A step-by-step guide to creating a website
By: Kriti Krishan
Tags: Website, Web Development, Web Design, UX, Website Design

Step 1: Decide what your website goals are

First, think about why you need a website — what your goals are, what is the intent, what content will be found on it, etc. It helps to think about the kind of traffic you want on your blog eventually, and the kind of people you want to serve as this knowledge will help you make key decisions later on.

Source: Unsplash, Estee Janssens

The platforms you use to build your site are heavily dependent on your goals and needs.

If you are looking to build an internet business you might need more robust and different tools than if you are looking to build a personal site.

It begs to be mentioned here that there are a lot of “build a free website” ads and platforms going around now — and without naming any, it helps to know that a self-hosted website will always outperform one of these. These platforms typically offer very restrictive customisation, end up piling up features you might not need, and can end up more expensive in the long run.

Step 2: Find a web host

A web host is the first thing technical you need. All it is, is a place for your website on the internet. Think of it as buying real estate for your website on the internet.

There are many hosting platforms for you to choose from, but what’s important is knowing what factors to look at when you choose. Uptime guarantee, availability of customer service and site speed are a few of the things you want to consider here.

A good rule of thumb is to avoid shared hosting for a website that you want to scale into higher traffic. Also — don’t be afraid to pay for your hosting, it’s the backbone of your website running smoothly.

Step 3: Get a domain name

Now, you need to think of your domain name. Using your audience’s key needs, your USP and your content & offering — think of some keywords that would bring people to your site. There are also a lot of tools you could use to create a website name from those keywords, one example being namemesh.

Source: Unsplash, Markus Winkler

Needless to say, avoid slurs or trademarks. Remember to give it due thought but don’t overthink it, it’s what’s on your website that is most important.

Now that you’ve chosen a name, buy it on platforms like GoDaddy, Namecheap, etc. (you can link it to your web host easily)

Step 4: Choose a Content Management System

Next comes something slightly technical — you have to choose a CMS. A CMS is a platform that is used to organise and manage web content by different people, from a robust backend database. If this sound confusing, think of it as a file manager, where you can just sort out and publish your work. It’s easy and important to have a really good CMS platform for a well functioning website.

Source: Unsplash, Stephen Phillips

Most CMS platforms have various plugins you can use to optimise your website better. You have the options of WordPress (the most popular one) or Joomla, Drupal and a multitude of smaller CMS systems that work well. Reading some comparisons will help you choose the best one for you.

Step 5: Brand & Customise your site

Branding goes a long way. Source: Unsplash — Mae Mu

Now that you have done the heavy lifting, here comes the fun part. You can go up to your CMS platform and start making your website your own. Every platform has robust themes that you can use and customise for yourself.

You can also create a logo by yourself and make sure to create brand colours that you can adhere to — to give yourself an identity for customers to find you with. You can play around with these and keep customising your theme as you go along to keep it fresh and fun.