How to make a website from scratch – Create your website ste
Oct 30, 2024 23:16:44 GMT -8
Post by ariya108 on Oct 30, 2024 23:16:44 GMT -8
The objective of this guide is to take you step by step through the process of making a website from scratch , but to do so and before I get down to the task of explaining the process, I would like to go back in time 16 years, that is, in 1998 when I started programming my first website. I remember that it was programmed in the most popular languages at the time (ASP, Flash and basic HTML), and creating a website required weeks or even months of work until its completion.
I have used this social media marketing service anecdote to present this guide for a simple reason, because languages are constantly changing and imagine if you decide to make a website with a specific tool, and a few months later it is abandoned or becomes obsolete, and with that we have to carry out a distressing migration to another CMS tool.
If you are thinking of creating a website step by step , you may think that the first decision or choice you have to make is the choice of the tool, or the choice of the domain name, or the choice of hosting, but the truth is that this is not the case, and these should be decided at a later stage.
Step-by-step guide to creating your website
1.- Conduct a complete briefing
A necessary step in decision-making is to carry out a complete briefing of the project we are going to carry out, which would consist of the following parts:
-Design. A briefing would be carried out so that the designer would have sufficient data and information on the image and style that must be captured in his proposal. Without this briefing, the designer would be going in completely blind and the quality of the work or proposal would drop significantly.
– Web. This area is perhaps where the most important decisions that will affect the creation of the new website are found. These decisions will consist of preparing a document with all the requirements and needs that the new page must meet.
Not preparing this document or preparing it without sufficient depth can lead us to discover needs as the project progresses that can make the chosen tool not the most suitable, and that will most likely "give us more than one headache", and may even lead to a bad relationship between client and company.
To facilitate the completion of this briefing, it is best to conduct an interview between the client and the professional who will conduct it so that they can ask each of the questions and in this way we can specify and enrich the client's response.
Obtaining as much information as possible in this first step is essential.
2.- Domain selection
When choosing the domain for our website, we have two options:
– Promote our Company’s brand
For example www.marketingandweb.es. This way, you will achieve great popularity for your name and brand in the sector, but it will take you longer to make your way into the top search results.
– Orient the name to the most important keyword(s)
For example, www.tourismincadiz.com. This way we will be able to rank faster with our two most relevant terms, in this case “tourism” and “Cadiz”. Although Google has told us over and over again that it no longer takes this into account or does not give as much importance to the inclusion of terms in the root of the domain, the truth is that it still gives good results. Try it yourself and search for your profession in your city and analyse the search results to see how many have one or more keywords in the URL.
It's up to you to choose between getting more visitors or improving your branding. Which do you prefer?
Should we choose a .com or .es domain?
Once we have chosen the domain name, another question comes to mind: should I choose a .com or a .es domain?
This is a common question when you have little experience, but we should not make the mistake of choosing it based on whether it sounds better or because I like the way it looks better. The choice should be made based on where our target audience is located. If it is in Spain, we will choose .es; if, on the other hand, we want to give it an international character, we will choose .com.
You may also find that the .com domain is not available and you have to choose the .es domain, but you should not be overly concerned about this decision.
What is the best domain extension?
I would always recommend choosing a domain as short as possible and always avoiding using characters such as hyphens, underscores, accents and eñes, but here are some reasons why:
1.- It affects search engine positioning. Both the length of the domain URL and the use of characters that make our page unfriendly affect SEO.
In the case of length, this happens because Google understands that the most important thing in a URL is on the left and the least important thing is on the right, and if the length of the root is very long, it will push the main keyword of each content that we create with this domain always to the right, and with this we will be reducing its importance.
2.- It will be harder to remember. It is a no-brainer, a shorter domain is easier for the reader to remember and it will be easier for them to visit you again if they have not saved your website.
Ideally, a domain should always have a domain length of less than 20 characters.
3.- Buy your domain and hosting
I recommend that, to the extent possible, you centralize the purchase of the domain and hosting with the same company.
For the purchase of the domain and hosting I am going to give you 2 options, one in Spain and one in the United States. Please note that I am not affiliated with any of these companies nor do I earn a single euro for recommending them in this guide. I recommend them simply because from my experience they are the most serious and have given me the best results for my projects:
1.- Hostgator . American company where I have hosted the Marketing and Web Blog for 2 years, and the technicians who work there are highly professional and above all, they solve any problem.
