This guide gives you a short overview on how to create your first website. It covers all the steps involved in creating your website.

The most important thing to do before you start your website design is to find the purpose of the website. What do you want the site to do?

For some people, a website is an extension of their lives, interests, business. The main purpose of these websites is to bring attention to what they are doing offline. For others, their website is their interest, business.

What are the overall goals of your website? Is it to sell something? Is it to improve your clientèle for your consulting business? Or is it just to maintain an online presence and use it to provide basic information to your customers?

For some companies, branding is the most important part of their site’s purpose. For others, it could be community building around their product or services.

The goals and aim of your website will have a strong impact on how you will setup your site.

1. Choose and Register a domain name: Based on the goals of your website, the first thing you need to do is get a domain name. A domain name is the name of your website. For example, my domain name is www.iriswebsolutions.in. Domain registration should usually be done with an ICANN-Accredited Registrar. You need to pay an annual fee to register your domain name. GoDaddy.com is one of the biggest domain name registrar. Click here to view their website. Click here for a detailed summary on how to choose a good domain name.

2. Choose a Web Host: A web host provider is a company who rents out web space and bandwidth to those who wish to publish a web site. The web host gives its customer an account, which can be used to upload HTML documents, PHP scripts, graphics, and more. You need to signup with a Web Host to setup your website. HostGator is a leading provider of web hosting. Click here to view their website. Click here for a detailed summary on how to choose a good web host.

3. Design your webpages: Most of the Web Hosts come with a Site Builder service. A Site Builder is the most convenient way to build your website if you are not familiar with HTML. If you are eager to learn HTML and develop your website, you can visit www.w3schools.com

4. Deploy your website: Once your website is ready, i.e. all the pages are complete, upload the site to your web host. You can use free tools like Filezilla to do the upload. Click here for a detailed summary on how to upload files using Filezilla.

5. Promote your website: Once your site is on the server, it is time to help people find it. There is no use of just making a website if there is no traffic on that site. The best way to achieve this goal is to build links to your website. You can submit your website to Directories related to you niche. Yahoo Directory and Dmoz are the most popular directories available on the internet. You can also submit your site to various search engines and Social Media Marketing Sites like Digg, Del.icio.us, StumbleUpon etc. Click here for a list of various Social Media Marketing Sites.

6. Track your website’s performance: Tracking your websites’ performance is also important. Every Web Hosting control panel comes with Webalizer. You can also track your website using Google Analytics or Stat Counter.

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Related Posts:

• How to upload your website using FileZilla
• How to choose a good Web Host
• How to choose a good domain name