How does one build a website from scratch?
How does one build a website from scratch?
Building a website from scratch involves several steps, from planning and designing to development and deployment. Here's a general guide to help you get started:
You only need to follow a few essential steps I'll talk about below.
In no time, you'll have a bright and shiny webpage made all by yourself.
Start with choosing a hosting plan and buying a domain.
Before building a website, you will need to choose a hosting provider and buy a plan.
When you purchase a hosting plan, a hosting company provides space in its data centre for your website placement.
You will find a tremendous amount of different hosting companies, although if you want to choose the one that fits your needs the best.
You should take a look at a few criteria, such as choosing the right hosting plan, reasonable uptime, 24/7 customer support, good speed, and enough disc space.
Along with a hosting plan, you'll need a purchase of a domain. The domain is the virtual address of your website, so it's crucial to choose a domain that represents your website the best.
To come up with the name, think of the best site names you know and admire for inspiration. You can also use a little help from this tutorial on generating names.
Have in mind that there are around 354 million domain names already taken, so don't rush to cross out other less popular options.
Another thing, with specific hosting plans, you might get a free domain. A win-win!
Now that you already have hosting and domain figured out, you can start making the website. There are a few main ways to build a website:
- Website Builder
The site builder option is the easiest as it works with a primary drag and drop function and is highly customizable. Most likely, your hosting company will provide the website builder as a complementary product, and it will be super easy to figure it out.
- Content Management System (CMS)
A second and most popular option is building a website with a Content Management System. There are plenty of different CMSs like Joomla and Drupal, but none of them beat WordPress. Around 34% of the internet is powered by WordPress, and its definitely the most popular CMS out there. Building a website on WP is moderately difficult for someone without any experience, although it doesn't take too much time to master it. Here is a very nice and simple video tutorial which explains step by step approach on creating a website with WP.
- E-commerce platform
For an online shop website, you will need to use open-source ecommerce scripts. This includes platforms like PrestaShop, Magento, and WooCommerce. These platforms will help out a lot while managing an online store because they are specifically designed for that reason. The difficulty level of these programs is similar to the CMS, and it doesn't take too long to learn the ropes.
- Making it from scratch
Another way of building your website is from scratch. This type of website building is mostly done by professional developers and usually used by major companies. For a person without any programming experience, it would be too complicated to create a professional-looking website. It takes a lot of time and skill to master using the programs alone. In case you are wondering about the most basic site, you'll need to know HTML, CSS and PHP, text editors, and some automated tools. Not only that, but you will also need to learn back-end programming languages like JavaScript or Python and write code. If you are curious, here is a good explanation of all the steps you'll need to take.
Creating your website from scratch might sound very exciting, and many think that for a company, it's important to build their website that way.
Although, for small and medium-sized companies, it's best to use CMS, in order to save time, money, and additional resources.
Creating a website from scratch by a professional can cost thousands and take months, so you need to evaluate your company's needs.
So you've built the frame, now you need to improve it
After all the technical parts comes the time to set it all up. As all the major things are done, it's time to polish the site to make it shine.
During this part, you can start filling it with pictures, written content, products, set up the security measures, and optimise it for the best performance.
- Fill in the website with written content. Make sure to write in understandable, clear, and short sentences, learn who is your audience, and write to them. If you are creating a store or a professional site, avoid using slang and jargon. While writing makes text scannable - people don't like reading long and monotonic looking texts.
- Improve your site speed by optimising it. Many think that website speed depends solely on the hosting company, although there is a lot you can change by merely optimising it. Not only will it help you with a higher SEO rank, but also your visitors will feel much happier visiting a fast loading page and converting more. You can start by checking your website's speed on GTmetrix.
- Implement security - you don't want any trouble concerning your websites and your visitors' safety. To prevent that, there are some steps you can take, like implementing captcha, limiting login attempts, installing the security plugins, implementing CloudFare, and keeping things up to date. Also, don't forget to get an SSL/TLS certificate - it will make your visitors feel secure.
- Link your site with Google analytics - it will be much easier understanding your audience, getting data, and making decisions when GA gives you constant insights regarding traffic, target audience, and more.
So here you have it, a comprehensive guide on building a website.
Good luck making your vision into reality, and don't forget that even if it's challenging at first, it can be an enjoyable and entertaining process after you know the in's and out's of website building!
Building a website from scratch requires time, effort, and attention to detail, but with careful planning and execution, you can create a professional and effective online presence for your brand or business.