How to Create a DIY Website
Did you just start a new business or non-profit organization? Are you thinking about starting a blog or creating a website for an event such as your wedding? Do you need a website to make your business appear credible and help your customers find you? Most importantly, are you on a (tight) budget?
If you answered yes to one or more of the questions above, you’re in the right place! Creating a Do-It-Yourself website is easy and requires little money. Contrary to the common belief, you don’t have to be a programming or design expert to make beautiful websites–just to have an open mind and the willingness to learn.
These simple step-by-step instructions will guide you how to Do It Yourself.
Step 1: Select a Domain Name and a Hosting Service
First step in the process is to select a domain name, the URL address for your website. You also need to have a hosting service where your website will reside at. If you are a beginner or first time website builder, I would recommend you get both the domain name and hosting service from the same company. This will save you from having to do some technical setups to map your domain name and hosting service together.
When selecting the service provider, compare both the domain name registrar and web hosting services they provide.
Domain Name
In my opinion, this is the hardest step in the entire process. Not creating the domain name itself, but coming up with a name for your business, if you haven’t come up with one already! The domain name for your website should be a unique name that is not already being used by another website. It can be a little challenging to find a free name. Fortunately, web hosts have domain name search services that you can use to see which names are available.
You can buy domain names and web hosting services from companies such as GoDaddy, BlueHost or SiteGround. Domain names are one of the few things where you most likely will have to pay a little. You can get a domain name for free for a year from some hosting service providers, but remember that free is free. In other words, the more expensive the name is, the easier it is to remember. There are people who do business by buying and selling domain names, and the expensive ones can cost tens of thousands of dollars. However typical prices are between $15-50.
Web Hosting Service
Web hosting is like a home for your website. It stores all the applications, tools, content and images that make up your website. There are a couple of things to keep in mind when selecting a web hosting provider and before signing up for a monthly / annual contract with them.
Price
This is the second area where you will have to spend a few dollars. Web hosting providers can charge between $10 and $25 per month for hosting your website. Things that impact the pricing vary from number of websites you’ll have, speed, and storage to security certificates, etc. Take a look at this example from GoDaddy and compare it with BlueHost. There are often discounts available. Be careful though, normally the discounted prices are valid for a year only, after which you’ll have to pay full price.
Domain Extensions
You may need to do some research if you want to have a more unique domain extension than your typical .com or .net. Many of the hosting service providers support only your most common domain extensions such as .com, .net, .biz or .info.
Step 2: Selecting Your Content Management System
A content management system such as WordPress or Joomla can help you manage your website content: the design, images, media, forms, fonts, plugins, languages etc. WordPress is free to use and a great choice for a small business to get started. There are many free theme templates for blogs, events, businesses both online and brick and mortar, that you can modify to get started. In addition, there are many free plugins that you can use to make your user experience even better.
To install a content management system for your website, just log into your web hosting service account. They typically have an option to install and link the most common CMS systems for your page with just a couple of clicks.
After selecting your CMS system, you can go straight to editing the web pages, or take a page builder into use. More about these options below.
Step 3: Optional - Select a Page Builder
Page builders such as Divi or Elementor make building a website a breeze. You will have an easy way to create nice looking pages by dragging and dropping elements such as images, headers, text, videos, forms and icons to your site. These websites also provide a variety of themes for your disposal, free of cost! Even though you can create web pages without using one, I strongly recommend you to consider it, as it makes the design process much quicker and more enjoyable. Plus, basic versions of these builders are often free.
To get a page builder, go to your CMS system dashboard (WordPress) and find a place where you can add new plugins. Search for page builders and select the one you like. Installation takes just a few clicks! Remember to read their user guides and watch training videos before getting started.
Step 4: Select a Theme And Edit the Pages
To make website creation easy for a small business, I recommend using a ready made theme as a starting point for your website design. There are many free themes for different types of websites out there that you can download and utilize. A quick Google search ‘free WP themes’ will get you started, or you can look through the theme that WordPress offers.
To edit and customize the theme for your company or blog, go to the sample pages and change titles, logos, colors, fonts, images, placement of elements, and fill in content specific to your company. Theme creators often have great instructions available on how to edit their themes. Make sure to read their user guides or watch their videos before getting started.
A good thing to know is that themes also have paid versions available. These typically contain more functionality and more ability to edit the theme, such as fonts etc. Check what features are available in the free theme first. You can always upgrade to the paid version later.
Make sure the theme you selected is compatible with your page builder. Page builders have recommended themes available on their sites. Staying within the recommended themes can help you avoid unnecessary technical headaches.
Other Tips
Now that you have a working website under construction, you might want to add additional important functionality to help make your customers find and contact you easily and enjoy their browsing experience.
- Set up SEO to help search engines find your page. There are free plugins such as Yoast or All in One SEO Pack that you can download via WP. Optimizing your pages is an important step to help your business rank well in the Google and other search engine results.
- If you plan to send email newsletters or campaigns to your customers, you can create a sign up form and email marketing service such as Mailchimp. These types of applications allow you to collect email addresses automatically from everyone that signs up for your service, as well as automate and manage your email campaigns.
- If you have an online sales business, plugins like WooCommerce will automate the creation of your online store and associated pages. You’ll be able to manage your products and inventory, add payment gateways to charge your customers, and manage the orders.
- Remember to use your own images, free stock photos or ones for which you have a license for!
In Conclusion
Creating a DIY website does not require much technical skills, but it does require some time and perhaps learning some new skills. Building your own website can not only get your creative juices flowing, but proves to be a very enjoyable process. It gives you great insight into all the things that impact how your website is found by search engines and your customers, and allows you to utilize this information to develop the site further. You’ll be able to manage your website yourself until the point in time when you can hire someone else to do that for you.
Good luck!