What do I put my site?  What should I say or share?  How can I be sure I targeted what people are searching for?  Each of these are questions you might ask, depending on the type of internet presence you want, or the goals you have in mind for your web pages.

What do I put on my site?

This is a question you might ask if you’re an established business.  You want (or know you need) a web presence and have made a command decision to get one going.

You’re “IT” guy knows how to get a site hosted, or knows you can probably do that through your current email service as a “freebie” for signing up with them; (see make your own email for a cheaper way to get email if that describes how your company email got started).

Anyway, maybe he even has a template, knows how to get one, or is savvy enough to recommend WordPress.  All good – but what next.  You have the platform and the technical “know how” to get a few web pages live – but what next?

That’s why we need to think this through first.  Define a purpose for you site.  Is it for your future customers to see what you do, what you provide or what you sell?  Is it for your current customers to track shipments, or have ready access to time sensitive information about the project or program you provide for them?  Or is it just to have a site up so you can point to it on correspondence, but really have no sales goals for it?

Depending on what you decide, the next steps you take to make your own website will get clearer.  Map it out.  Define what you want to show or say (or both).  If you need to be a top ranked site in Google, at least look up SEO on the internet before you start asking for a consultant.  That alone can save you a ton of money.  In fact, the articles and posts you find on this site will help you do much of what a consultant will charge a bundle for – for free, or at least just at the cost of time for you or your employees to learn how.

We’ll discuss the other two questions on the next post …

Just type “www.squidoo.com” into your favorite browser and click the big orange ‘sign up now’ button with the single eyed squid monster behind it. That takes you to a screen where you can enter a user name (you might have to try a few to get one somebody else doesn’t already have), an email address you are comfortable possibly being public with (get a yahoo or gmail address if you don’t already have one you can use), select a password, accept the terms of service, enter the captcha and – finally – press the ‘join now’ button.

Next time, all you have to do is enter your email address and password and you’re all set to build a web page, or squidoo lens as they are called here.

Once you are in your dashboard, just find the ‘create a lens’ button and press it. That will get you headed down the path to where you can start creating a web page.

As an example of a completed squidoo lens, take a look at Rent-PS2-Games. It’s a fun site that shows many of the building blocks you’ll use for yours as well.

Back to getting started … you should be at Step 1. Just follow the directions and type in what you will build a web page about. Click continue and fill in something for the title, your ONE chance at setting the URL, the best topic from the drop down list and a rating as well.

On Step 3, select three keywords, or keyword phrases that people might search for to find your lens. For the above example, maybe video games, video game rental or rent video games would be good, since the best tag ‘Rent PS2 Games’ will have already appeared in the best tag for my lens box.

Click Build my lens and you are ready to go.

Now, to actually build a web page, I’m going to turn you over to the Lens Workshop Tour video. It’s just under 10 minutes long and does graphically what a lot of words would take here. And they probably do a better job anyway – after all, it’s their platform. So get to creating a web page – and remember, as long as it’s in draft form, you can’t break anything (that others will see anyway) …

Before you build a web page, you need to do a couple of things first. For one, you should have already decided on the purpose of your site and have selected either a domain name or chosen a name through a free service like Hubspot, Blogger or WordPress. As a starting point, the build my own website page can help a bit with that.

Next, if you decided to buy your own domain name (good choice by the way), then you should have already purchased it and hosted it through a web hosting company before you go much further. The host your own website page should help there as well.

Once that’s done, then the next step depends on whether you chose to go the free or paid hosting route.

First the free services:

If this is your first attempt at creating a web page, the free services like those mentioned above are certainly the easiest. But before you jump in with both feet … remember … if you build a web page on them (Blogger, WordPress, Hubspot, Squidoo or any other service like them), THEY own the site, not you. It’s ok if all you want is a personal page or two, or maybe a first go at an affiliate website, but be forewarned.

To be clear, I like these services. They are easy to work with, the help screens are great and you can literally have your website live in an hour or so if you already have photos or written content ready to post. In that regard they are unbeatable. In fact, I very much like these services for business, but as support sites, not as the main money site. More on that in other articles soon …

For now, just remember, use these services to help you learn how to build your own. That’s probably the best value they provide, at least it was to me. Build a web page or two (or a dozen if you like), and look at the html tab after you type in some content. That will show you what’s needed to make your text and photos look like they do on the page. If you also select “view”, then “page source” at the top of your browser, you’ll be able to see a lot of the underlying computer code (html) that makes it possible for your browser to understand what to display.

