If you’re contemplating these 2 questions: “Can I make my very own website?” and if so, “How should I do it?” – then you’re in the right place at the right time.
Whatever the purpose, you can definitely have a website for yourself. And even if you can pay someone to do it for you, we’ll show you here how you can make a website for yourself.
Before you even think, wait. We assure you that making a professional website is easier than you think.
This article is dedicated to those who want to set up their own site without any headaches. Following our website 101 guides will help you to build an easy yet secure website in no time.
What’s Necessary to Create a Website?
There are 3 key components that you must comprehend and apply to build a professional website from scratch.
A Domain Name
First, you have to make a name for your website. A website’s name is known as its domain name on the internet. People will use this as an address to visit your site. And don’t forget to give it a sensible name, one that mimics your brand or company name.
Every domain name has a tail end of “.com”, at least ideally. Other preferable top-level domains (TLDs) are dot net, dot org, and dot biz.
If you can, avoid the usage of hyphens in your domain name. And if you really have to, use only one. Multiple hyphens in a domain name are generally considered to be a spammy site in the Google search rankings.
Once you’ve concretely decided on the domain name, you’ve got to register it and make it your own on the internet. You can use reliable domain name registration companies like GoDaddy, BlueHost, SquareSpace, and HostGator for this task.
Website Design
Even though this part is a technical part, nowadays you don’t have to be a web designer to design your website.
You can use website builders for this part. Website builders are also websites (hilarious, right?) but they have a lot of themes and components to design a website from scratch. A lot of these designing options are simple drag-and-drop actions – so no worries, just find elements and design your website.
Remember the domain name registration companies we mentioned just a while ago? Well, most of them are also capable of building your website from scratch with simple drag-and-drop functionalities.
Top-rated website builders are Wix, SquareSpace, Shopify, GoDaddy, Weebly, and WordPress. You can use any of them to build a fully functional website design.
But we also want you to consider getting help from professional web designers as they can design an optimized website for your business.
Ultimately, the decision is up to you—decide which way best fits you.
Web Hosting
Now you need to put your website on the internet, and for that, you need a web host. But what’s that?
It’s a service. The provider of this service (the web host) allocates space on a web server for a website to store its files.
Web hosting makes a website available for viewing online. Every internet site we visit is hosted on a server.
Don’t try to cut costs when it comes to web hosting, as it’s the lifeline between your site and your site visitors.
The cost of Web hosting can vary depending on the space allocation, type of hosting, server technology, management quality, and additional services.
If you’re hiring a web developer, let him/her do the hosting for the site as it’s easy to organize and manage for your business.
One last thing – if you’re planning to do credit card-based payment through your website (e-commerce and shopping websites), you’ll need PCI-compliant hosting. Not all web hosts offer this type of hosting, so choose carefully.
How To Build A Website With CMS
CMS stands for “content management system.”
A CMS allows you to update your website without putting your hands on the actual website. You can get into any browser, log-in to your CMS, and simply add, update, or delete the contents of your website.
The good news is that there are plenty of great CMSs available. Here are some of the best CMS softwares on the internet: WordPress, Joomla, Drupal, HubSpot, Wix, Shopify, Magento, and Bitrix24.
Some of these are not free, and some of them are. We strongly recommend WordPress though, as it’s free, open-source, and easy to use as a CMS software.
There are two scenarios where you can equip your website with a CMS service. For the best comprehension, we’re using a WordPress-based example here for both scenarios. But don’t worry, most other CMS programs use almost the same approaches.
Scenario – 1: Adding WordPress CMS Into An Existing Website
After setting up your website, you can easily add the CMS service to your already existing site by following these steps.
First, create a new sub-directory (folder) on your website. Name it “blog” (you can use something other than “blog”).
Now, download WordPress from the internet.
Upload all the WordPress files into this new blog folder.
Now install WordPress in that folder.
Add this code snippet to the start of each page of your website to transform and utilize WordPress resources.
Scenario – 2: Building A Website With WordPress CMS From The Scratch
You can actually make a website equipped with CMS, to begin with. This is a longer approach but it’s safer and easier for most users.
It’s important to note that most of the web building softwares we’ve mentioned already offers this service. Meaning not only will you be able to make the website there but also have a CMS dashboard to do all the maintenance work for your website.
As promised, we’re using the WordPress-based CMS example here. So, let’s look at the steps:
Go into WordPress.com and select a plan (services and charges).
Set up both the domain name and web host.
Install WordPress and choose your website’s theme.
Create all the necessary posts and pages.
Customize the appearance and structure.
