Want to build your own website?

Thinking about starting a website for yourself or your company? With the tools available today, this can be very very easy. Unless you have very specific requirements, need some custom programming or have a large project in mind, I would recommend the DIY approach as opposed to hiring an expensive web designer. All you need to know is one magical word - “WordPress”.

Here is what you need to do to get started. These are broad steps which will provide a roadmap to work with and details of exact procedures will be available through installation wizards and support documentation given by various providers.

1. To get started register the domain name and you have in mind with one of the good/cheap providers (GoDaddy, BlueHost, JustHost and so on) and also sign-up for a hosting package
2. Setup WordPress from your hosting account. There will usually be a prominent option/tab for this
3. Pick a Wordpress theme. These are ready-made templates which you can customise fairly easily, to get the layout, colours, etc. that you want. There are some excellent themes available depending on your needs. Have a look at this website for a listing of some of the good providers [click here]
4. Install the theme on WordPress and customise as per requirements
5. Get your plug-ins. These are applications that can add lots of features to your website such as spam check, search engine optimisation, opt-in forms, contact us forms, advertisement management, forums, live chats, media galleries and much more. Some of the essentials ones I recommend and which are useful for most websites are - Akismet, All in One Adsense and YPN, All in One SEO Pack, Easy Contact, Dean’s Permalink Migration, Google XML Sitemaps, ShareThis, Subscribe to Comments and Yet Another Related Posts Plug-in. There are some very specific plug-ins available to meet demands of various users, so make sure you search WordPress and Google to see what’s out there
6. Start creating your pages and posts

That’s it! It really is quite simple and you need more time than specialised expertise. In case you want help on any of the aspects listed above, post a job on elance/guru and hire a reasonably priced freelancer to set it up for you. It won’t cost much and they can also be used to add new features/applications to your theme.

Sources and references: Sandbox Advisors

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