your own choosing. This tool can be very useful when creating widgets.
4) Comments
You can enable or disable for people to leave comments on your website, which is absolutely fantastic. I highly recommend you enable people to leave a comment, as it encourages them to come back and participate in a conversation – this is how you build a community!
Of course, you can also set up comment restrictions, moderation, etc – totally flexible.
5) Appearance
This is one of the best features of WordPress – its ability to change your website’s look entirely in just a few clicks! There is another free tutorial on our website that goes into this in deep details, so be sure to look for it.
6) Plugins
Another brilliant feature from WordPress. If you ever need anything for your website, you can bet that there’s a free plugin for it – whether it be visitor counter, image slideshow, anything!
Simply search for what you need and install them with a single click – easy peasy.
Once again, all of this and more about how to set up WordPress after the initial installation is explained in our other free website tutorials – so be sure to check them out!
We would love to hear your feedback, did you like this tutorial? is there anything you didn’t understand, or needs to be explained better? We want to make this site and these website tutorials the best they can be, so we value any and all feedback from our users. Just post any comments you have in the comments form below. Thanks again.
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