How to make a website for beginners

Making a website can seem like a daunting task for those of us who are not technical genuses, web developers or just complete nerds. This is a short guide aimed at the average computer user who wants to know how to make a website. The topics I will cover are website domains, web-hosting, how to code a website, and different kinds of websites and the unique features these different kinds of sites have.

The first thing you should think about when you decide you want a website is whether you want your own hosting or free hosting on another domain. For example, you can either pay to have "yoursite.com" - basically whatever name you want to call your site as long as its not taken already. Or you could use another domain such as blogger, weebly, wordpress, or myspace to make a free site on their larger domains. There are different pros and cons depending on what you want to do with your site but the main advantage of having your own domain is that you own it and you have more freedom with it. Its also safer because nobody can then shut down your site because you own the web property.

If you decide to have you own site hosted you will need to buy hosting. It usually costs between 4 and 10 dollars a month to have your site hosted. And this just means you are paying someone to put your site online so that everyone can see it. There are lots of places that provide web hosting. If you google "web hosting" you will easily find plenty of options. The other thing you will need is to buy your website domain or web address (same thing). Some places sell both hosting and domains like godaddy does. A domain will cost about 3-9 dollars per year depending on where you buy it from.

So after you have you web address (‘yoursite.com’) and your web hosting. You just need your actual website. Now you need to think about if you want to use a template or have your site coded from scratch. There are lots of places online that sell web-templates, you can even find them for free (usually blog templates). If you want a site coded from scratch you have to decide if its worth it to you to learn HTML and CSS which are simple computer languages that most websites are made of. Or, if you want to hire a professional to code a site for you. This is a great option but usually expensive. It is however, always a good idea to know at least a little about HTML and CSS so you can change things about your website when you need to down the road. Once you have your website coded you just need to use a free FTP (file transfer protocol) program to send your site to the hosting account.

I realize this short article does not go into much detail but it should be able to point you in the right direction when it comes to starting your own website. Here are the questions repeated that you need to ask yourself again during the process of making a website.

Do I want to host my website on my own domain or use a free page on another domain?
How much do I want to spend to get my website up?
What do I want my website domain to be?
Do I want a blog or a business website or a personal site?
Should I use a template or code my own site or hire a professional web developer?
Goodluck everyone, I hope this helped. I should have more articles that cover the specifics soon.