Simple Steps to Get Your Website Online
- Buy a Domain Name
Purchase your domain from a reputable domain registrar such as Domain.com. Some registrars include services such as URL Forwarding, Transfer Lock, Email Forwarding, and similar tools free of charge with each domain registration.
- Buy Web Hosting
You will need a hosting account in order to get your website online. Most hosting packages are subscription-based and provide you with: 1) space on a server to store your website files and 2) an "always on" Internet connection that keeps your site visible to potential visitors.
- Design Your Website
There are many ways to go about designing your own site, depending on your web design expertise and your budget.
- Analyze Your Success
Programs such as Google Analytics let you track and analyze your website traffic in near real-time. Use these programs to learn more about the frequency of visitors to your site, your visitor's physical location, the most popular pages on your site, where a visitor goes after exiting your site, and more. Use this information to continually improve and adapt your website to the needs of your visitors.
Design Your Own Site Using a Do-It-Yourself Program:
Many hosting providers include easy-to-use website building programs with each of their hosting accounts. These products contain customizable templates that you can tweak to meet your needs. The primary advantage to this type of website? It eliminates the need for web programming experience and gets your site up and running quickly.
Design Your Own Site Using Advanced Programming Software:
If you or someone close to you has web design experience, consider using those skills to design your own site using programs such as Adobe® Photoshop® and Adobe® DreamWeaver®. While these are not the only web development programs available, they are two of the most widely used. Programs such as Photoshop are used to design the artistic flow of the website, while programs like DreamWeaver are used to code or program the site.
Hire a Web Designer:
If you've recently launched your organization or you're just one person on a tight budget, startup capital may be scarce and the idea of contracting a web designer may seem cost prohibitive. But custom web design comes in many forms with many price tags. Many web hosts offer web design services for anything from a moderately customized first website to a full design overhaul on a enterprise website. At minimum, don't be afraid to get a price quote from your web host or an independent web design contractor. You may find they can offer you a lot more than you expected for a lot less money.
Forward Your Domain to an Existing Site:
Perhaps you don't have the time or money to create and host your own website, but you'd still like to use your own domain. Many hosts include free URL forwarding with any domain registration. URL Forwarding gives you the option of automatically forwarding your visitors to a different website. For example, if you purchased the domain "iwanttosavetheworld.org" and activated URL Forwarding, you could set the domain to automatically redirect to a FacebookŪ profile you created. That way any time someone typed in your domain, your Facebook page would load.