There really isn’t all that much more to tell with this option. I’ll provide a step-by-step set of instructions to build a web page on each of the major free services as blog posts shortly, but for now – just sign up to the service of your choice, get an account (takes a couple of minutes), follow the help that pretty much pulls you through the process and give it a try. I think you’ll be glad you did.

To Build a Web Page on your own hosted domain:

Ok, this is a little harder but don’t let that scare you off. Just keep plugging away and you’ll get it. Anyway, next to the above free services, a wordpress site is probably the next easiest to set up. Knowing some html will certainly help, but it isn’t absolutely necessary. Be watching for a blog series on setting up WordPress sites, from uploading the wordpress database structure on your host server with or without Cpanel, to setting up the program to put your site on the web, to creating your first post, to managing incoming comments and what to do with backups, hackers and spam.

In the meantime, if you have Cpanel it is really easy to get started. Before you build a web page, just click on the Fantastico button, select wordpress and – poof – it gets installed for you with a single click. From there, pick one of the default free themes (you’ll see when you get to that point that it’s already installed for you), then just build a web page or your first blog post using the help screens and you’ll do just fine.

A more difficult approach (especially if you have no experience with html) is a self-hosted, or straight html site. The first thing you’ll need is a template, and there are hundreds of them you’ll find on a Google search that you can get for free. Just pick one, download it and set it aside for a minute.

The next thing you’ll need is an FTP program. I recommend FileZilla. It’s free and it works great. I’ll cover starting an html site from scratch in another blog series soon as well, but if you’ve never had the opportunity to build a web page using straight html, php or dabbled in css and all the other alphabet soup strings of letters that symbolize code for web design … then I recommend doing some reading first. DON’T jump in and buy a service, or the promised holy grail for a web design consultant … just don’t!

Read a little. Ask questions, but don’t get overwhelmed by it all. There are a few things you need to know to be successful, but not at a cost of hundreds or even thousands of dollars worth of somebody else’s help.

You really can build a web page, and turn that process into an entire website chock full of great content, interesting photos and superb graphics all on your own. Really! Just stay tuned and see …

Return from Build A Web Page to the homepage.

First, log into your cpanel, control panel or admin area using the user name and password provided by your hosting account. Select the email admin button. For Cpanel that’s the “Email Accounts” icon. That should bring you to a form where you will define your new personal email address.

In the first block, type in the name you want to appear. If your domain name was mysite.com, and you wanted your email address to be Admin@mysite.com, just enter Admin (or Bob, Sue, contact, info, sales, etc.) in that first block, enter a password in the section for that, confirm it by typing it in again and click on the create account button. If you don’t have Cpanel, the form will be slightly different, but the information you need to enter will be the same.

Once you defined your address, Cpanel allows you to set just how large you will let it get. That’s called the quota, and unless you plan to send a tremendous amount of video, photos or save large files in your account, the default setting will probably be just fine.

The make your own email part is done now, but to read, send and generally access your account, go back to the Cpanel home screen (or your host’s email control panel area) and look for an email access icon. For Cpanel, that’s the “Webmail” button. Press it and you will have 3 choices for reading mail.

Web hosting companies that have a different admin area may only have one way to view your mail, so they may send you directly to the account area. That’s ok … for the rest, you will get a choice of Horde, Squirrelmail or Roundcube. I prefer Roundcube, but it doesn’t really matter which you choose. They are all very basic services without much flare, so just pick the one you like, select it and head on over to your inbox.

You can make your own email address anything you like, and you can set your account up to have as many addresses as you want, at least up to the memory limit your hosting account allowed you on sign up. It’s a good idea to send an email to one of your other addresses to make sure that works, then reply to that email on your old account to make sure your new inbox functions properly as well. That’s it! You now have your own personal email account. Create some addresses for your friends if you like and you’re good to go!

I did so with some of my sites in the beginning, and (crossing fingers), so far I haven’t had any issues. But … many notable forums out there with folks much more in the technical, day-to-day ‘know’, strongly recommend not doing it. I won’t mention any web hosting packages, or hosting company names, as the intent here isn’t to pass on rumors or slam a reputable company because a few folks had issues … but the common guidance at the base of those discussions is not to host your own website with the same company that you used to register the domain.

The reasons are varied, but the common thread is having your site held captive. Basically, the argument is that if you have a problem with your hosting company, you can always transfer the domain to another and move on. However, if you’re having the registrar selected by the same company (usually as part of your web hosting packages), then you can’t even transfer the site. That site is completely out of your control at that point.

