Starting a Web Site

June 27th, 2008 | by Scott

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I got a question from Natalie in the comments of this posting that I actually see quite a bit, basically it’s how to start a web site when you don’t have any knowledge about building sites.

Natalie actually gave the domain of an example site she would like hers to resemble, but I’m not going to go into specifics on achieving a specific look or style here because it’s too big of a topic for a single posting and I want this to be helpful to everyone who is looking to start their first web site.

Getting over the intimidation factor

Don’t let all of the geek language and the technical nature of the web intimidate you, at the core a web page is nothing more than a text file you save on a hard drive–just like if you were to write a letter in Office or some other text editing program and save it to your desktop.

The difference with a web page is that you normally use a special type of of text editor to create the file with, and instead of just saving it to your desktop you’re going to save it (upload it) on the hard drive of your hosting account online so that others can access it in their web browsers.

Web pages can be more advanced than that, they can be loaded with nifty scripts and applications and they can be highly interactive…but most of those things will be available to you through simple copy-n-paste type installations and even with advanced features added in your page is still just a text file at it’s core.

Examine what you’ll need

To start a web site you’re going to need a domain name, cheap (but reliable) hosting, and a program to create (write) your pages with.

I’ve linked to NameCheap above for domain names because they’re 1 of the 2 registrars I prefer to use, and of those 2 NameCheap’s user interface is the easier in my opinion for a beginner to navigate and make sense out of.

I’ve also linked to HostGator hosting because of the 3 hosts I like to use, they have a great deal and a very easy interface for beginners to work in.

A program for building your site

This is a little more complex because you have to decide what type of site you want to build.

If you’re going to make a blog, or even a blog-like site (which I would consider the example Natalie mentioned in her question to be) then I would suggest using WordPress.

It’s free to use and pretty easy to get up and running, plus has a large community of supporters who offer hundreds of free themes (site design layouts) you can choose from.

There’s a little bit of a learning curve with WordPress, however for just $15 there’s a great set of video tutorials available that I highly recommend.

For a non-blog type site where you’ll just be creating stand-alone web pages individually you can do this in 1 of 2 ways.

If you know HTML, CSS, JavaScript and PHP or ASP scripting then you can use any text editor you like to create your pages. (I told you web pages were just text files at their core!)

But I’ll assume that the people this posting is intended to help aren’t masters of scripting and coding and will want something much easier to build pages with. So, I’d recommend using the visual editor (it’s drag-n-drop what you see is what you get) in CoffeeCup’s HTML editor. Download CoffeeCup HTML Editor - Click Here

CoffeeCup has been around for years and theirs is some of the best software you’ll ever use, hands down.

Get it up and get running

Once you have registered a domain name, signed up for a hosting account and decided which software you’ll be using to build your site with it’s time to jump in and start tinkering.

That may not sound like professional advice, but the specifics of web design are beyond this posting and trust me when I say that the first few pages you create will probably not stay on your site very long because there’s a little “learn as you go” that needs to take place as you become familiar with the tool(s) you’re using.

So, the best advice I can give you is to go ahead and build a few pages, see how everything that you’re using works and get a feel for how you want your web site to grow. Then delete what you’ve created and start over using your new knowledge to create pages that you’ll be proud of and that will stick around for a long time on your site.

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