MEIBZ

So now that we’ve established that you need to have your own domain/site. Let’s move right along and get an overview of what’s to come. Basically, there are three steps.

Step 1: Decide what kind of site you want to build

Now, rather than coming up with a pie-in-the-sky site ideas that come once in a life time, and hire a team of programmers to build something you have no idea about, and blow through a ton of money, let’s start by building the few basic type of websites that YOU can easily build for next to nothing, learn what each one does, and as you gain more knowledge about how everything works, you will be in a better position to know what you might want to build next. Perhaps you will come up with the next Myspace of Facebook. =)

Here are the basic websites you can easily build.

Basic Company Brochure Sites
Blogs
Forums
Picture Sharing Sites
E-commerce Sites (a bit more involved)

We will get into the nitty gritty of each type in the up and coming posts. But basically, pretty much all except the full-fledged e-commerce site can be built with a click of a button inside your hosting control panel! I will show you how very soon. Before we get into how to build these sites, let’s make sure that you have selected one of the above site types, and let’s move on to the next step, which is getting a domain name.

Step 2: Getting Your Domain Name

A domain name is basically the address people will find you by. And if it’s a catchy one, people will even remember it and come back all on their own. Some great domain names are ebay.com, yahoo.com, officedepot.com as they are concise and easy to memorize. In case you are not familiar, this is what you would type in inside the URL bar on the top of your browser. Simply type in the domain name in there (for example ebay.com) and the browser will automatically format it to the “official” format which looks like http://www.ebay.com which is a time saver, because it’s a pain to type in the http:// every time you need to go to a site! Good thing the web is constantly evolving and getting easier and easier.

Now, let’s get a domain name. You simply need to get to a reputable domain name reseller such as GoDaddy.com or something similar and within minutes you will get a confirmation in your email letting you know that you’ve successfully acquired the domain. Obviously, a lot of domain names are already taken, so the trick is not to go for some really general words like teachers.com or whatever. First, decide what kind of people you want your site to reach, and what kind of content you wish to provide, then thing along those lines as you search for a domain that is not taken yet. For example, if you are a teacher and want to create a blog site that shares your teaching tips with other teachers, as well as allowing your visitors to interact with comments and feedback, then you might want to see if something like TipsForTeachers.com is available. To research the availability of domains, I just go to godaddy.com and start putting in the domain name ideas on the top where it says “start a domain search”.

This step is pretty self explanatory once you get to the godaddy.com site, but I’ll put together a video that guides you through this process shortly for those of you that feel more comfortable having someone guiding you through.

Step 3: Getting Web Hosting to Host your New Domain

This is the step where you “rent” some storage space to store/host your website online. Basically, without getting into the technical jargon, all it is is that this storage space is “linked up” to the domain name you just purchased, and voila, anything you create and upload to this “space”, will show up accordingly when anyone puts in your domain in their browser’s URL bar.

A good low cost hosting I’ve found recently is PowWeb.com which currently has a promotion that gives you hosting of a generous 1,500 GB of storage (I’ve never even used up 1GB online myself), 15,000 GB of monthly transfer (again, way more than enough for even high traffic websites), unlimited domains meaning you can get more domains in the future and host them all here with no extra cost on hosting, and here’s the kicker, the price of one domain is included, so you don’t even have to go to Godaddy.com to get that $10/year domain! I’ve shopped around, and most of the popular hosting companies are good. But this one is just irresistible at the current promotional price.

Step 4: Putting “stuff” or content on your website

How much work it takes to get your site started depends on what type of site you’ve chosen to build. Typically, Wordpress blogs are the easiest to setup and launch, and since there are a ton of free themes you can install and free plugins for you to customize your blog/site with, having and managing your site has never been easier.

If you chose PowWeb.com as your hosting provider, you will have access to easy 5- minute installations of Wordpress along with some 40 different apps to build your site with! Yup, you can install forums, photo gallery sites, and even full blown ecommerce sites absolutely free and easy if you have good user-friendly web hosting.

We will show you more detailed instructions on how to setup your website with blog, forums and more shortly. But for now, I hope you are beginning to see just how much you can do on your own, and for so little money!

To sign up for the best hosting package we’ve found so far, click on the banner below to get started. Get all of the following features at just $3.88 per month (if paid annually, which is only $46.56!), with free setup too.

First off, you should know that whatever it is you want to achieve online, you will need your own domain name! Don’t settle for those free web pages that are simply a folder within someone else’s site.  Why would you want to do all the promotional work unto a website that is owned by someone else? It makes no sense in the long run.

Also, having your own domain name, and then have it hosted by a quality hosting service is cheaper than ever. On average, you can get your own domain name for less than $10 a year, and have it hosted for less than $10 a month! And keep in mind that with most hosting plans, you can host multiple domains (sometimes unlimited) for the same low monthly fee! Simply get another domain at less than $10 a year, and host it on your existing host, and you pay nothing extra.

You might be asking “okay, so I see that it’s pretty affordable to get the domain name and get it hosted, but I don’t know how to do any of it!” No worries. Let us show you how to do all that. I promise it’ll be a lot easier than you thought it would be. Trust me on this one.

We envision this site to be a comprehensive destination for learning everything to getting your first domain all the way to building a fully functional website.

You will learn step by step, in multiple formats, including useful diagrams and videos. Watch over our shoulders as we guide you through the process from step one!

When you have gone through our material, you will have the basic knowledge to begin building a fully operational website for whatever your heart desires. You may not be able to do all the programming and site building yourself if you are aiming to do something complicated, but you will have enough knowledge to know what softwares you might need to buy/find, or what kind of people you need to hire in order to get the job done.

Armed with the functional knowledge, you are less likely to get ripped off and pay too much when you outsource anything you don’t have the time to do yourself.