A complete step by step guide for Beginners
A step by step guide to creating a website for your business, your own personal brand or anything else!
Making a website in 2022 is much easier than it was a few years ago. All you need is the right set of resources and tools. And most of these resources are available for FREE online.
You can make a website without knowing anything about coding or graphic design or web development. And you don’t have to pay any freelancer designers, web agencies or website builders.
What do you need to create your website?
Basically, you need three things to create or set up a website of your own:
- A Domain name
- Web Space for hosting the website on the Internet
- A software to build your website. In this case, it’s going to be WordPress.
You are required to register a Domain Name. And rent Web Space. That is the usual terminology. Both of these are valuable assets for your business. You don’t own these assets, but get to use them, as long as you pay for them.
Both, Domain names and Web Space are paid services. And you pay for them on an annual per year basis. You may get discounts and better pricing offers if you commit to pay for 2 or 3 years. But that varies from one company to the other.
Usually, both Domain Name Registration and Web Space are sold by the same company.
The software with which you build or create your website is called the platform. Since, we shall use WordPress. So, the platform on which your website is built is WordPress.
WordPress is the preferred platform for creating websites, and is used by almost 40% websites on the Internet. It is easy to use, and has some remarkable features that Search Engines love.
Steps to create your own website
Let’s begin with listing the steps.
- Choose a Domain Name
- Registering a Domain Name & Buying Web Space
- Install WordPress on your Web Space
- Configure your Web Site to suit your business type
- Customize your website design, color, layout etc.
- Add important web pages to the website
1. Choose a Domain Name
As I mentioned earlier, your Domain Name is an asset. And a very valuable one.
The most common domain extensions are .com, .net and .org. Try to get a domain name with these extensions if you plan on targeting International visitors. However, if you are targeting visitors from a single country, you can choose country level domains with extensions like .ca, .de, .jp, .in.
Some day, when your website is popular, people will be wanting to pay millions of dollars for your domain name. Or waiting furtively when, or if, you skip renewing your Domain Name, and they will get to own it.
So, be very careful. Always renew your Domain Name well within the time allowed.
If you are creating a website for your business, the domain name should reflect your business name. Like yourbusinessname.com or yourbusinessname.de or yourbusinessname.co.in etc. And if you are creating a personal website, the domain name could be yourname.com or yourname.ca or yourname.jp.
The domain name you want should be easy to remember and easier to spell on the phone.
You may have made a list of the domain names you want, but they might have already been taken by somebody. So, the best way is to check here if the domain name you want is available.
This is the Hostgator website and they will also offer you suggestions on the variations of your domain name that are available.
Check and shortlist your domain, but do not register it right now. You have a deal coming.
2. Registering a Domain Name & Buying Web Space
Your website files (pages, images, videos etc) will be stored in the web space that you buy (rent). Considering the fact that Search Engines place a lot of emphasis on page load speeds, a good web host is highly relevant. Since you cannot go into the nitty gritty of the Server configuration, its Internet backbone, redundancy, connectivity and other such parameters, your best bet is to go for companies who are reputed and reliable. Hostgator is one such name.
What you need to look out for is a
- lot of web space,
- unlimited bandwidth and
- 99.99% uptime.
With Hostgator, you get them all. Plus a few extras like
- Free Domain Name for one year,
- Free SSL certificate.
Now, that’s why I asked you to wait, and not register the domain name then. And look, you have saved yourself almost $13.
Here is a screenshot of the different plans available for web hosting. 
Unless you are planning to make a lot of websites, the Hatchling plan is good for you. And if you do intend to create a few websites, buy the Baby Plan.
You can see the complete list of web hosting features that these plans offer. I have added a screenshot below to apprise you of the main hosting features.
When you have bought your web space, you will receive the information to log in to your web space. Save it somewhere you can find it easily.
3. Install WordPress on your web space
Now that you have your own web space, lets begin construction (create your website). You do this by installing WordPress. Let’s break up the process into easy steps.
