In this article, I want to provide you with some details on how to build a web site, but first, consideration ought to be given to the primary reason for your site.
Will it be a personal blog where you can share your everyday living, ideas and opinions, or are you desiring to go into business online? If this site to be a business site, you will need to make some decisions about your domain or site name; e.g., do you want to use your own name as a ‘brand’ or will you use a product-related name? Should you choose a generic domain? Will it be best to have your own domain name?
If you need some assistance with these choices, you can take a look at the posts under “Domains, Hosting & DNS” on my blog, Voiceover.
Whether your website is to be for journaling your life or business use you can do one of a couple of things – buy your own website name and organize your own web hosting, or you can make use of one of the many free website building sites.
These are usually simple to use, and have loads of features and functionality, and include lots of choices as to how your site will look. You will discover that the majority of them utilize ‘drag and drop’ editing, and include photo, video and audio upload capabilities, plus shopping cart and payment facilities if you desire them.
These web building sites can host your website for you, although the majority of them won’t let you have your own domain name with a free membership, however, the option is usually available in the paid subscriptions. You will generally still have the ability to name your website just what you like, but your website will be a sub-domain of their site, so your site name would look like this -
http://yoursitename.sitebuilderco.com” title=”http://yoursitename.sitebuilderco.com
Don’t think that this is necessarily undesirable, because you will automatically be taking advantage of their site’s page rank.
Be aware that some of these companies will put ads on your free site as a way of raising revenue to pay for the free sites. Some free sites, on the other hand, will let you to put your own ads on your site. Generally these website building services also have various levels of paid subscriptions available, giving you more benefits and functionality.
Here is a list of some of the sites available, giving their Google Page Rank and Alexa Ranking:
Page RankAlexa Ranking
WordPress.com 9 326
Orkut8 103
Ning8 133
TypePad 8 189
Network Solutions8 903
Weebly 8 986
Friendster 7 149
Multiply 7 249
Squidoo 7 284
Webs 7 428
Plaxo 7 1,505
Jimdo 7 1,597
Tripod7 2,037
Squarespace7 2,237
Yola 7 4,469
Pageflakes 7 18,997
Hubpages 6 280
Gather 6 3,871
Moonfruit6 11,374
Virb6 13,603
You should check these sites out for yourself, but if you are keen to narrow your search down, I have snippets of information about most of them on my blog, Voiceover. Not all these sites have a ‘free’ option.
Another big contender for your attention is WordPress. I don’t have space to give you many details here, except that it is an extremely useful platform, particularly if you decide to get your own domain name and hosting. It can be totally backed-up, so that if anything went wrong at any stage, all your site’s database files will not be lost. There is a WordPress setup tutorial on my blog – you will find a link to it below.
I wish you all the best for the future.
Valerie
Working 40 hours a week for somebody else wasn’t allowing me to do the things I wanted to do, so having years of computer experience I got started on the internet. I see it as the way forward, so come and see what I am up to – here is the link to my blog, http://voiceover.valerieeldridge.com