So, even if you plan to build your own websites, and you’ll host your own website as well (great choices here, by the way), general guidance for best results is to keep the two companies separate. Having said that, I really do like NameCheap for buying domain names and Host Nine for putting them on the Internet.

NameCheap has very reasonable domain name prices and a superb private registration (whois guard) process that others provide at a much higher annual cost.

Host Nine is worth considering if you plan to make website building a career. You can create unlimited sites, host them on servers with different IP addresses as desired and you can even offer web hosting packages to others if you purchase their reseller’s account. For just getting a site up, Host Nine is still ok, but if you only plan to have just a few, then I recommend HostGator. Great service, great prices.

Enjoy!

Anyway, one of the first things you’ll need is an account at Google. If you don’t have one, it’s quite easy … just type the blogger.com url into your search engine, hit return and wait for the Blogger home page to appear. There will be a spot on the right hand side where you can either enter your Google login, or get an account.

Once you’re logged in, you will be at your dashboard. After you build your own websites, or in this case, your own blogs, you will see them here. Until then, it will be empty … but, on the right side you’ll see a button that says Create A Blog – and one right next to it that says Help. Honest, that help button is all you need … that and a good cup of coffee. It will walk you through every step you need to get a site up.

If this is a personal site, all you need to do next is find your photos, use the help screen to get them posted and start calling friends and family to let them know you can “build my own website”, and here’s the URL as proof!

But do remember. You can build a website or blog this way very easily … but if it is for business purposes, I can’t recommend strongly enough that you buy your own domain name, host your own website and be in control of your own online destiny.

If you plan to purchase your own domain name, then services like Namecheap, Hostgator, 1&1 and many, many others are out there to help you with that.  For what it’s worth, I like Namecheap because they are very reasonable, and they have a whois protection service that lets you decide what information to give out rather than just blurting your home or business address, phone, email and name out for all to see (and use) as they wish.  The other hundreds of services out there are probably just fine … but remember, you don’t want to host you website at the same place you purchase your domain name at.

Next, you’ll need to write your content.  Putting that in notepad is best, since it doesn’t have any stray formatting, or even html coding in the background that could intefer with the final appearance of your web pages.  If it’s a personal site … the normal “hello world” post you get with wordpress will be just fine to get you going.

However, if you are planning to make your own website for business purposes … I’d recommend spending some time making sure you have quality content about you site ready to go before you publish it on the internet.  Sure, you can put up an “under construction” page if you like, I just personally think it’s better to have a good deal of the site written-up first.

More on this to come soon …

When you host your own website, you are also able to make your own email address. In fact, most control panels require you to create at least one custom email address on your new domain so the web hosting company (as well as site visitors) can communicate with you. If you don’t want to check that account on a regular basis, you can certainly forward it to a personal email domain or account that you monitor frequently instead.

However, unlike some of the most popular services out there, when you make your own email address – you completely control it. Although AOL (for example) allows more flexibility with canceling, reusing and naming personal email addresses than in the not so distant past, you are still competing with a lot of other people for your own email address. Not so when you host your own. If you want it to be Steve or Bob or admin@yoursite.com, you can certainly do that.

Even more important for business websites is having the capability to make you own email address for each employee. Not only can you grant or deny access to each individual in the company, most packages also allow you define a default address that will capture any stray email that comes in on the primary domain but wasn’t directed to any specific person. Sales@yoursite.com for example, just might prevent you from loosing a potential client.

To make your own email address, simply log in to the control panel provided by your web host. If that’s a cpanel, you’re in luck. Just select the “mail” icon (it is the first icon button on my cpanel account), select the Add/Remove/Manage Accounts, click on the Add Account hyperlink and fill in the form. You can assign any name you want, as long as it is unique and the @yourwebsite.com will be assigned automatically. Enter a password and decide how memory you want to give that email account and you’re all set. 50 – 100 Meg should be adequate for most general email accounts, although you will need to increase that quota for heavy users.

Then click on the create button and it’s live. If you don’t want to have to log in to the cpanel, select the Webmail icon and navigate to your email account, you can use outlook to get the email directly. Outlook has great help files, and it’s a bit more involved than we can cover here in a single article, but we did want to mention it.

You can make your own email account, set it up on the cpanel (or what ever control panel your host provides), then simply log in to Outlook, get the mail and manage it from there. That makes it easy, but the important thing is that you have complete control of that account. Because you registered your own domain already, set up an account with a web hosting company and went live with your own site … you now have control of all the custom email as well. You can even make an email address for your friends. What could be better than that?

