How to Set up a Website in 2023:
An Updated Beginner’s Guide
Setting up your own website is much easier than you think. More and more people want to have their own online presence. You don’t need to depend exclusively on an Instagram profile, a Facebook page, or a Twitter account.
Why not create your own website?
To get started, let’s take a
look at the most common questions we received from ambitious beginners like
yourself in the past:
Table of
Contents
·
Will I need technical skills?
·
How to set up a website: 5 steps to get started
·
The
3 most popular ways to set up a website
·
Smart Finder: Quickly find out which is the best website builder
for you
·
What’s
the Best Website Builder for You?
·
What about the domain name?
·
Design
and planning of a website
·
What
elements do good websites have in common?
·
Steps for setting up a website
·
Your website is up. Now what?
Will I need technical skills?
This depends on the purpose of
your website. The most complicated
way would be to learn how to code HTML, CSS, JavaScript and PHP – the basics of practically any
website.
But this isn’t the only way to
create a website: even if you aren’t very familiar with the technical side of
things, you can easily set up a good website.
But how?
By using a Website builder. If
you can use Word, Facebook, or PowerPoint, you’ll be able to use these tools
without any problem. These easy-to-use platforms offer a visual editor,
hosting, and you can get a domain
name through them: a
one-stop-shop.
How to set up a website: 5 steps to get started
Most website projects go
through these steps:
1.
Make a plan for
your website’s structure and content
2.
Register a domain
name – ideally pick a .com
3.
Find a website
builder (and hosting provider) to create your site
4.
Optimize it for
search engines
5.
Launch your
website
The 3 most popular ways to set up a website
Let’s go over the most popular
ways to start a website. There are many solutions. Some are more flexible than
others, and some are more complex.
Setting up a website with a website builder
Let’s start with the easiest option: a website builder. This is an “all-inclusive” package, so
to speak: a single company will usually provide the template (design), editor,
hosting, domain name, email address and support. The web builder takes care of
the difficult tasks.
Smart Finder: Quickly find out which is the best website builder for you
What's the Best Website
Builder for You?
START SMART
FINDER
This isn’t only useful for
beginners. It simply depends on the project. Why complicate your life if there
are easy ways to do things? Almost all site builders let you create a free basic website on a subdomain (e.g.
yourname.sitebuildername.com), which is ad-supported. Using such a plan you can
try it in detail before deciding if the cost is worth it.
Prices start at around
$8/month, but it includes all the essentials. If you don’t particularly need an
email address, it can be even cheaper.
To better understand exactly
how it works, please watch our step by step tutorial to website creation!
Pros:
·
It’s very easy to
use.
·
You don’t need
additional software.
·
You can start
without technical knowledge.
·
Updates and
security aspects are handled by the website builder itself.
·
Predefined design
templates that you can adapt as you like
Cons:
·
You can’t always
add extra features (depending on the website builder).
·
It isn’t as
flexible since you’re dependent on the provider.
·
They aren’t
designed for very complicated projects that require a database (e.g. a job or
real-estate directories)
The best-known website
builders are Wix, Weebly, and Shopify (for online stores). You’ll find
other Website builders in our complete comparison.
You can try the Wix website
builder for free and for as long as you want.
Creating a website with a content management system
Content management systems
(CMS) are a bit more complicated. Even though they essentially work the same
way as a website builder, they are far more difficult to use.
With a website builder, not
only can you add simple content like texts and images, but you can also design
an entire website. A classic content management system would be much more
limited in this case, and as far as appearance goes, you’re limited to the
templates available.
While there are plenty of
systems like Joomla!, Drupal and Typo3, we’ll focus on the most popular CMS,
which is WordPress. Thanks to hosting companies that offer a one-click
install, it’s not difficult to set up.
Recommendable ones are Dreamhost (extremely affordable), Siteground (a
bit more expensive but super powerful) and Bluehost (popular choice with 24/7 support).
Learn more about which web hosting companies we recommend for WordPress
here.
You can also install a
template easily and adjust it with the design options. But: if there is something you don’t like, you’ll probably
have to modify the CSS or HTML (you or a programmer).
The hosting, domain, email
address, installation and level of support you choose will depend on how much
you want to spend and your technical knowledge. It can be quite cheap if you do it
yourself. Take a look
at our pricing guide for typical website projects here.
Of course, that may not always
be the ideal solution, especially when you’re busy running a business. In this
case, you can also try to hire a web designer who can help you set up a
WordPress website, for example.
An enormous advantage,
especially for WordPress, is that you have thousands of plugins that let you add special features to your website
that are not initially included. A typical example would be WooCommerce, a
plugin that adds a complete online store.
By default, WordPress is
designed to be in a single language, but there are plugins, like WPML, that let you translate the page. Another of my
favorites is the Yoast SEO plugin, which lets you change the search
engine settings (e.g. Google).