- Access the cPanel
- Go to Apps Installer Section
- Double Click on WordPress icon
- Start Installation
- Provide website related information
- Select username and password for website administrator panel
- Choose design of your website (Theme)
- Click Install
cPanel
Firstly, login to your Hostgator web space account, and open the cPanel.
cPanel is the feature rich Control Panel for your web space. You will use it for installing software (like we are going to install WordPress), setting up email addresses on your domain, FTP information, Site metrics, set up databases and a lot of other useful stuff.
Select username and password for website administrator panelApps Installer Section
Once you are there, scroll down to Softaculous Apps Installer section.
Double Click on the WordPress icon
The next screen looks like this.
Start Installation
Click on “Install Now” and watch the action begin.The screen will prompt you to choose the installation URL which is your domain name (use the one you just registered when buying your web space).
Provide website related information
You will also be asked to enter the Site Name and Site Description. Continue with whatever is shown on the default screen. You can always change these settings later.
Choose Username and Password for Admin
Scroll down and you will ask you Admin username, Admin password and a valid email address. Provide this information, and then scroll down further.
Next come the Advanced Options for the WordPress installation of your website. A lot of information of your website is stored in a database. It helps making changes much easier. The installer will allot random name to the Database, and if you have no specific reasons to change these, continue as is.
Choose a Theme for your website
Theme is the design of your website.
There are thousands of themes which you can use to create your website. And the best part of using WordPress or similar software is that you can change the theme whenever you want. You don’t have to create a fresh website if you want to change the design. All you need to do is select the new theme, and change a few images to suit your business model. This is possible because your site information is stored in a database, which we created in the steps above.
But, for now, we will choose the Photoshoot theme shown here. Looks impressive!
The above screenshot shows layout of different pages of your website. Click now on “Select theme”.
Click Install
Enter your email information, so that installation details can be mailed to you. And click “Install”
WordPress installation is a very simple process and should not take more than 3-4 minutes to finish.
Once the installation is complete, you can view your website in your browser.
And this is what your website looks like now:
You can also access the administrative panel of your website using the Administrative URL displayed on the screen along with the Admin username and admin password you created while installing WordPress.
If you are not able to see your website in the browser, inform Hostgator.
Configure WordPress to suit your business type
It’s time now to customize your website to your own colour and design preferences. Browse to your Admin URL and Login to your administrative control panel using the credentials you set up here.
You will see this Dashboard on your computer screen. The menus here are self explanatory. You can edit your front page, add additional pages, add a blog post or simply view your site.
Next, look for “Settings” in the vertical menu on the left. And then go to “General”
You will see the following fields which you can edit. Change the “Site Title” and the “Tagline” to suit your business, products or services. You need not change to WordPress Address and the Site Address, unless you are an expert user. You recently added an email address while installing WordPress, which is displayed here as the Administration Email Address. If you wish to change it, you may do it now. Or else, you can change it anytime later.
5. Customize your website design, color, layout etc.
As mentioned earlier, WordPress uses themes for various design elements of a website. So, if you need to customize the design of your website, you need to customize the theme. It is not very difficult.
In the screenshot above, you can see all the themes installed (but not active) on your website, and also the Active theme, which is in use. In your case, it is Photoshoot. When you move the mouse / cursor over the other themes, you get an option to Activate them or see a Live Preview. You can activate any theme you like. Once you have done that, click on Customize.
Here you get to change the Site Identity (title of the website and a few more parameters), Font Colors, Header and background Images, Menus, Widgets, Homepage settings and add your own CSS.
You can go back to the main menu using the arrow shown in the image above.
Use the Theme Options to change the Site Logo, Favicon, Copyright text and Blog Title.
6. Add important web pages to the website
Next, you need to modify the home page of your website. Access the “Pages” section in the vertical menu on the left, or click on the “Add additional pages” as shown in the image below.
Similarly, you can add new Blog Posts to your website, using the “Posts” menu
Congratulations! You have created your first website.
Go, tell the world about your achievement. Give them the URL of your website, and get their feedback.
Your website needs to be updated regularly. So, learn new stuff and keep improving.
The next step on your agenda should be to Drive traffic to your website.