The Beginner's Guide to Building a Website

Have you ever wanted to create your own website but didn't know where to start? Well, look no further! This is the guide for you!

Before building a website, you must think about some things before hiring a developer or agency or starting work yourself. The most obvious is the name and domain name. The name of your website can be anything you want, but the domain name has to be unique and follow certain criteria. The domain name is how people will find your site on the internet, such as google.com or azuliadesigns.com. Domain names are usually the same as business names or derivatives, and they must be unique and not already taken. Next, you need to know the type of website you want - a shop, forum, blog or articles. We'll have a look at these in a minute. It would help if you also had some idea or concept for how you want the website to look, some colour palettes, and examples of other useful sites you like. If you build a site yourself, you'll also need a web hosting package, which is somewhere to store your web pages so people can access them.

Let's take a look at these points in more detail.

What Are the Types of Website Available to Build?

Websites can be divided into two broad categories - static and dynamic.

Static or Brochureware

Static sites are usually small and have very infrequently updated content. Often, the site has been developed as a direct translation of existing printed promotional materials, hence the name Brochureware. Since no programming or scripting is involved, brochureware sites are often cheap to produce, and they do not require anything more than a basic hosting package.

Brochureware sites are ideally suited for individuals, self-employed, or small businesses, where nothing is required other than a few pages of information, photos, and contact details. Typically, it is less than five pages, and once published, the content does not change often.

Dynamic or Database Driven

Dynamic websites, in contrast, boast a database behind the scenes where the content is stored or generated. These sites necessitate server-side programming (PHP, ASP.Net, etc.) to collect and present data on the page for the reader. Dynamic sites dominate the web today, and with the rapid proliferation of open-source software (WordPress, Joomla, Drupal, et al.), static sites are becoming less prevalent. The versatility and functionality of dynamic websites make them a popular choice for various online ventures.

Dynamic websites are split into many categories; however, 99% will fit into one of these.

A Weblog (or Blog)

A blog is usually an individual's site with regular entries of commentary, descriptions of events, or other material such as photos or video. They have tended to take over from the diary or log (hence, web log = blog). The usefulness of blogs ranges from an individual's online diary to news, current affairs, and celebrity gossip. In recent years, companies have used the power of business blogs to keep in touch with customers and keep them informed about events and promotions.

There are two main blogging platforms - Wordpress and Blogger. Both offer a free managed service which is hosted on their sites, while WordPress can be downloaded and installed onto your server.

Other blogging software to consider consists of Movable Type and Type Pad.

A blog can also be used as a content management system (such as this site!). See content management systems below.

A Shop or eCommerce Site

If you are planning to sell something online, then you need a shop. As with blogs, many software packages are available in a managed solution (on their server) or a standalone (on your server).

Different packages will be suitable depending on what you are selling and who you are selling to. Some may prefer to set up an eBay store where the listing and payments are handled for you on a site where you can take advantage of its existing high visitor count.

For a more professional online store, you may prefer to install software such as Zen Cart, osCommerce, PrestaShop or Magento on your server or hosting package. Self-hosted software can allow for a more customised solution tailored to your requirements.

With a bit of work, your WordPress blog or content site can also be turned into an e-commerce store. This can extend functionality for an existing website and provide a seamless transition from blog to shop.

In certain situations, you may be better off with a bespoke system, especially if you have existing backend processes that need to be followed or require non-standard integration.

A Forum or Online Community

A forum dates back to Roman times where it was a gathering place and often the scene of diverse activities, such as discussions and debates, rendezvous, meetings, etc.

An online forum in a modern day equivalent - a gathering place for users worldwide to share ideas, form discussions and debates and exchange information. Online forums are one of the oldest forms of "website", dating back to the early 1980s with Usenet. Forums are generally targeted at a specific audience, such as a marque of car.

Popular forum software includes phpBB, bbPress, Simple Machines and Vanilla.

Content Management System (CMS)

Content Management Systems (or CMS for short) are content-oriented websites (such as this one) where the information is provided by a limited number of people and made available to everybody. There is very little in the way of visitor contribution, except comments/reviews or rating systems.

If you need a site where you can present a lot of information to your audience but don't need/want them to contribute, then a CMS is the way to go. You can set up different users to publish information, but the general public cannot.

Bespoke

Bespoke websites are custom projects, usually written from scratch or a barebones framework and satisfy requirements that open source or "off the shelf" software cannot. You could need to integrate a shop with your existing backend systems or a website with a specific and specialised goal. These are usually highly specialised and involve programmers and designers.

Finding a Web Hosting Package

Web hosting (sometimes referred to as 'web space') is a service which allows you to upload your files and site to a shared server in a data centre. Once uploaded, your website can be seen by anyone connected to the internet.

The server is a physical computer that processes requests from people connected to the internet and serves the requested content. There are two primary flavours of servers - shared and dedicated.

Shared servers are as the name suggests, shared. The server will look after hundreds of other hosting accounts, including yours. These are usually quite powerful machines and can handle hundreds of websites; however, because they are shared, there are strict regulations on what you can or can't do on the server. If you wish to host a site, they are fine, but larger and high-usage sites may be better with a dedicated account.

Dedicated hosting means that you will have a server all to yourself. This option can be costly as you are paying for the whole server and maintenance, while under shared hosting, this cost is spread among hundreds of people. Because the server is just dealing with your site(s), you will have much greater control over the server, including installing third-party products and increased resource allocation.

