Building Your First Website? Here’s What You Need to Do

In the 21st century, there is no presence more significant than the website. From its humble beginnings as a space to talk shop on trading cards and your favorite video game to the now personal face of information juggernaut, websites have evolved and grown substantially. This is why you, the individual, need a website. It can be for anything. It can be wacky, scary, silly, serious, or even a portfolio to showcase your talent. The important part is that you have digital real estate along the information superhighway. 

If you’ve never made one before, you’re in luck! Here’s a quick and dirty guide to get you set up.

Hosting

The first thing you need is good hosting. I start with hosting because the domain matters less and less these days. Unless it’s a solid brand that needs to have their name as the domain name like “Target” or “TDAmeritrade” you can pretty much put anything. So first, find yourself a good host. Be sure to find the closest one to you, too. If you ask long time players 4goodhosting, choosing hosts with options close to where you or your audience physically reside makes it a lot easier for bandwidth-consuming content to load and stream quickly. When it comes to domains, just make sure you have it available for transfer to your preferred hosting company. This means turning off most privacy and security settings and coordinating between the two. So get that domain and, more importantly, get the best hosting for you. 

Design 

Depending on how you want it to look, you can either use pre-set designs offered by platforms like WordPress, or you can hire a designer to make things for you. The latter, although more expensive, is the most ideal for business and brands. The more you have to ride on this website, the more of an investment you should put into the user experience. But if you’re just making a blog or something you want to build off of for fun, there’s nothing wrong with using the formats that are provided by the platform itself. Some of the most successful and well-designed websites were made off of pre-sets. 

Content

After you’ve got the hosting and the design down, it’s time to pump it full of content. Without content, nobody is going to go see your website. You need to set up personal benchmarks and individual goals when it comes to putting things up. Set your strategy to be the most appealing to the audience you’ve determined, and pump out, at the very least, 3 pieces of content a week. That’s going to be your goal. After that, take a personal review of your work. If you’re satisfied with the 30, go ahead and write another 30. This process doesn’t end until the end of your website’s lifecycle. 

Building your website isn’t nearly as complicated as it was back in the day. There are resources and websites out there specifically geared to help you. After all, that’s what the internet is all about: providing and exchanging value. Who knows, maybe when your website is big enough, people will be looking up to your content.