How to Build a free website
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Introduction
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!).
I'm going to follow along with an example website so you can see each step as it happens and you'll have a rough guide to follow to ensure your success.
How to Build a Free Website :: Quick Fire Planning
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!
What type of free website do you want to build?
Is it for business, or is it personal?
Do you want to make the changes online using a free website maker or do you want to edit the content offline and upload it when you have an internet connection?Are you going to host movies, and large files on the website?Do you need extra services like a blog, forum, shopping cart or guestbook?Trust me, these are just a few of the questions that we could be looking at, but they're enough to get started with and they'll give us enough information to move forward, so I'm going to go ahead and answer them for my own website I want to build.1. It's a personal website about my dog Phoebe.2. I'd like to be able to make changes online, I have a permanent Internet connection.3. I might like to have a blog to let everyone know what Phoebe is doing on a day-to-day basis. Have you written down your answers on paper? Good... you may read onWhat is your current skill level?
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,
Have you had some experience with websites before, either editing or writing HTML or, something else?And my answer:I've had a bit of experience in building websites before, I would say my skill level is intermediate, I know most of the HTML tags, I've worked with a bunch of free website makers and I've built some websites for friends and family.You need to be honest with me here, if you've had absolutely no experience then that is cool, just let me know and I'll guide you through it. If you've already built website before then you'll need to take a different path, but once again I'll lay it all out for you just as soon as you've answered these questions.Who is your target market/audience?
This ties in closely to the first question.
If you are running a business website then you need a clearly defined target market (audience). However, it's still important for your personal website, it will define your writing style, design and type of content.My answer to this question:The target audience for my website about Phoebe is going to be mainly family and friends. I also plan on adding some general information about the care and training of Jack Russell's so I need to remember not to make my content too personal, any one could see it.How much time do you have to spend on the updating and marketing of the website?
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?
You also need to consider who will be updating the website, is it just you, or will other family members need access to upload their photo's and stories?Not only that, I am sure you'll want to be number 1 on Google and have thousands of visitors to your free website daily, but it just isn't going to happen without considerable effort. How long can you spend marketing your free website and how much spare some time do you have to learn the skills needed?Here are my answers:1. I could probably update the website once a week or once a fortnight. I think that is going to be ok since not a lot will be happening on a daily basis.2. My partner might want to upload some photo's or write a story about what Phoebe got up to today, so I need to keep her skill level in mind as well.3. I don't really care about getting a load of visitors to this website, it's mainly for family and friends. However I'm going to give you some solid advice later to give you a good chance of getting high rankings in Google.
How to Build a Free Website :: Hosting
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.
My highest recommendation goes to Pink Paper at the moment, they've really stood out from the crowd. As far as I can see their business model is to give away free web hosting and then provide cheap paid hosting if you ever need it. Just so you know I'm not affiliated with them in any way.I'm going to sign up with them and video the process, unfortunately I don't have a microphone right now so I'll have to dub over the video later.How to Sign Up for Free Web Hosting
Hosting (cont'd)
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.
For now though, we're going to look at how to get a more personalized domain name. Remember, at the moment it's http://mydogphoebe.pinkpaper.info which isn't too bad, but we'll see if we can make it just a little nicer.How to Build a Free Website :: Domain name
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.
Disclaimer
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
Consider This
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.
Links to Help You Build a Free Website
- SitePoint
This is a website containing frequently updated articles, forums and columns aimed at people building websites. The forums are especially helpful if you get stuck with building your own website. I use this website on a weekly basis and I hope you get - Digital Point Forums
These forums are kind of aimed more at marketing, but its also full of web developers who are always keen to help you out. I visit this fairly often and find it really satisfying to help people out on the boards. If you see me on there make sure to s - Open Source Web Design
This is dedicated to bringing you fresh layouts and designs for your free website that are... well... free :) You can download a new design, try it out and make amends to anything without the fear of copyright infringement. This is an excellent resou - Wordpress (org)
This is where you go to download the latest version of Wordpress which is a super simple Blog and Content Management System. There is heaps of documentation to help you get started and lots of friendly people to help you out if you get stuck. I use t - Wordpress (com)
Get a free blog within minutes from Wordpress.com it's probably the fastest way if you want to build a free website without getting your hands dirty. I'll have a video up soon of how to build a free website using this service, if its not on here alre - Blogger
Yet another blogging platform, this one is run by Google so it's pretty reliable, it's also very fast. I have a couple of accounts on here but I don't keep them updated as much I would like. - Web Monkey
You know, I've never liked the front end design of this site, but once you get into a tutorial it's actually really nice and full of great information. Go here if you want to enhance some designs from the "Open Source Web Design" site. - Web Design From Scratch
This is like being able to read a $50 book on the subject of Web Design for Free! It is really cool and will teach you a bunch about best practices and WHY things look cool. - Writing for the Web
We all get stuck from time to time but we always have some message we want to get across. Go to this website to learn how to form your ideas and messages into words, paragraphs and pages that people will want to read. - Writing for the Web Tips
This is similar to the link above but gives a nice overview of tips that you can use to critique your own work, or just ideas to put in your head before you start writing your own pages.
How to Setup a Free Blog for Your Website
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Comments
Hey there Sindicut, Sorry I didn't realise people would see this so fast!! Wow... I'll get them up today I was just going to record some videos to show how to evaluate the free website companies.
Thanks heaps for your comment!
Definitely interesting so far....thanks!
Thanks Aqua!
You pointed out some helpful tips to those plannning to start a blog or a site.
where are those links?
I used msn free websites works great...my daughter liks free webs...and blogger i think?
Great artickle, Webchalk, with some very useful advice.
Those links should be up now, I just wanted to make sure I wrote a little something about each one first. Many thanks,
I can't believe I spelt article as artickle. It was very late and I'd had a glass of wine.
Thanks for the feedback, make a request if there's anything in particular you want me to write about.
good stuff, webchalk. thanks for the info.
thank you I will see if can put some of your advice into practice
This has been very helpful, were excited to put it all to the test. Thank You.
Thanks so much for this article... I usually don't search hubs for something I need, but I have a Web site on my college server, and since I'm graduating I'm going to need a new domain.
I always keep building sites and they expire thanks for these tips I will try them
thanks for this information, glad I came across this
best of luck
Great information here - can't wait for the next one.
I made i site but i don;t get how to edit it
This is a must hub for anyone who is interested in creating their first website! A lot of very helpful information regarding building a website.
I felt that I just talked to a friend who is willing to help. You are cool!
can you help me
working
Sindicut says:
11 months ago
Just wondering, but WHAT links did you supply? :)