Virtual Private Server is a hybrid of the two. Physically, it is a shared server in that many people share the same hardware; however, each hosting account runs in a dedicated area on the server (partition). These servers are becoming increasingly popular as they offer the flexibility of a dedicated server with the costs of a shared server.

Web Hosting Platform

The platform the server runs on (also called the operating system) will determine the languages in which you can write your website. There are two leading platforms available: Windows or Unix/Linux.

Windows servers generally run the IIS webserver and ASP or ASP.Net using the Microsoft .Net framework, and when using third-party software, it must be written in ASP. A few Windows servers can run PHP. However, there are not many.

Unix/Linux servers use the Apache webserver and run PHP or CGI scripting languages. PHP is the more common scripting language used on the web and is often cheaper than Windows hosting. If you plan to work with PHP, Perl or MySQL, Linux is the solution you should choose.

Web Hosting Databases

Databases are used to store information and provide dynamic data driven websites. Windows servers use Microsoft SQL Server, while Linux servers use MySql most often.

Suppose your site is only going to contain a few static pages which do not change. In that case, you may not need a database, but you will need one if you want to run packages such as WordPress.

Web Hosting Web Space

Web space is also called storage, hard drive capacity, disk space, and so on. This is the amount of data stored on the server under your account. This varies from as little as 10MB (~8 digital photographs) on a very basic hosting account through to 10GB (~3 DVD quality movies) on pro-level accounts. You can often use as much hard drive space as is installed on dedicated hosting packages. Typical disk space allocation is around 2-5GB.

An average WordPress website serving pages and a few pictures may only require 200MB of space, depending on the number and quality of images.

Web Hosting Bandwidth

Also called data transfer or traffic is the amount of data that can be transferred over the internet each month. Whenever you upload files or somebody views your website, information travels through the network to allow visitors to see your site. The more visitors you have, the more information travels through the network, the more bandwidth is used.

Bandwidth usage is tough to estimate as it depends on the number of visitors per month, the content your site serves and the proportion of visitors downloading that content.

Other Factors to Concsider

A couple of other factors you may wish to consider are the number of email accounts, if you have FTP access to the server to upload your files, what support the host offers, whether any stats packages are offered, and any additional services provided (site builders, search engine submissions etc.)

These are the main factors you need to look at when choosing a hosting provider; you should also research the company and try to find out what they are like from existing or previous users. The cheapest is not always the best, nor is the most expensive.

Registering A Domain Name

Once you have a web server or hosting package, you must register a domain name.Firstly, you need to think of a domain name. When choosing your Domain name, you should choose a name that reflects your company or website name. This could be your brand or personal name. Think about how you search on Google yourself.

Tips for Choosing A Domain Name

1. The name should reflect your website name. This could be your brand or personal name. For example, timtrott.co.uk
2. Avoid the "flavour of the month" unless you want to change domain names. iPod, iPhone, iWebsite and so on have been done to death and are repetitive and boring now (see next tip)
3. Your domain name should stand out from the crowd. Everyone seems to have an iWebsite. Be original.
4. Invent your own words, try combining words (Bust-a-Name is good at this), using similar words from a thesaurus or even translated into different languages.
5. Try adding Latin or Greek prefixes and suffixes to a word, for example, -atus, -ium or -ia.
6. Avoid using Trademarks in your domain name. Trademark owners will not like you for this any may issue a take-down notice.
7. Try to get a .com domain name, as it is the one most people will automatically assume and habitually type into a browser.
8. A good domain name will be short, easy to remember and spell, and not contain hyphens or numbers.
9. All good names are taken? Mostly, but just because they are taken doesn't mean they are in use. A lot of great names can be bought second-hand at Sedo or similar domain name collectors.
10. Once you have decided on your domain name, ask your friends or colleagues for their opinion about the name before registering it. For example, look at the domain name "ExpertsExchange.com"; at first glance, the name looks fine, but one can also read this domain as "ExpertSexChange.com"!

Once you have found an available domain, the registrar will typically have a checkout process followed by an admin panel. You'll need to provide some details for the registration and identity records. Some registrars will also offer services such as hosting or email. Once that is done, you must link your domain name to your hosting package. If you choose to get both together from the same provider, this will typically be set already. If they are different, then you need to make a change in the domain settings. You should check the FAQ section of your domain registrar for the exact steps, but its generally called "changing nameservers". Your hosting company will give you nameserver details, which you can enter in the domain settings. Some types of domains (e.g. .com) have a domain lock on them, which must be removed before you can change name servers, while others (e.g. .co.uk do not). If you have these options, go to the screen and unlock the domain.

Find the option to manage name servers; this may not be available until one hour after registration, although sometimes it can be much earlier. You may have to try this later if the option isn't available yet.

The name server screen will show a couple of text boxes labelled name servers 1 and 2. You need to enter the values from your Pair control panel (or provided by your host) into these boxes. Only enter the names, not the IP addresses.

All you need to do now is wait for the DNS settings to propagate through the internet before you can access your hosting package with your domain name. This could take a few minutes (I have had a domain working within 5 minutes of registering it!), but sometimes it can take a few hours or even days. When it is working, you should be able to type in your domain name, and it will show your empty directory listing (or content if you have uploaded that already).

Where Next?

Depending on your project, there are a few articles you can continue with, or you can engage the services of a web design agency to take over.