Getting Started

If you are interested in building your own website this article contains information you need; you may want to bookmark this page right now or print this article so you can refer to it as you continue with your project. If you are interested in creating a stream of income using the internet from your home click here to read my article, "How To Earn Money On The Internet".

Building a website is not as difficult as you might think. Free services are popping up all over the web that make it easy for anyone with a computer to create their own site, even with no previous technical experience. If you have ever used any social networking sites like Facebook or MySpace you probably already have some of the skills you will need to get started. Don’t feel like you have to do it all in one night. As it is with anything worth doing it takes time to teach yourself the skills that you will need to be successful. Things won’t make sense at first, but later all the parts will start to come together.



Blog/Web Hosting Services

The first thing you will need is a good web-host. Web-hosting services vary greatly in quality and price. For a beginner I highly recommend using Site Build It! web-hosting services.

I have used many and, in my opinion, Site Build It! has the best tools and support for someone who is just starting out. They also offer excellent educational videos, training materials, and online support. Below is a list of other popular web-hosting services followed by a review of some of the ones that I have tried:

Google Blogger and Google Sites: Google offers free blogging and web-hosting services. This is the second blog I have used Blogger for; the first one is a simple weblog--I find it very easy to use, especially for using Google Adsense ads. My niece has also put together a nice blog on Blogger. I built a site using Google Sites too, and it is making me lots of money now. Click this link to take a look: CHIMAYO CHILE BROTHERS. I love Google! Google has some great tutorials and other free support and it's all free! 

Wordpress: Wordpress is another free web-host that is very easy to learn and use. If you aren't planning on adding advertisements to your blog, this is a great free service! It is almost as easy to use as Google Blogger; their customer service is great; they make it easy to customize your pages with photos and it takes only a few minutes to get set up. If you don't mind paying for it, they do have options that will allow you to include advertisements.

Microsoft Office: Microsoft Office offers free web-site/blog hosting. I started writing restaurant reviews with them at http://realitycontrol.web.officelive.com. Unfortunately, they have sometimes had technical problems which made it difficult for me to login and make changes or update the site with new reviews. It appears that they have resolved these problems but they are still not the easiest to learn and use.

Comcast: Most people don’t realize it but if they have ComCast High-speed Internet, they probably are already paying for a blogging account. I don’t know anyone who’s ever been happy with Comcast for anything. The service is very slow, customer support is horrible, and there is only so much you can do with it, but it is fairly easy to use and you are probably already paying for it. Just log in to your account and start your web-site or blog. You will probably have to call them at first to get rolling but they are already charging you for the service so you might as well use it.

SquareSpace.com: I started my first blog with SquareSpace.com. I found it to be more functional and easier to work with than Comcast but it’s not perfect and it’s not free (in fact, it’s kind of pricey). There is a lot that you can do with it as far as personalizing your site and, consequently, there is a lot you can learn from using it. Customer service is not that great. They do offer a free 14-day trial, though, and it is good practice even if you don’t plan on using them for the long run.

GoDaddy.com: GoDaddy as a website building platform called "Website Tonight", I found it extremely difficult to use and the customer service is lousy. When I called them with problems the representative I spoke  with kept saying "You can't do that with our service," but I sometimes found out how to do it on my own later anyway. Here is a link : GoDaddy.com Hosting Plans

WebHostingPad: Webhostingpad

Google Blogger: http://www.blogger.com/home

WordPress: http://wordpress.com/

Microsoft Office: http://www.officelive.com/free-website

Comcast: http://www.comcast.net

SquareSpace: http://www.squarespace.com/

GoDaddy: GoDaddy.com Virtual Dedicated Hosting

Homestead: http://www.homestead.com/

HostMonster: http://www.hostmonster.com/

One.com: http://www.one.com/en_US/

HelioHost: http://www.heliohost.org/home/


I started three blogs simultaneously with different web-hosts and I believe it really accelerated my learning curve because it exposed me to a wide variety of web-publishing/blogging techniques. I recommend practicing with as many hosts as you can without driving yourself crazy.
If the idea of setting up your own website is overwhelming begin with a blog. Basically, a blog is a web-page that has been set up for journal entries. People start blogs to earn residual income, promote a business, or just to express themselves. There are blogs on every subject you can imagine. My first blog was a fiction blog, click here to check it out. Once you become comfortable making blog entries, you will have a better understanding of how to start putting together your own independent web-pages. Anyone who can keep a journal can start a blog and they are very easy to maintain. Don’t worry about making it pretty at first, just get the blog started and see where it goes–-you will have plenty of time later to make corrections and play with formatting.
The important thing at first is to experiment while you build content. Later you can improve and build on that content. Once you feel you have it more or less presentable, send out an email to your friends (and me) and see if you can get some input.

Research

Research the internet for ideas. I researched how to do it with simple Google searches; I found the following resources to be useful when I was getting my first site going:

Quackit: http://www.quackit.com/

1st Site Free: http://www.1stsitefree.com/

The Site Wizard: http://www.thesitewizard.com/



Steve Pavlina: http://www.stevepavlina.com/



Web Source: http://www.web-source.net/

Of course you can find many articles related to site-building on the web, but I highly recommend reading Quackit for general information. 1st Site Free offers a great outline of how to get started, and also has an excellent index of terms. The SiteWizard has put together an amazing site with lots of great information, but it could be a little intimidating to someone who is just getting started. Web-Source is a web hosting service which also has tutorials on how to get started.

Equip Yourself

Start taking pictures with a digital camera, video camera, or web-cam: A simple inexpensive camera will do--if you don't have one, you can get a good one at a reasonable price.

HTML

Everyone has seen this cryptic acronym, but few know what it means. Actually, it is the code that the internet is written in. I recommend reading these pages for information on HTML coding and what it means. Again, at first I didn’t understand it much, but nevertheless, I spent fifteen minutes copying HTML code onto a Word document just to get the feel of it. Then, I tried copying it onto my web-page just to see what it would look like. At first it didn’t work, but after I fooled around with it for awhile I figured it out. You don’t have to be a master of HTML coding, but it if you want to do more than just blog you should at least understand what it is and more or less how to use it.

Domain Names

Once you get your blog started, you may notice that instead of a your own domain name, you have a something that looks like “www.http://example.yourhost.com” (“example” being the name of your site, and “yourhost” the name of the hosting service that is hosting your blog. This is fine if all you want to do is put some photos up or you are just hobby-blogging. But, if you are planning on building a website that is going to earn you money, you will want to register your own domain name. This is a lot easier than I thought it would be. You may want to use your current web-host for this service, but there are many web-hosting sites out there that can help you with this. It costs a little money, anywhere from $3.00 to $100.00 per year. If you haven’t thought about it yet, start by making a list of domain names that you might want to use. You will have to check with the web-hosting site to make sure your domain name is available--this service should be free. The first domain name I ever registered was FreetheGods.com.

Although it is not absolutely necessary, I create a back-up of all of my work with a separate web-host. I do this in order to learn more about different services and web-publishing techniques, to protect myself against server failure, and just in case I decide to drop my primary server for lousy service. I recommend you do the same–-it is easy to cut and paste from one site to another.