WebPublishing.me

I’m assuming you’re savvy enough to throw up a blog posting using a free online service like Blogger.com or Wordpress.com.  This guide is written for people who want to go a step further and have their own “domain” name: something like, fred.com or webpublishing.me (not fred.blogger.com or fred.wordpress.com). Once you can do that, you’re on your way to becoming a professional Internet entrepreneur :). Without more ado, then, here’s the Web’s Simplest How-To Guide for Building Your First Web Site:

1) Buy a domain name. In order to get a site like webpublishing.me functioning, I had to purchase rights to the domain through a provider. Common options are registrar giants like GoDaddy.com or Register.com. Both are large enough to offer competitive pricing and large support forums to help you over the inevitable roadblocks when lauching your first site. When you “buy” a domain, you’re typically granted you two years of ownership with the option to renew. A common rule to keep in mind? Pick a name that contains keywords that match your content. That’ll help your Google ranking, and that’s one of the most important factors in driving traffic to your site. Prices for domains start at about $8 per year. Want more detailed advice on how to pick your first domain name, visit my post, “How to Pick a Domain Name that Ruins Your Web Site.”

2) Get a Web hosting company. Once you have a Web domain, you’ve still got work to do. You’ve got to find a “server” that’s connected to the Internet. This server will store your files so that when someone visits your domain, they’re readily available for download and viewing in someone’s browser hundreds (or, perhaps, thousands) of miles away. I recommend www.hostgator.com (my wonderful host), or a domain registrar like GoDaddy.com, which allows you to bundle your domain purchase with your hosting service. I always recommend going with a dedicated hosting company, though (i.e. a company that only handles hosting — not domain registrations). They’ll be much more responsive when you have a technical problem — which you probably will when launching your first site.

Buying hosting services ranges from $5 to $100 or more per year — depending on the bandwidth you’ll need. I currently pay $10 per month with “unlimited” bandwidth at hostgator.com. Bandwidth describes the amount of traffic your site receives. The more visitors who view your site, the more file requests you’re feeding your server. Since the amount of traffic a server can handle is static, you’re going to have to pay for it if you use a lot of bandwidth — especially since the costs of maintaining a single server can run into the tens of thousands of dollars.

3) Associate your Web domain with your Web host. If you’re one of the lucky ones who bought your domain name at the same place you plan to host it, you probably can probably skip this step, but if you decided to go with a host that differs from your registrar (the place where you registered your domain), you’re going to need to update your domain’s nameservers. Do this by logging into your hosting account and searching for the “nameservers” provided by your host. These are the specific servers where your Web files will be saved (typically there are two — a primary server and a backup). Copy the nameserver names, then visit your registar. There, with a little bit of searching, you’ll be able to figure out where you need to update your nameservers. Paste in the information you obtained from your host. This action will link your domain name with the specific server where your files are served, so that browsers know where to look when they get a request to visit your site.

4) Decide whether you want to use a Web template or write your own HTML code. If you want to use your own HTML code, visit Step 5. If you want to build your first Web site using templates (which I strongly recommend), visit Step 6.

5) You’re one of the brave and proud who wants to code your own site? Great. You can do it easily with a simple text editor like Notepad. Just paste the following code into Notepad and save it with the filename index.htm (sorry you can’t name it anything else):

<html>
<head>
<title>Your Simple Web Page Title</title>
</head>
<body>
<p>Hello World! This is my first Web Page.</p>
</body>
</html>

Now, that you’ve got an index.htm file saved, you’ve just got to upload it to the root directory of your server. You can do this by visiting your Web host, and finding the file manager for the domain that you purchased. This might require some rooting around, but you’ll eventually find the spot where you can upload files directly to your server. Unfortunately, the “root directory” isn’t called the “root directory.” It’ll likely be labeled with a simple slash: /

Once you’ve uploaded your index.htm page to your root directory, you should be able to visit your domain name (fred.com or some other such name), hit refresh, and — presto — you’ll have your first Web site. Keep in mind, there might be some lag time. If your site doesn’t show up right away, do something else for an hour or so, and try again. It sometimes takes a while for your nameserver changes to propagate across the Web.