But surely when you access it you will say which hosting I have to choose, one that is good and does not cost me a lot of money, so do not worry because I will guide you in the process of purchasing the hosting step by step. In the image you will see that I recommend 2 hosting and you will make the decision based on whether you are going to host one or more than one domain.
buy hosting hostgator
You will have to decide if you want to make the payment every month or every 6, 12, 24 or 36 months. In this way, the hosting offers you a very flexible and affordable payment method for any pocket.
Remember that since it is an American hosting you will not be able to register a .es domain, you will only be able to register a .com, .net, .info, .biz.
The only drawback is that any incidents or conversations you have with the technicians must be in English, so if you are not very fluent in English, this may not be the most suitable option for creating a website.
2.- Webempresa . A Spanish hosting company that is totally trustworthy so that you can buy hosting to create a website . This company combines 3 characteristics that I consider very important for a hosting: professionalism, security and friendliness. I highlight this last one because few hosting companies have professionals who are so kind to help you with any change or resolution of an incident.
buy web hosting company
Many of the students of the current free Digital Marketing and Social Media course that I currently teach have followed my recommendation in the course and have opted for this hosting, and several of them have also told me about the great kindness of its technicians.
You can choose to pay for your hosting every 6, 12, 24 or 34 months. The price is slightly higher than HostGator hosting, but if we take into account that the cost of hosting is included in the price, we can say that both have very similar prices.
4.- Tool to create a web page step by step
There are mainly 3 tools or methods to create a website step by step:
Through the hosting itself, such as 1&1 or similar.
Through a company or professional's own tool.
Through an Open Source tool.
1.- Through the hosting itself, such as 1&1 or similar
This is the preferred method for those users who do not have any knowledge of creating a website and do not have the money to hire a professional.
It is very easy to use and you can create a website in a short time, but you should ask yourself if just by having a website you are going to sell or get clients or purchases, the answer is clearly no .
I am not at all in favor of this type of choice because the only thing it will serve us for is to show off that we have a website.
2.- Through a company or professional's own tool
Although it may seem unbelievable, as we are at the end of 2014 and on the threshold of 2015, there are still companies and professionals who have their own web page creation tools that they use to carry out their projects.
Why do I think this is a bad idea?
Well, I could tell you many, but I'll only tell you 4 of them that I think will clear up your doubts:
1.- You are tying yourself for life to a single company. Because if the tool is your own you will have to deal with it, whether you like it or not.
These forced relationships often give very bad results and generate bad vibes.
2.- Little updating or evolution of the tool. This seems logical, since the company does not have a large number of programmers working to improve the tool.
3.- If you want new functionality, pay for it. Something that happens when we are going to create a website is that our project can grow and have new needs or requirements, in which case, most likely the company has already developed the module that meets our needs but we will have to pay almost as if they had done it for us.
4.- Functionalities that cannot be covered.
3.- Through a free Open Source tool
This would be the most professional option and the one I recommend for creating a website from scratch , and you will have to choose between the 3 most used tools in 2014, which are: Wordpress, Drupal and Joomla.
Depending on the needs of my project, I will always recommend that you choose the easiest tool to use and that meets the needs of my project, and this tool is Wordpress.
If we have more advanced needs and integrations with third-party applications, and in this case the Wordpress tool is very limited, then we will choose Drupal .
[clickToTweet tweet=”In 99% of projects #Wordpress is the best tool to create a website from scratch” quote=”In 99% of projects #Wordpress is the best tool to create a website from scratch”]
In this post I will not go into the subject of online stores but I will simply make a quick mention of 2 recommendations: Woocommerce with Wordpress or Prestashop .
5.- Choosing the Theme for my new website
Nowadays, buying a professional template is super cheap and highly recommended, instead of starting with a basic and free template. Buying this template will cost us 30 to 40 euros and in this way we will be able to access a super optimized template, which will undoubtedly position in less time than a basic one.
Where do we choose the template?
I recommend that you go to the largest WordPress template bazaar called Themeforest , although you can buy templates from any professional company, the goal is to find a template that best suits our needs and that is always a professional theme.
If you don't know which template you can use, I recommend that you look at the blogs you like the most and find out which template they use. To do this, we are going to use the free online tool What Wordpres is theme that? It has a daily search limit, but the amount it allows is high and it is difficult to reach that limit.
