How to Build a free website

This is a step-by-step super-simple guide on how to build a free website. At the end of this page you will have not only learnt how to build a free website but you would have actually built one in the process (cool!).

If you want to build a free website then you will need to consider a few things before you get started.

1. What type of free website do you want to build?

2. What is your current skill level?

3. Who is your target market/audience?

4. How much time do you have to spend on updating and marketing the website?

Ok, so these questions are designed to get you thinking about some key issues that people usually overlook when they start to build a free website.

You'll find a lot of people never end up finishing their free website because they never considered these important questions.

Either they'll sign up for free services that require too much technical knowledge or they go the opposite and the services are over simplified and don't offer enough fine grained control.

Yes, this is a tutorial on how to build a free website, and yes you do get a surprising amount of choice. This process will be different for everyone because we are all at different skill levels, we want to achieve different things and we have different time constraints.

The Overall Plan for How to Build a Free Website is:

1. Answer these 4 questions to get a website specification to work from

2. Find a hosting company that fits our spec

3. Find a domain name service (if needed)

4. Either start editing the website online, or learn how to use a free website maker to create the website offline

5. Get some extra tips to make your website shine

So let's get started!

Is it for business, or is it personal?

Is this your first ever website and you know absolutely nothing about how to build a website? (Good! This page is perfect for you) Or,

This ties in closely to the first question.

More often than not your visitors are going to want fresh content as often as possible. Whether it's photo's of the latest family holiday or the newest products your business has to offer, there's always going to be a need for some time to be spent updating the website. How often can you update your free website?

Ok it's time to sort out some hosting, the first thing to look out for is "free hosting" providers that force you to display ads on your website. I don't really like it, and I'm sure you wont either, so I'll try to pick out web hosts that fit your specifications and are as Ad-Free as possible.

I am pretty sure that will cater to everyones needs here. If you are indeed trying to setup a free business website I will setup a new hub just for you because there are a heap of different things you need to consider to make sure you're website is profitable, and stays profitable.

Generally to get a free domain name that looks good you need to look at a redirection service. I haven't found anywhere that is giving away the standard .com, .org, .info domains without the need for you to buy something else. So let's stick to the free stuff wherever possible and look for a good redirection service.

As luck would have it I've already found one for you, it's called .co.nr and it gives you a domain name http://youname.co.nr/ it's about as simple as you can get and much better than the other services I've seen out there. However you do need to put a link back to their website on your home page. So there is a bit of a trade off there, but at least it's not strictly advertising, you're just letting people know about a cool service.

The setup is pretty self explanatory but I've setup a separate hub with all the screen shot to show you step-by-step how to setup a free domain name for your website. I chose http://www.mydogphoebe.co.nr/ Not bad for a free one :)

Note that I found the activation email in my Spam folder, so I had to whitelist the .co.nr crowd.

Plus there are two important steps you need to take in the email.

First. You need to add a backlink on your website to .co.nr

Second. You need to activate your account by entering your username, password, and activation code (at the bottom of the email) into the form they link to.

I show you in the How to Setup a Free Domain Tutorial exactly how to sign up for this service and add the backlink using this exact setup.

Very little (if anything) in this world is literally free. There is always some trade-off, whether it be time, money, losing out on doing something else, agreeing to licensing terms, forgoing ownership on screen real estate, the list goes on.

This hub is aimed at people who want to create a website for "free" meaning no money changes hands, and no credit cards are involved for "security measures" or "verification".

You will however have to trade your time for this information and depending on how you value your time it could be an expensive exercise. If you think you're time is worth $100 per hour, and it takes you six hours to get a "free" website up and running then it has really cost you $600.

I just ask that you take that into account when looking for free information on the Internet.

If you were reading "How to make a free website" Return to that article here: How to make a free website

What is the true purpose of your website? If it is indeed just to write up some free information you want people to be able to use then you may disregard what I have to say. However if you are actually wanting to make money and are considering how to build a free website you might need to reconsider your options. Here's why:

A free website often has very limited support, I mean when a server crashes with a paid service someone is accountable, but with free services they have no real loyalty to you, you're not paying them any money so why should they care? Well maybe they should ethically, but from a business perspective they can't afford to spend a whole bunch of money on support.

So can you afford to build a free website? If the free website server goes down do you have a backup plan? How fast can you recover from such a situation?

Interesting things to consider and I'll be helping you overcome these very situations in upcoming hubs.