In our introductory video, we
take a look at what you need to consider if you’re setting up WordPress.
You can sign up for Siteground here.
Pros:
·
You can choose the
hosting company.
·
Great for
multi-language websites.
·
Technical
flexibility: you can access the whole source code (if you know what you’re
doing).
·
You can get more
features with plugins.
Cons:
·
No personal
technical support.
·
Creative freedom
depends on the template.
·
It can have
additional costs for the plugins.
·
You may need a
programmer to make small aesthetic changes.
Other examples of content
management systems are Joomla! And Drupal, but they are far more complicated to
use than WordPress, so we won’t get into that. You’ll find more information on
WordPress in our WordPress beginners guide.
How to program a website yourself (or hire someone to do it).
This is the supreme
discipline: opening the editor and starting to code. Those who need total liberty will have to make the page themselves. You do need
patience for this, and for beginners, it is usually overwhelming (and
frustrating).
A good place to start are
websites like Codecademy, Mozilla, or W2Schools, which have step-by-step
tutorials for beginners. But expect a long journey before your website is ready.
In this case, it is not
possible to give a price in general, since it depends on the project. Above
all, it will be much more expensive if you need to hire a programmer: paying
the $8-10 a month for a website builder will always be cheaper than what any designer or agency will charge for an
hour of work.
Some favorites are NetBeans,
Aptana Studio or Brackets. All allow at least HTML, CSS, JavaScript, PHP, and
are free. Another option is Webflow, which is a visual source code editor.
Brackets screenshot
Pros:
·
The possibilities
are unlimited if you know how to program.
·
Cost-friendly
hosting.
·
Maximum
flexibility.
Cons:
·
No support.
·
The learning curve
is steep.
·
The costs are hard
to calculate.
·
Requires a lot of
study and implementation time.
What about the domain name?
If you don’t want to use a
free domain name (which looks quite ugly as it will have the name of another
company in it), you need to purchase your own domain. This will then look like www.mycompany.com. Usually, it’s best to get the .com extension unless you
are strictly operating in one country like Canada (.ca) or the UK (.co.uk).
Our own domain name
There is no shortage of
so-called registrars that sell domain names. We ourselves mostly buy them
at Namecheap as
they are, well, pretty cheap but the differences are not that significant as
they range from $9-18 per year.
But depending on where you
build your website, you can get it also included in your website builder package. Wix, Weebly, and Jimdo, for example, all have the
domain name included for free in the first year. The following years they
charge slightly more than Namecheap, for example, but the added convenience of
only having to deal with one company is normally worth it.
If you are using WordPress.org
or build the website yourself, you will also need to organize your own web
storage. This can be bought at the same place where you get your domain name
from or at yet another specialized company like Siteground or WPEngine. But if
you are only starting out, this won’t matter too much for now.
Tip: if you need email addresses too, you can try out Zoho Workplace. It’s a similar service as Google
Workspace but Zoho also features a free plan.
Design and planning of a website
Just like it isn’t always a
good idea to start cooking without following a recipe, at least if you have no
experience, the same goes for creating a website. Here, improvising is not a
good idea. Planning will
help you decide what sections you need, the content that works best for you and
how your website should be designed.
Mind map for an online shoe store
A good way to start is by
creating a mind map with the ideas of what your website will need. The main
items of this mind map can be used for your navigation.
Tips for planning your website:
1.
Use a paper and a
pen and write down everything you want on the website. Brainstorming and
creating a mind map are the perfect ways to organize your thoughts.
2.
Take a look at
other interesting websites both in terms of design and content.
Note what you like and what you don’t.
3.
Once you have a
draft of what you want on your website, ask people you trust what they think.
You’ll certainly find some interesting perspectives you can incorporate.
4.
Create a list(e.g.
in Excel) with all the pages that your website will have. Note down the
title, what kind of content you’ll have, keywords, the purpose, the kind of
page and their importance.
5.
Bonus: If you want to position yourself well in search
engines, this is when you should find out what keyword each page will have, and
add them to the list in point 4. Read this SEO guide for more information.
What about the website design?
Creating visual web designs is
no easy task. In fact, I’d say that online, there are more examples of terrible
designs than good ones. Don’t let your website be one.
Just like bell bottom jeans
were stylish in the 70s, they were ridiculous in the 80s and 90s. The same
happens with web design. You have to remember that what was considered good
practice 5 years ago, can now seem kind of old or out of date. Check out
this article to know what practices to avoid.
This is not a guide for
professional designers, but it will give you some tips that I think always
work:
1.
Try to use
a light (or white) color for the background.
2.
Choose attractive
colors that complement each other. Use Adobe
Color if you need help.
3.
Keep the design clean, simple, and leave
white space between the
elements. More information..
4.
Don’t use too many fonts: one for the titles and another for the text is usually
enough. This guide will
help you choose.
