Designing Your Own Website

After you would have setup your hosting and bought a domain name. Now you need to bring the two together.

There are various ways of designing a website. But keep the following in mind – your site needs to be SEO friendly.

Search Engine Optimization is the science of making your site rank in the search engines; we have discussed that in articles before, There are two main ways commonly used but both methods work and both have their advantages as well as disadvantages.

So let’s have a closer look at these methods.                                              

1. Using an html editor to code and create a website this method has advantages in that you can design the site exactly as to what you want and need.

But you will need an html editing program (software) and you will need some html knowledge.

HTML editing programs we recommend would obviously be Dreamweaver – it can be the older version or the latest, or Coffee cup’s HTML Editor.

However, if you are a newbie, I recommend you begin by using free and simple WYSIWYG web editors such as Kompozer, WordPress, HTML-Kit, SeaMonkey Composer (Mozilla), Amaya and Trellian.

Note that some of these free web site builders have some restrictions such as:

    * Limited amount of pages

    * May not be allowed to customize HTML

    * You have less option for customizing your template and page layout

But they have the following advantages:

    * No HTML web design knowledge is required

    * They typically include pre-designed web site templates

    * You can upload the site easily without the need of an FTP programme to upload your pages

    * Usually come with an image library where you can download free images, templates, backgrounds and web site headers

    * You can upload your own images.

These will obviously cost some money this will be part of the investment into your own business.

With an HTML editor, you can design your site complete from scratch, but this site will be a static site, meaning, if you want to add something, be it text, an image or a page, you need to do so on your pc and then upload the site to your server.

For this you will need an FTP program – File Transfer Protocol. There are many free FTP programs available, but one we use with great success is Filezilla.

It can be downloaded here . An FTP program gives you access to your hosting server and thus allows you to upload your html files to the server where your domain name is.

So, the process would be that you design your html files (your website) with the HTML editor on your pc, then use the FTP program to upload these files to your server (domain name) so that when people type in www.yourdomain.com – they will see your website appear.

Advantages as I said, is that you have full control over exactly what the site needs to do and how it should function and look. Disadvantages are if you don’t have HTML knowledge, you will struggle with the more intricate functionalities of your website.

It might also take some time to understand the basic workings of website design and HTML, although there are many online courses and training available.

I prefer using Dreamweaver to design websites from scratch as this gives me the choice to decide how and what the site should do and look like.

The Second Method here is:

2. Using Wordpress or Blogger as a Content Management System (CMS) This method has the advantage that once loaded onto the server, you simply login to the site and edit, add or delete content live.

No html knowledge necessary, no FTP program necessary, you do it all live on the live server.

Wordpress or Blogger however, limits you in the sense that you can only use certain set templates, and make minor changes to those.

Unfortunately some of the changes need to be done in an HTML editor.

But for the biggest part you can use Wordpress or Blogger templates as is, without having to bother about that. For instance – I have built this site –  as a Blogger site I used a standard free Blogger template with few modifications to the template.

Having said all that, the biggest issue is to setup a Wordpress blog on your server, For Blogger it’s so easy, You just log into blogger and do normal blogger Designs, but in wordpress it’s very different. Well here are some of the steps – you login to your hosting control panel www.yourdomain.com/cpanel using the username and password that your hosting company sent you.

Once logged in – look for the Fantastico icon – a bit to the bottom. Click on that >> you will be taken to a new page. In the left hand menu – click on Wordpress – then just follow the instructions given to you in the right hand column.

You will decide on a username and password and same will be emailed to you.

Now you will be able to see your Wordpress site on a basic template and then also be able to login to your admin section where you can expand and build the site.

There are numerous Wordpress lessons available on the web simply Go get your site set up!

Source; Click Here