Install the required plugins and optimize the site to reduce loading time.
How To Maintain Your Website
The act of regularly checking your website for issues and mistakes to ensure its relevance and peak performance.
A well-organized and well-maintained website is one of the crucial reasons for business growth, brand expansion, high search ranking, and a positive user experience.
Website maintenance is a constant, year-long process. Thus, we’ve broken down the tasks into 4 different phases.
Weekly Maintenance
It’s better to perform weekly maintenance to ensure the best day-to-day functionality of your website. Let’s see what the weekly maintenance tasks can be below:
Checking for error-free page loading and safe storage of the previous site version.
Updating the plugins and reviewing the performance of all the forms.
Getting rid of spam comments and posts.
Checking for broken internal and external links.
Fixing the 404 errors and redirection of pages.
Monthly Maintenance
Important to market analysis like trends, CRO, and customer patterns, they are all related to the quality of your business website. A monthly checkup can help you analyze these user engagement issues and identify what needs to be improved. Monthly maintenance prepares you to make a better business strategy for the future.
Monthly maintenance tasks include the following:
Checking the loading speed of your website.
Performing security scans and debugging.
Analyzing and comparing the website’s data and statistics from the previous month.
Updating site content.
Quarterly Maintenance
It focuses on structure assessments, testing backups, automation quality, content updates, and various troubleshooting issues. Doing so will help you to keep your site fresh across various platforms and devices.
Here’s the list of quarterly maintenance tasks that you should stick with:
Reviewing websites’ structure and design.
Checking out the quality of media, graphics, and imagery on your website.
Performing SEO audit to ensure utmost effectiveness.
Testing and tweaking the website’s dynamic modules.
Deciding to add more automation or not.
Testing the website’s cross-platform performance.
Checking the website’s backup performance.
Annual Maintenance
Annual routine maintenance protects the design and function of your website and checks whether it’s aligned with your long-term business goals. It also provides an opportunity to stay up-to-date with the administrative tasks of your website (i.e., certifications and domain registration).
Here are the key tasks that you must perform in your annual site maintenance:
Renewing your website’s domain name and altering the website design.
Updating content and link references to the current year.
Evaluating your content’s freshness and checking for grammar, typos, and relevancy.
Getting rid of the dead links and email addresses.
Reviewing the top-performing content for a better annual business strategy.
How To Connect Your Website With Google Services
You need to hook up your website with Google web services to maintain the integrity of the site in the search indices. Among all the services you need, you need to start with Google’s Search Console and Analytics for your website.
Google Search Console
Previously known as the Google Webmaster Tools, it’s a free platform that will allow you to monitor how Google views your site. Moreover, you can optimize its organic presence, referring domains, mobile site performance, and the most trafficked queries using this tool.
Here’s how you can add your site to Google Search Console:
Sign into your Google account that you’re using as your business account.
Then go to the Google Webmaster Tools.
Click the “Add a property” option.
Select “Website” from its drop-down menu.
Enter the URL of your site accurately and click “continue.”
Pick a verification method for your own website. For example, HTML file upload, GA tracking code, domain name provider, or HTML tag.
Note that if your site is supported by both HTTP and HTTPS protocols, add both of them to each domain separately.
And that’s it. You’re done. Use your dashboard to monitor all the data and analytics whenever you like!
Google Analytics
Google Analytics is a platform that collects data from your enlisted websites and apps to generate automated reports that provide crucial insights into your business.
(for image-> source: https://sridharkatakam.com/add-new-website-google-analytics/)
Here’s how you can use this tool for your website:
Go to the Google Analytics site and click “Access Google Analytics”.
Once you are logged in there, click on “Admin”.
Use the account dropdown menu to select the Google account under which you would like to add your website.
In the “Property” dropdown column, create a new property.
Fill in the details as per instructions.
Once done, click the “Get Tracking ID” button to get the tracking ID and tracking code.
Finally, copy and paste the tracking code into the code of each page of your site that you want to be tracked by Google Analytics.
Conclusion
With the help of web building tools, you don’t even need to know coding to create an attractive and functional site. A simple, well-designed, and secure website will give you an extra edge in any competition. Furthermore, a website is easy to change whenever it’s necessary. But no matter how you make your website, make sure to set it up with a secure payment system, keep it SEO optimized, and maintain it.
FAQ
Is SSL important for your website?
Yes, absolutely. Without SSL certification, a site’s visitors and customers will be at a higher risk of data theft. Your site will also be at risk without SSL encryption. It protects a site from phishing and data breaches as well.