10 Best Themes to create a website from scratch
As I mentioned with the hosting, and I am not affiliated with Themeforest nor do I receive any income from it, I recommend those that I consider to be the best for creating a website step by step and in a very simple way:
I have used this social media marketing service anecdote to present this guide for a simple reason, because languages are constantly changing and imagine if you decide to make a website with a specific tool, and a few months later it is abandoned or becomes obsolete, and with that we have to carry out a distressing migration to another CMS tool.
If you are thinking of creating a website step by step , you may think that the first decision or choice you have to make is the choice of the tool, or the choice of the domain name, or the choice of hosting, but the truth is that this is not the case, and these should be decided at a later stage.
Step-by-step guide to creating your website
1.- Conduct a complete briefing
A necessary step in decision-making is to carry out a complete briefing of the project we are going to carry out, which would consist of the following parts:
-Design. A briefing would be carried out so that the designer would have sufficient data and information on the image and style that must be captured in his proposal. Without this briefing, the designer would be going in completely blind and the quality of the work or proposal would drop significantly.
– Web. This area is perhaps where the most important decisions that will affect the creation of the new website are found. These decisions will consist of preparing a document with all the requirements and needs that the new page must meet.
Not preparing this document or preparing it without sufficient depth can lead us to discover needs as the project progresses that can make the chosen tool not the most suitable, and that will most likely "give us more than one headache", and may even lead to a bad relationship between client and company.
To facilitate the completion of this briefing, it is best to conduct an interview between the client and the professional who will conduct it so that they can ask each of the questions and in this way we can specify and enrich the client's response.
Obtaining as much information as possible in this first step is essential.
2.- Domain selection
When choosing the domain for our website, we have two options:
– Promote our Company’s brand
For example www.marketingandweb.es. This way, you will achieve great popularity for your name and brand in the sector, but it will take you longer to make your way into the top search results.
– Orient the name to the most important keyword(s)
For example, www.tourismincadiz.com. This way we will be able to rank faster with our two most relevant terms, in this case “tourism” and “Cadiz”. Although Google has told us over and over again that it no longer takes this into account or does not give as much importance to the inclusion of terms in the root of the domain, the truth is that it still gives good results. Try it yourself and search for your profession in your city and analyse the search results to see how many have one or more keywords in the URL.
It's up to you to choose between getting more visitors or improving your branding. Which do you prefer?
Should we choose a .com or .es domain?
Once we have chosen the domain name, another question comes to mind: should I choose a .com or a .es domain?
This is a common question when you have little experience, but we should not make the mistake of choosing it based on whether it sounds better or because I like the way it looks better. The choice should be made based on where our target audience is located. If it is in Spain, we will choose .es; if, on the other hand, we want to give it an international character, we will choose .com.
You may also find that the .com domain is not available and you have to choose the .es domain, but you should not be overly concerned about this decision.
What is the best domain extension?
I would always recommend choosing a domain as short as possible and always avoiding using characters such as hyphens, underscores, accents and eñes, but here are some reasons why:
1.- It affects search engine positioning. Both the length of the domain URL and the use of characters that make our page unfriendly affect SEO.
In the case of length, this happens because Google understands that the most important thing in a URL is on the left and the least important thing is on the right, and if the length of the root is very long, it will push the main keyword of each content that we create with this domain always to the right, and with this we will be reducing its importance.
2.- It will be harder to remember. It is a no-brainer, a shorter domain is easier for the reader to remember and it will be easier for them to visit you again if they have not saved your website.
Ideally, a domain should always have a domain length of less than 20 characters.
3.- Buy your domain and hosting
I recommend that, to the extent possible, you centralize the purchase of the domain and hosting with the same company.
For the purchase of the domain and hosting I am going to give you 2 options, one in Spain and one in the United States. Please note that I am not affiliated with any of these companies nor do I earn a single euro for recommending them in this guide. I recommend them simply because from my experience they are the most serious and have given me the best results for my projects:
1.- Hostgator . American company where I have hosted the Marketing and Web Blog for 2 years, and the technicians who work there are highly professional and above all, they solve any problem.