Return from Make Your Own Email to the homepage.

As discussed on the Build My Own Website page, I think it’s wise to host your own website. That also means you’ve made the decision to own your own domain, and that you decided to build your own websites. Again, I think you are smart in doing all of that.

The next thing you’ll need is a good hosting company.

Hosting Your Own Website and Down Time
After taking the time needed to make my own websites, the absolute last thing I want is to publish them on a service that has more down time than not. So that has to be the number one consideration on who to use for hosting your own website. Any good hosting company will post that information – just look for percent uptime, and 95% is a bare minimum.

Web Hosting Packages
Next, you need to read the fine print on what each of the web hosting packages provides. $4.95 a month might sound like a great deal, but when you find out all you’ll ever get at that price is a single site live on the net, you might not be very happy later on. They may also have restrictions on bandwidth, email accounts and memory use, amongst many other things. Make sure you get a service that allows you to host your own website now, and then as many times in the future – at no additional cost – should you decide to build more sites later.

Bandwidth is just how much information is allowed to transfer from the server your web pages are hosted on, to the computers your visitors will view them on in a single month. It is usually measured in kilo-bytes, and if you “run out” of bandwidth, your site won’t show up on the internet for the rest of that month. That’s bad – especially if you build your own websites for business operations. So … make sure you get unlimited bandwidth from the web hosting package you select.

Email accounts may not be important to you today, but they could be. If you host your own website for business purposes, and it gains in popularity … you may need to hire more employees (think big here!). They will need email addresses. For personal sites, you can give your family members email addresses if desired, even though they still have to have internet access on their own. Ok – could be a small point here, but a good hosting company will provide unlimited email accounts as part of the monthly fee, so look for that.

On the other hand, memory is a big deal. When you host your own website on a server, each page is stored on that computer. If you use a wordpress format, most of that will be in a database. If you created your site with html, then most will be in separate files, just like you have on your computer. Either way, it uses up memory resources on the host’s server, so some will try to limit you. Opinions are varied here, and services grant different storage capabilities … but a good web hosting service will provide almost unlimited memory as part of the basic package. Even if it isn’t “unlimited”, a good provider will have ample memory for just about any site you can build, and they’ll also provide the ability to upgrade at a later date for a reasonable price should you need to do that.

Who to Use?
That’s the real question isn’t it – who to use to host your own website. I can tell you who I use, but this really is something you need to decide on your own. What I do recommend, however, is to start with Hostgator and compare all the others you’ll undoubtedly find from a quick search on the Internet. And do not get frustrated with the time it takes. It is worth the effort to build and host your own website – promise.

Return from Host Your Own Website to the homepage.

One of your first questions will be – how to build my own website? Where do I start? What do I need? How much will all this cost and how much time will it take?

Great questions. Let’s see if we can answer them.

How To Build My Own Website – Where to start?
First, you need to decide what you want. Sure, that sounds obvious and perhaps even a bit lame, but – really – you have to make a few decisions about your site before going very far. For example, what will the site be about? What is the intended purpose? Do you need to target a specific audience? Do you need the site to be ranked #1 on Google to drive tons of targeted traffic to your business, or are you simply interested in getting a few web pages up for family and friends to visit now and then?

The reason is important, as it defines what the next steps you take will be. For example, if you are looking for a personal web page, then you probably don’t care if 99% of the people searching on the web ever find you. When you say you’ll build my own website, all you really need is a web presence so the people you give your URL address to can find you. That’s a fairly easy task.

On the other hand, if you have a business, you need it to be profitable or it simply won’t last long. Assuming you don’t want to pay for that traffic, then the higher you are on page 1 of Google, the more free traffic you will get. That means more people will visit your site, and that equates to more sales you can make. That’s why you want to think about what the site needs to do before you jump in and just “build my own website” to the tune of a lot of wasted time.

So What Do I Need to Build My Own Website?
First of all, I assume you already have access to the internet. That’s a must, and the public library can provide that for free if needed.

The next thing is a name, or more specifically a URL. Without getting into too much detail, “URL” stands for Uniform Resource Locator and for our purposes, it is simply the online address at which your website will be found. If you want your website building experience to be completely free, then you can get a URL from services like WordPress, Squidoo, Blogspot, Hubpages and many other “Web2.0″ services. Google any of these to get the actual address if a free site is what you’re looking for.

