Thinking about putting up a website can be mind boggling, HTML, PHP, MySQL, scripts, blabla. But it turn out that there are many websites provide you all the tools you need to build a website and reduce the daunting task into just some simple clicks.
I have been thinking about starting a new website for sharing useful tips for everybody for a while. After a wonderful Christmas dinner I had a couple of hours to kill. So I decided to just get started.
The web host I picked is godaddy.com, which is essentially my one-stop shop for the website. They offer all the service you will need DNS register, web hosting, email etc in one envelop.
Step 1: Pick your your ideal domain name.
You will need some luck to get exactly what you want because someone might already had the same brilliant idea and registered it before you do. For my case, the name in my mind is available, so I am feeling lucky. You can check it right in godaddy.com
If not, then you might need to go through auction or maybe contact the owner of the website and negotiate a price, which is another topic.
Besides picking .com as your website name, you can also pick .net, .org, .mobi, .info, which depends on your needs and comes with different price tag. But in general, you can register a domain name with only a couple of bucks. I got my tipsarea.com domain name for $9.99/year. The .info and .us domain are in promotion at $2.99/year and $3.99/year.
Think about that, for the price of a Burger, you can own your own website!! Wow.
One thing I would recommend is the Private Registration Service, which prevents your personal information listed for the website. I have no problem with paying a small price for protecting my personal information.
Step 2: Pick your web Host options
Godaddy.com offers three options: Economy, Deluxe, Ultimate. I chose the Economy option which comes with 10 GB space, unlimited Bandwidth, 100 email accounts and 10 MySQL databases (1GB each). With the promotion, the price tag is only $2.85/month for 24 months.
If you don’t know what I am talking about for the specifics about the plan. It is OK. Just to know it is big enough to get started. You can always upgrade if your website is out growing the web host.
After the two steps you can check out your purchase. You will need to register a Godaddy.com account and pay with your preferred method such as credit card or paypal. Here is my receipts for my website.
I registered the domain for 5 years and web hosting for two years in hope that I might need to upgrade after two years.
Step 3: Build Your Website
After the web hosting is setup, you can choose to upload your own website if you already have one build locally or you can pick from the popular WordPress, Joomla or Drupal platform to build your website. WordPress is probably the most popular blog platform right now. It has been around for long time with lots of resources such as themes and community support. So I picked the WordPress as my platform.
You can install WordPress from your Godday control panel. A couple of clicks later, your WordPress are ready to use. Note that the setup might take several minutes to 24 hours. So have a little bit patience.
For me, I also picked up a new theme “Responsive” instead of the default “twenty twelve” theme. Changing the Theme in WordPerss is pretty easy. You just log in your WordPress admin account and go to Dashboard-> Appearence->Themes->Install Themes to find and install a new theme that you like.
Horey, we have a new website up and running in one hour.