How to Create Your First Website

Use a Content Management System (CMS). WordPress, Drupal, and Joomla are popular choices.

Choose a domain name. Think of a domain name as your street address and hosting as the land where you built your house. The domain is the name of the website, and web hosting is where you place your website's files on the internet. You need to have both to create a website. There are various tools you can use to pick a name if that gets difficult for you. Check out Nameboy.com, makewords.com, and eBay also has some. You can determine if the domain name is available by using sites like http://www.instantdomainsearch.com/ which can also help you find out if a similar site name has not been registered. Make sure that it is easy to remember: If you are going to purchase a domain, then it should be relatively simple. Be creative. Sometimes you might not be able to find the exact domain name that you are looking for. In that case, you could add something before or after the brand name or tweak the spelling. Explain your brand with the domain name. The domain name which you are going to purchase should explain your area of services or products. Use commonly known domain extensions. Try to purchase a domain with an extension of .com as this is the most popular domain extension and is most easily remembered by people.

Determine what kind of hosting package you will need. Web hosting provides storage space for your website. Many web hosting companies offer different packages, some of which are free, which will usually fit almost any web hosting needs. Some popular web hosting companies with low-cost starting packages are: GoDaddy.com 1&1 Internet Hosting HostGator.com Hostmonster.com BlueHost.com DreamHost.com and countless other

Find a theme for your website.

Make sure your idea for your website is clear. Most websites have pages such as Home, About, and Contact. Arrange them in an intuitive way.Get a notebook and sketch out what you want the pages to look like and write out as much of the content as you can.

You might also want to use a web template to make it easier for you as well if you don't have time to do it yourself. Some of these are really good and very cheap. Freewebtemplates.com and templatesbox.com.

Design your website - Decide what software you're going to use to design your website. Some of the software platforms that you can use to create and edit your websites are: Frontpage office.microsoft.com/en-us/frontpage/default.aspx Dreamweaver www.adobe.com/products/dreamweaver/ NVU www.nvu.com/ Bluefish bluefish.openoffice.nl/ Amaya www.w3.org/Amaya/ Notepad and Notepad++ notepad-plus.sourceforge.net/uk/site.htm

Text/Graphics and Web buttons - Use Adobe Photoshop to generate a page header for your website. There are websites that can help if you're not a pro at Photoshop. You can use these sites to generate banner ads, buttons and everything else you need. Check out freebuttons.com, freebuttons.org, buttongenerator.com and flashbuttons.com - You can always use these sites to create advertisement banners for your website.

Website design and development tools - There are many sites available for learning how to design and develop websites: W3Schools Online www.w3schools.com/ PHPForms.net tutorials www.phpforms.net/tutorials/ Enter www.entheosweb.com/website_design/default.asp How-to-build-websites.com http://www.how-to-build-websites.com/ Web Design Tutorials www.webdesigntutorials.net/ About.com webdesign.about.com/ HTML Help Central Forum www.htmlhelpcentral.com/messageboard/

Search engine submission - Don't forget try to get it on all the big guys, Google, Yahoo!, MSN, AOL, and Ask.com

Their pages will walk you through the submission progress, from adding your sitemap and including your child pages as well. Don't forget to submit to DMOZ and Searchit.com too.

Advertise your website using Yahoo or Google AdSense. Be sure to maintain your own budget.