But surely when you access it you will say which hosting I have to choose, one that is good and does not cost me a lot of money, so do not worry because I will guide you in the process of purchasing the hosting step by step. In the image you will see that I recommend 2 hosting and you will make the decision based on whether you are going to host one or more than one domain.
buy hosting hostgator
You will have to decide if you want to make the payment every month or every 6, 12, 24 or 36 months. In this way, the hosting offers you a very flexible and affordable payment method for any pocket.
Remember that since it is an American hosting you will not be able to register a .es domain, you will only be able to register a .com, .net, .info, .biz.
The only drawback is that any incidents or conversations you have with the technicians must be in English, so if you are not very fluent in English, this may not be the most suitable option for creating a website.
2.- Webempresa . A Spanish hosting company that is totally trustworthy so that you can buy hosting to create a website . This company combines 3 characteristics that I consider very important for a hosting: professionalism, security and friendliness. I highlight this last one because few hosting companies have professionals who are so kind to help you with any change or resolution of an incident.
buy web hosting company
Many of the students of the current free Digital Marketing and Social Media course that I currently teach have followed my recommendation in the course and have opted for this hosting, and several of them have also told me about the great kindness of its technicians.
You can choose to pay for your hosting every 6, 12, 24 or 34 months. The price is slightly higher than HostGator hosting, but if we take into account that the cost of hosting is included in the price, we can say that both have very similar prices.
4.- Tool to create a web page step by step
There are mainly 3 tools or methods to create a website step by step:
Through the hosting itself, such as 1&1 or similar.
Through a company or professional's own tool.
Through an Open Source tool.
1.- Through the hosting itself, such as 1&1 or similar
This is the preferred method for those users who do not have any knowledge of creating a website and do not have the money to hire a professional.
It is very easy to use and you can create a website in a short time, but you should ask yourself if just by having a website you are going to sell or get clients or purchases, the answer is clearly no .
I am not at all in favor of this type of choice because the only thing it will serve us for is to show off that we have a website.
2.- Through a company or professional's own tool
Although it may seem unbelievable, as we are at the end of 2014 and on the threshold of 2015, there are still companies and professionals who have their own web page creation tools that they use to carry out their projects.
Why do I think this is a bad idea?
Well, I could tell you many, but I'll only tell you 4 of them that I think will clear up your doubts:
1.- You are tying yourself for life to a single company. Because if the tool is your own you will have to deal with it, whether you like it or not.
These forced relationships often give very bad results and generate bad vibes.
2.- Little updating or evolution of the tool. This seems logical, since the company does not have a large number of programmers working to improve the tool.
3.- If you want new functionality, pay for it. Something that happens when we are going to create a website is that our project can grow and have new needs or requirements, in which case, most likely the company has already developed the module that meets our needs but we will have to pay almost as if they had done it for us.
4.- Functionalities that cannot be covered.
3.- Through a free Open Source tool
This would be the most professional option and the one I recommend for creating a website from scratch , and you will have to choose between the 3 most used tools in 2014, which are: Wordpress, Drupal and Joomla.
Depending on the needs of my project, I will always recommend that you choose the easiest tool to use and that meets the needs of my project, and this tool is Wordpress.
If we have more advanced needs and integrations with third-party applications, and in this case the Wordpress tool is very limited, then we will choose Drupal .
[clickToTweet tweet=”In 99% of projects #Wordpress is the best tool to create a website from scratch” quote=”In 99% of projects #Wordpress is the best tool to create a website from scratch”]
In this post I will not go into the subject of online stores but I will simply make a quick mention of 2 recommendations: Woocommerce with Wordpress or Prestashop .
5.- Choosing the Theme for my new website
Nowadays, buying a professional template is super cheap and highly recommended, instead of starting with a basic and free template. Buying this template will cost us 30 to 40 euros and in this way we will be able to access a super optimized template, which will undoubtedly position in less time than a basic one.
Where do we choose the template?
I recommend that you go to the largest WordPress template bazaar called Themeforest , although you can buy templates from any professional company, the goal is to find a template that best suits our needs and that is always a professional theme.
If you don't know which template you can use, I recommend that you look at the blogs you like the most and find out which template they use. To do this, we are going to use the free online tool What Wordpres is theme that? It has a daily search limit, but the amount it allows is high and it is difficult to reach that limit.
10 Best Themes to create a website from scratch
As I mentioned with the hosting, and I am not affiliated with Themeforest nor do I receive any income from it, I recommend those that I consider to be the best for creating a website step by step and in a very simple way: