How to build a website can be quick and easy or slow and difficult depending on the method of construction.
The simplest approach is to use a free website builder, but you will be locked in to one platform. This is the most limited and least flexible option.
Hiring a developer is expensive and you need to provide a detailed design and instructions on functionality. You would need to fully test the site before acceptance.
The best option is to get your own hosting account and use WordPress to build your website. This option offers the most flexibly. You can easily change the theme and structure of your website. Your website is fully portable to other hosting businesses.
Developing your own website with programming languages is another option that has many advantages. However, the main disadvantage is that you require a lot of technical ability and time to develop the code and test the system.
How to Build a Website
When it comes to building your website(s) you have four options available.
Hire a Web Developer
Usually for a beginner this is not a viable option as the cost of website development is prohibitive.
The main issue with having a website developed for you is that you may not own the code. If you don’t own the code, you would not be able to have the website maintained or modified by anyone else. You would be locked into the services of your web developer.
Before building any site, you should spend some time designing your site. Once you have built one site, subsequent sites will be a lot easier as you become more experienced.
Most developers will simply use a template website that they have used many times before. They customize the template to your requirements.
I don’t recommend this option unless you have experience with developing websites. You would need to develop very detailed and precise specifications as to what you want developed, including layouts, graphics, colors, content, performance and the delivery timetable. Otherwise, a web developer would produce results different to what you expected.
Specifications for Development
The specifications would be a difficult task in itself. In the time it would take to develop the specifications you could have built a site yourself.
Then you would need to find a developer to build your website to your specifications. This is often a frustrating process as you need to check and test the work. There may be many small changes that are required before you are happy to go live with your site.
The other issue is maintenance. There will be instances when you will want to make minor changes to your site. This would be a costly (and usually slow) exercise if you don’t do it yourself. This is where web development businesses can hold you to ransom and charge excessive fees for simple changes to your site.
Free Websites
There are many online tools that allow you to build a basic website for free.
However, you are locked into that service provider. You will need to host your website on their platform and pay hosting fees. You would never be able to move your website to another platform.
Free websites are not useful for serious internet marketers. If you just want to play around and learn how to build a simple site without requiring any technical knowledge please go ahead. These websites may be a good learning experience for someone who has not built a website or if you want to create websites for back linking to your main websites.
However, if you are serious about building an online business income stream I strongly recommend you get you own hosting account. Remember professional hosting is less than $8 per month for an unlimited number of websites.
Issues with Free Websites
- When using free websites, you do not have full control over your websites.
- The type of website you can build is very limited.
- Cannot fully SEO your site for high page rank.
- Your website is one of thousands of subdomains.
- Free hosting is often run on cheap, slow servers so your website pages load more slowly. Slow websites annoy visitors, and they will go elsewhere.
- Free website companies offer free websites because they are making money from advertising on your website.
- They may close your free website account without reason or warning, and you lose all your hard work.
- The domain name will be very long and difficult to remember.
- Free websites are more difficult to achieve high rankings in Google.
- Google knows they are free sites and takes them less seriously.
- You cannot sell your website.
Best tools to building a free website
Blog.com
Blogger.com
Weebly.com
WordPress.com
Squidoo.com
These free products are useful for building a small, quick site to provide backlinks to your affiliate marketing sites.
Build a Website with WordPress
WordPress is the recommended option for building high quality websites that look professional and rank in Google. It’s a free, open-source platform that can be moved between hosting platforms. There is no restriction to anyone hosting service provider.
This platform has become the most popular site building tool. It’s easy to learn, easy to use and you can build a very professional looking website without technical knowledge.
WordPress is the most popular and widely used website software. Many independent developers have created thousands of plugins for this software.
A plugin is an extra piece of software that loads into WordPress to add additional functionality. There are thousands of free plugins available and also many paid plugins available.
WordPress Ranking
Some affiliate marketing experts believe WordPress sites rank better in Google than sites built with other software. Some claim that Google give preference to WordPress sites because Google owns WordPress. I have experimented with both hand-coded HTML and WordPress sites and have not noticed any difference. Both types of sites rank on the first page of Google for their respective keywords. I will say that WordPress produces good quality code that the search engines prefer. If you are inexperienced and try to create a HTML website your code may be poor quality even though the website executes well and functions correctly. Poor quality code will not rank as well as high quality code. So, if you are new to building websites, WordPress is the safest way to go to ensure your sites have code the search engines will like.
When building a WordPress site, you login to your website’s administration area on the internet. In the administration area you configure meta data, titles, categories, themes, widgets, add posts, add pages, etc. To make the website, post or page live you hit the “publish” button. So, you have to be on the internet to build or make changes to your site.
Build a Website with HTML Code
If you enjoy software engineering you will want to learn HTML, CSS (cascading style sheet), JavaScript, PHP and SQL code.
The important thing to note is that you will own the software code.
You can modify the software yourself or hire any software developer to modify your software.
When you build a website with programming languages you can move it between hosting platforms. There is no restriction to anyone hosting service provider.
What is HTML/CSS?
HTML stands for hyper-text manipulation language and is the main language behind building websites. CSS stands for “cascading style sheet” and is the programming code for controlling the appearance of a webpage. The CSS code can be included within the HTML file, in the head element, or can be kept in a separate file that is referenced from the HTML file. More complex websites will use a separate .css file.
When building HTML/CSS sites you build the website offline on your computer and test run the site on your computer. On completion of the website load it up to your hosting account and it becomes live on the internet. When you know how it is actually more convenient to create a HTML/CSS website than a WordPress blog because you don’t need to be logged into the internet until you want to publish the website.
Why Have Your Own Hosting Account
- You have full control of your websites when you have a hosting account.
- You can build any type of site from simple to very advanced.
- SEO your site for high page rank.
- Achieve high rankings and high volumes of traffic.
- Redirect your site, park your domain, etc.
- You can sell your website.