But be warned … because they are free, you won’t actually own the site. That means it can be taken down without your permission for any reason, at any time. Granted, unless you break their terms of service, chances are your site will be safe and online for as long as you want it to be. But if you’re running a business, especially if you build my own website all on your own time, be careful using free services.

The other option is to actually buy your own domain name. There are literally hundreds of services to choose from, some being much better than others. GoDaddy is extremely active with their marketing and their service is quite good, but I think they’re a bit pricey. 1and1.com does a fine job as well, but I still prefer namecheap.com. They usually have coupons for discounts, and even if they don’t, a .com, .net or .org domain name usually only costs about $10 a year … and they have privacy options that allow you to put up a site without everyone on the internet being able to figure out your name, home address, phone number and all the other information you might want to keep private from the general passer-by. After all, people who know you already know that stuff … right?

Anyway, to build my own website (or sites), I register most of my domain names with namecheap.com.

Build My Own Website – Going Live
If you decided on a free service, then all you need to do is register with them, pick the name of your site and start posting. For personal sites, that’s as simple as saying “Hello World” and hitting the publish button. Of course you’ll want to put up pictures and write some comments, but seriously, your website will be live as soon as you tell it to publish your comments.

For business sites, you’ll need to take a bit more time to create your initial post or article that says just what you want, with just the right photos to go with it. Either way, the free method is fairly simple, and for questions, each of the Web2.0 properties listed above have great help screens you can follow.

Finding A Web Hosting Service.
Once you know how to build my own website, you’ll need to get it published. If you prefer to actually own your website, meaning you have control when it’s live on the net and when it’s not … then you need something called a web host, or web hosting service.

Good rule of thumb … never host your website at the same place you registered the domain name. Why? It has never happened to me, but lets just say many forums have horror stories about hosting services holding sites hostage for one reason or another. If your hosting service also registered your domain name, you’re stuck. If your domain was registered elsewhere, then all you have to do is pick another web hosting service, transfer your name over to them, upload your backed up content and you’re live again.

Like registrar’s, hosting services are a dime a dozen. I’ve had good luck with 1and1.com, but you have to know a bit about a site language called html, or at least know how to install wordpress on your server from scratch. Granted, it really isn’t all that difficult, but the “Fantastico” button on a service that has Cpanel is an easy one button installation. Cpanel, by the way, is just a place you set up your site at.

I also use HostNine, but it’s a bit expensive if you only plan to have a single site. Since one of my business models is to host sites for others as needed, I chose their reseller account. It’s about $25 a month, which probably doesn’t make sense if you’re just starting out.

Hostgator has some great plans for as little as about $5 a month for a single domain, or $8 a month for unlimited domains. That’s not bad … especially when it allows you to have control of your own website.

Build My Own Website – What About The Look And Feel?
If you use WordPress, you’ll have plenty of free themes to choose from to get you started. If you decided to build an HTML site, then you’ll need to search a bit for a free template you can use that fits your needs. Either way, theme or HTML template, they are simply a framework to display your posts, articles, pictures or graphics in a nice looking way.

With WordPress, you have everything you need to get started right away. If you use an HTML (or a standard PHP) site, then you’ll need something called an FTP program as well. This is simply a software package that transfers what you want to show up on your website from your computer, to the server on the internet that will actually display it to the world. Once I build my own website, I use FileZilla to get it on the server. It’s free, fairly easy to use and I can recommend it without reservation.

So How Much Does It Cost To Build My Own Website?
Other than your time, it can be completely free. If you prefer to own your own web site, then $10 a year for a domain name and $5 – $10 a month (or up depending on what you need) for somebody to host your site on the Internet is about the minimum above the cost for online access itself.

How Long Will It Take To Build My Own Website?
That completely depends on you. If it’s a personal site on a free service … about 30 min to an hour to register with one of the web2.0 properties and do a little reading on how to make a post can get you live.

If it’s a serious business site, probably 15 – 30 minutes to decide (and find) just the right domain name, another 30 minutes to sign up with a registrar (being sure to read terms of service and privacy policies) and actually registering the name. Another 15 – 30 minutes will be needed to find and sign up with a good web hosting service. After that, you’ll need to factor in some time to find a theme or html template you like, learn how to post or “FTP” your content to the server, and then write or contract out the actual content itself.

It may sound like a lot of work to build my own website, but if you choose WordPress (free or as a framework for your own domain), it really isn’t that hard to get a site live. For personal sites, you just add content as you want and you’re done. For business sites, it will take a bit more time to get it just right … so you can start on the second phase, which is getting it noticed on line.