Around 50% of small businesses do not have a website at all. This is a real lost opportunity for their owners. In this post I will show how to quickly create a website at very lost cost (amazingly less than $50) that can look professional and provide a way that you can communicate interesting content to potential customers. This can be a building block on which (if you wish) a highly customized site can professional be built later.
First you will need a domain name (see my post). I recommend that you go to GoDaddy to purchase this domain as they are relatively cheap and very reputable. They regularly have offers and discount codes available. If the domain that you want is not available the GoDaddy page offers alternatives. Here is an example of what you might see (you may need to click on the image once, then once more in order to blow it up more):
In this case London Tutors dot com is not available. You will need a .COM so ignore the .Net and .Org and so on. You will see on the right hand side some .COM alternatives:
New London Tutor dot com
London Tutor Site dot com
Best London Tutor dot com
Decide which one you prefer. The shorter the domain the better (providing it makes sense). Generally it is best to have the key word phrase at the beginning rather than the end so in this case I would choose London Tutor Site dot com. I would personally ignore the suggestion highlighted by GoDaddy of London Tutor dot me thoug it could be excellent for email.
Next thing is to click on the domain and put it in your basket. GoDaddy then tend to take you through a series of pages offering different options all of which I would ignore. You might want privacy depending on your site though.
You will then end up at the payment page where you will be asked to enter your credit card (they will create a new account for you if you do not have one). After this you will receive an email confirming the order and an hour or two later a confirmation that the domain has been purchased on your behalf from the domain registrar. Very occasionally it turns out that the domain is not available for some reason (perhaps somebody bought it while it was still in your basket). In that case you will need to repeat the process again with a different domain name.
Next you will need to obtain hosting. Though offered by GoDaddy their service tends to be somewhat slow and unsatisfactory (at the time of writing). Hostgator is my favored hosting company. Hostgator have a good quality hosting service and are always friendly when you need their help. There are 3 basic levels of hosting service called the Hatchling, Baby and Business. The disadvantage of the Hatchling is that you can only host one domain with it. Only the Business has a toll free US number. Any of these would be suitable. Make you choice and buy the service. When you make this purchase you will need to specify the domain that you have just bought as the one you wish to host.
Next thing is that you need to load WordPress – the free software that we are going to use – onto your site. This is amazingly simple! WordPress is technically a way to create blogs but you can use it in all sorts of ways to easy create and present content. There are an amazing number of themes, plug ins and add on features that are absolutely free and it is used by 100,000′s of sites many of which you would never think were blogs in the conventional sense. It is just the thing to create a site quickly and easily.
These are the steps to create a site with it.
First log into your hosting account using your username and password.
You will then be presented with a control panel which will look something like this.
Scroll down the page and look on the left hand side until you see the following…
Click on the WordPress Graphic then select WordPress. You should then be presented with the following:
All you need to do now is to enter your email, the name of the blog and your name. Then click the button and you are there – the software is installed and you have a site. You will be sent an email from HostGator which you should keep as you will need the information for future reference.
There is one more small ritual to go through and this is to “set the name servers” which sounds terribly technical but really is not. What this does it to tell the internet the address of your site so when you enter it they locate where you are hosted. To do this you will need to return to your GoDaddy account and enter your name and password.
When you are in your account you will see you domain name (if you have more than one they will be in a list). Click on your domain and then click on the section that says “set name servers”.
Something like this will appear…
In the email from HostGator you will see the the names which will be something like – NS1234.HOSTGATOR.COM and NS1235.HOSTGATOR.COM. Enter these in the above and click on OK. You will them need t wait anything from a few minutes to an hour or two for the address to propagate all over the internet.
You should soon be able to see your WordPress website when you type the name into your browser. You have a site now!
In my next post I will describe the next step – organizing your site and loading it with some simple content.
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