Once you’ve got your own business, you know how important it is to be visible online. Whether you’re a storyteller who wants to start blogging or an artist who wants to sell the art online: a website is of great importance. Of course, you can outsource the development of it to professionals, but maybe that’s something you can’t afford at the moment. That’s why we would like to share the basic steps of creating your own website. We wish you a lot of luck!
- Start with creating a plan
It’s not easy to create a whole new website, it isn’t for nothing that some people are true professionals at this. Of course, you don’t have to create an award winning website, but you do want to build a nice website that looks good and works well. While being in this process, you’re going to experience some bumps in the road. That’s not something to worry about, but it can be a little bit frustrating if you don’t have a plan to stick to. So, the first thing to do when you’re going to build your own website, is creating a plan. Make sure you set out what the purpose of your website is, how you want to reach this goal, what you want your website to look like and what content you want to share on it. If you ever experience some trouble in along the way, you’ll always have a plan to keep in mind.
- Pick a meaningful domain name
Of course, your website needs a domain name. You need to pick an internet address/url that’s still available and also meaningful. It isn’t difficult to find a unique domain name, but you want a domain name that’s meaningful and shows whether your business is in fashion, IT or marketing for example.
Let’s assume you’ve got a small business in custom printings in The Netherlands. You print logos and texts on products like bags (dutch: tassen), playing cards (dutch: speelkaarten), tableware (dutch: servies), cups (dutch: mokken) and shopping bags (dutch: boodschappentassen). You can use your own first and last name as a domain name, but why not use a domain name like Bedrukken.nl did? ‘Bedrukken’ means ‘printing on’ in Dutch, which shows exactly what kind of business the company is in!
- Register your domain name
Have you picked a domain name? Before getting too excited, you should always check if the domain name you would like to use, is still available. A lot of internet addresses are already taken. Have you checked and are you lucky? Then it’s time to register the domain name. You can let a registrar do this for you; they can also arrange a hosting package for your website (check out step 6).
- Choose a content management system (CMS)
If you’re going to create your own website, you need to actually make one. To do so, you need to choose a content management system, also known as a CMS. With a CMS, you can manage and adapt your website anytime and anywhere you want. There are multiple software applications like this, but one of the most familiar ones is WordPress. If you don’t have any knowledge of working with html codes, a CMS like WordPress makes the job a lot easier for you!
- Pick a nice design theme and fill it with content
Have you selected a CMS? Then you can start creating your website. Of course you can design the website yourself, but this is hard to do if you need to start from scratch and don’t have any experience in designing. That’s why there are many WordPress themes you can pick and adapt as you like. Once you’ve got a nice design, you can start filling the website with content. Make sure that all the pages contain good quality texts, so the content informs the visitors and helps you rank on keywords. Of course, you should keep all aspects of search engine optimization (SEO) in mind when building your website. The last thing you want is a website that doesn’t rank in the search engines!
- Arrange the hosting and let’s get live!
Once you’ve created your own website in WordPress, you need to fix the hosting. By arranging a hosting package, you simply buy a spot on the server. You need to pay for hosting, but don’t worry: it doesn’t have to cost a lot. How much it will cost depends on the size of hosting your website needs, but the prices start at a few euros a month. Of course, you don’t have to arrange the hosting by yourself. There are a lot of companies where you can purchase a hosting package, that can help you. So check out your options and make a wise decision!
We wish you a lot of luck with creating your own website and hope the steps above will make it a little easier for you!