Part 1 of 4: The first question you might ask me is, “Why would you tell people how to make your own website? Isn’t that your business?” Good question! I got into web design because I want to perpetuate good websites, usually by doing quality web design and development.

However, there are times when you don’t want to hire a web designer – your business may be just starting out and you need to invest in other things, or maybe you are a non-profit and need to have zero overhead, or maybe this site is just for fun. I can get you started with some recommendations, and you can always let me know if you want to ‘take it to the next level’ and have a professionally designed site. Shall we begin?

Key Points: Don’t recreate the wheel – use a social media site if you can. If you can’t, paid hosting is affordable and beneficial.

1. How to create a free website
2. Adding content to your website
3. Making your website user-friendly
4. What is a search engine?

How to create a free website

All websites are made up of web pages. In simplest form, the pages are files, and you have to have somewhere to ‘save’ your files where the world can access them. This is called “web-hosting” – that is, finding a company who is willing to store your web pages for you. I’m going to cover three options for web-hosting: social media sites, free web hosting, and paid web hosting.

Social Media Sites

Social media is ‘all the buzz’ these days, but you may ask, “What the heck is that?” Social media refers to any number of popular web applications which make it easy to share and discuss information. The most popular in this area are sites like MySpace, Facebook, Blogger, Flickr, Youtube, Yahoo! Groups, Google Groups, etc.

Before you start a website from scratch, take a moment to see if any of these existing sites will do the trick for you. Do you want to share your photography? Check out flickr. Do you want to stay in touch with friends and family? Try Facebook. There is a very compelling reason to use these sites: they are easy, easy, easy. The sites are designed and supported by professionals, and all you have to do is register – you will have a ready-made community to display your content.

As with free web hosting (below), these sites make their money via advertising. This is how they are able to pay their developers and provide great service to you for free. If you want to have an ‘ad-free’ site or if you want more control over the ads which are displayed on your site, you have to go to paid web-hosting (below).

Free web hosting

There are numerous options for free web-hosting, in which you can make your own web site. As with social media sites (above), these sites require you to display ads on your pages in order to cover their operating costs. I recommend that you go with a well-established free web hosting provider, such as Google Sites, because they are more likely to have the most features and more choices for design templates. Furthermore, you are less likely to have downtime, because the larger companies will be more stable.

What will happen when you register a free web hosting site is that a wizard will take you through how to create a website. You will be able to name your site, choose a professionally designed theme (a web template), and then type text for all of your web pages. Usually, you will not get your own domain name. In other words, instead of “www.mycompany.com”, it will be more like “www.google.com/site/mycompany.” That’s not exactly “short and easy to remember,” which is what a domain name should be. Because of this, and the forced advertising, I recommend paid hosting (below) if you can afford about $100 per year.

Paid Web Hosting

Many people are intimidated by paid web hosting, because they think that it will be hard to set up, or very expensive, or both. In reality, if you go with a major web-hosting company, you will find it is almost as easy as social media sites or Google Sites, and it is not very much money.

I use and recommend BlueHost for web hosting. They charge $6.95 – $7.95 per month, and you get oodles of storage space and email boxes. Your domain name registration (i.e. obtaining www.yourcompanyname.com) is included in the monthly fee. Once you complete your registration, BlueHost also offers a wizard to walk you through how to make your own website – this is on the control panel, near the bottom, in the Software/Services box. Click on the PageWizard icon, and start creating your website. If you run into any problems, friendly service staff can help you via phone at 888-401-4678.

The reason I recommend BlueHost is that they offer a good value, and they are reviewed well on the internet. I have had several interactions with their support staff, and they are very helpful and knowledgeable, and I rarely have to wait on hold. Finally, I have been using them for most of my clients, and they have very little downtime. There are certainly many, many options for web hosting, and you are welcome to do your own research. My main recommendation, as with free web hosting, is to find a company that is well-established.