As I found out earlier this week, I definitely need a website. The thought of making my own website terrifies me, but after a search on how to do it, I may be able to make my own. Who knows, one day I may be a techie!
I found many sites that will help me build my website for a fee, but I know people do it for free, and if I am going to put my time and effort into it, then I don't really want to pay someone for what I am doing.
There was one site that had viable information, but it also said that I could not use the information to tell you about it because it was copyrighted. Too bad because the information was generic enough that I found it elsewhere, so that company does not get a pitch.
I found one site that recognized websitebuilder.com as pretty good to use free of charge, but before going further into the site (which means I would have to join, sign up, and create a password) I briefly scanned the steps and thought, nah.
But what I did find was an incredible site -- websitesetup.org (for beginners). The information is not only free, but if you have problems with creating the website, you can email the designer (Robert Mening from Sweden) and he will answer your questions. (There is a place on the website to enter your questions).
From him and his website, I have learned there are three basic steps to creating a website:
1. choose a "platform" -- He said there were 3 most popular -- wordpress, drupal, and joomla.
Wordpress (which I am familiar with since I do have that idiom/cliche blog I am going to resurrect next month on Wordpress) is free, has themes and templates, can be expanded with plug-ins, and works on mobiles and tablets.
Drupal would require me to know a bit of codes (like HTML) which I know nothing about.
Joomla requires the same, a bit of technical coding language.
So, I am satisfied with Wordpress. Choice Number 1 has been completed.
2. choose a domain name and host
The domain name will be my website address, which I will have to choose. That may be the hard part because he said there are 150 million domain names our there. I will have to be very creative with this because I want people to remember the website so they can go on and see what I am doing, and of course, I will probably have another blog on the website about my writing. Later, much later.
The host is a service that connects my website to the internet. There is a cost here -- from $3-5 per month. I think I can handle that! He suggested Bluehost.com as a web hosting and domain register (you get the first domain name free).
When I was at the writing group on Tuesday, the person taking care of their website was using GoDaddy as the host, but from what I understood, she was having problems with it. But, that could have been her. I don't know. There is also NameCheap.
3. install Wordpress
Here, I am going to choose themes or templates for my site. I know Wordpress has thousands of them and they continually email me with new themes all the time. So it is an ever-expanding process.
Once I have my theme or template, I will check it out on google, the search engine I frequent the most.
It really does not sound that hard, so let's see what it really entails. Will keep you posted on that one.
Have a great weekend...
No comments:
Post a Comment