5.
Keep consistent
style and format. The users should not notice any differences between your
pages. Don’t create a Frankenstein.
6.
Your website
should also be perfectly adapted to mobile devices.
7.
Any
images you add must look professional. Don’t upload a selfie you took in
front of a bathroom mirror. Keep in mind that today’s smartphones take very
nice photos. If you plan right, you can get great headshots.
8.
Less is more. When
in doubt, go minimal.
If you want to go deeper with
the web design, take a look at Wix’s blog. There
have infinite tutorials and guides on easy-to-digest designs.
What elements do good websites have in common?
1. Great-looking
artwork
The logo and image selection
are crucial to getting a professional-looking website. Today you can easily
find loads of free stock photos: the best is to check out Creative Commons.
What’s more, you can find more
professional-looking photos (starting $1) on a lot of other websites,
like Adobe Stock and Shutterstock.
Here are some great free photo options.
It is important to make sure
you understand the
available image formats: .gif, .jpg
and .png are the main formats. Plus, you have to optimize the size and quality
of the image to the web standard browser. Everything you need to know about
this topic can be found here.
Likewise, it will come in
handy to have an editing program to be able to edit and change the size of the
images. A professional and free option is Gimp, however, it’s quite complicated
to use. Another Photoshop alternative is Affinity Photo, which costs only a
fraction of the price of the original and doesn’t require a subscription.
But there are increasingly
more tools you can use to create graphic resources simply and without having to
learn to use Photoshop or Illustrator. For instance, you can use Stencil or Snappa.
2. Professional
copy
Remember that writing for a
website isn’t the same as writing a letter or a book. On the web, we tend to be
less formal and at the same time need to help busy individuals find the
information they need quickly. That means we have to make our content
scannable by:
·
using a headline
structure that makes sense,
·
not letting the
text paragraphs get too long,
·
adding bullet
points and
·
choosing fonts
that are easy to read.
We’ve actually written an
entire guide around this topic, which you can find here.
3. Contact form
and a navigation menu that makes sense
To give a professional
impression to your visitors, you should use a contact form instead of an email address. It is very easy to
integrate contact forms with solutions like Wix, Jimdo, Weebly or
Remember that your website’s
navigation bar is crucial for visitors to go from one page to another. Pay
attention to it and make sure it
flows logically. For example, if
your objective is for users to send you a message through the contact form,
forgetting to link to it in the menu or page footer would be an epic fail.
Make sure you also do a test
sign up before publishing your website!
Steps for setting up a website
We can break down the website
creation process into the following steps:
1.
Plan your website
and order the ideas in a mind map.
2.
Decide what
content you need for your website.
3.
Buy the domain
name, for example at Namecheap (but you can also buy it after).
4.
Choose the best website builder.
5.
Create the content
(e.g. texts and images) for each page.
6.
Add the content to
your website and optimize the SEO.
7.
Publish and
promote the page.
Obviously, each of the above points can be built on much
more. We have a (free) ebook where
you can get more information.
Your website is up. Now what?
If you’ve already created your
website and published it, you can start promoting and optimizing it to increase visits and improve the user experience.
·
Update your
website: Websites are not books.
Once published, they can still be updated. Make sure that you create new and
relevant content when you have the chance and that you’re constantly updating
the website. For example, imagine a restaurant’s website: if the menu changes,
it should be reflected on the website as quickly as possible.
·
Online
positioning: To attract
as much visitors as possible, you’ll have to optimize your website’s SEO. This is not very complicated
but it requires time and work. Check out this guide for more information.
·
Web analysis: Your efforts in online positioning (above point)
will be useless if you don’t measure your website traffic. That’s how you’ll
know whether it’s working or not. The most popular website analysis tool
is Google Analytics. And it’s free!
·
Of course, once
you publish your website, you should register with Google Search Console to notify Google that your page exists and get
information. Or at least send your website’s URL (address) to Google so that it can index it.
·
Email Marketing: Another usual strategy, especially for businesses, is
to send regular emails to its visitors not to lose contact. This is especially
useful for online stores, small businesses, and bloggers. Email marketing is a
science in itself. You can read this how-to guide to
find more information on how to get started sending newsletters.
·
Social media: Finally, most websites also have social media
profiles (e.g. Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, LinkedIn, etc.) to be able
to interact with their visitors (and potential visitors) outside of the website
you’ve created. This works especially well for visual professionals, like
illustrators, jewelers, or photographers.
I hope that this small guide
has helped you understand how to create a website from start to finish.
Next to the guide you were
reading just now we also have a couple of industry-specific guides as well:
1.
Setting up a website for smallbusinesses and entrepreneurs
2.
Guide for starting an online store
3.
Website builders for artists (e.g.
artists and designers)
4.
How to create an online portfolio
5.
Creating photography websites
6.
Create a website with WordPress
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