6) So you’re one of the brave and proud who wants to use a templating service to launch your Web site? No shame there. I’ve become addicted to these services over time. One in particular stands out: Wordpress.org. It’s important to note that wordpress.ORG is different than wordpress.COM. Wordpress.COM is designed for people who are OK with a web site that runs on Wordpress’s servers. That means the domain name will be something like fred.wordpress.com. Now that’s not very professional looking is it?

Wordpress.ORG is different. Here you can download a full suite of HTML (a language that browsers use to display content) and PHP (a scripting language) files that will allow you to create your Web site on the fly. You’ll be able to upload images, videos, sound clips … almost any form of media you can edit on your computer, and then you’ll have control over the display of it on your screen. Cool, huh? You’ll also be able to write your site’s content ON your server, which means you don’t have to mess with FTP accounts (explained below) after the initial setup process.

The first thing you should do (and the most fun) is pick out a Wordpress Theme. That’ll give you an idea of what’s possible with just a small amoung of technical skill. Download the theme to your computer, then, download the latest version of Wordpress. After you unzip those files, you’ll have to visit your Web host to set up an “FTP account.” FTP stands for File Transfer Protocol, and it’s a very efficient way of sharing files across the Internet. Your host should have instructions on setting up an FTP account (just be sure you save the user name, password and port you specify during the setup process). Now, you should download an FTP client, which will actually communicate between your computer and your host’s servers. I recommend the free service Filezilla.

At this point, things get a bit more complicated. You’ll now need to visit Wordpress’s “Famous Five-Minute Installation” in order to set up your unique wp-config.php file. This will also require you to set up a MySQL database through your host. When you set up a database, you’re simply creating a place on the server that can accept changes (or edits) on the fly, then spit them back out on your Web site. That’s what will allow you to edit pages for your Web site directly on your server. I won’t beat a dead horse here. Wordpress’s instructions for your wp-config.php file and the associated MySQL database are incredibly exhaustive, and you shouldn’t have any trouble setting it up. Still, if you’d like some advice shoot me an email at fred(at)webpublishing.me.

Now, that you have Filezilla, an FTP account and a MySQL database, you can begin transferring your HTML and PHP files from your computer to the Internet server(s) provided by your host. Open Filezilla and plug in the information you saved (user name, password and port) when you set up your FTP account. When you’re connected to your server, you’ll be able to transfer your files very quickly. Simply specify a target location (the root directory for your domain, which will be indicated by a slash: “/”), and then doubleclick on the files you want to transfer. If you’re using Wordpress like I recommended, you’ll want to transfer three entire folders (wp-content, wp-admin and wp-includes) directly to your root directory. Also, transfer the individual php files that you unzipped when you downloaded Wordpress in the same place. Do not place them in a folder.

Now, deep breath, you should be able to visit http://example.com/blog/wp-admin/install.php (filling in your unique domain name where the above link says “example”), and begin the simple process of building your site.

Follow these tips, and you should have your first Web site up in no time. One of the best sites I encountered when I started trying to make money online was www.thesitewizard.com. It’s a no-frills site with down-to-earth advice that doesn’t beat around the bush. I won’t lie and says there’s no learning curve when you’re first getting into Web publishing, but thanks to the experts out there who’ve devoted their time to helping us along the way, it doesn’t take quite as long.

Hopefully these tips will help you on your way to making money online. If you have further questions, email me at fred(at)webpublishing.me. If you’re still a Web newbie and you need advice on how to pick your first domain name, visit my post, “How to Pick a Domain Name that Ruins Your Web Site.” Want more ideas for making money online? Return home, or sign up for our email newsletter.