You are hereBuilding Your Own Website - Part 2

Building Your Own Website - Part 2

If you don't mind the challenge, building a website on your own is very satisfying. It's like building a house (virtual one).

(Note: If you prefer having your website built using mix-n-match approach, please see part 1 of this subject)

There a few steps involved as follows:

decide on a domain name of choice
check if the domain name is available
register domain name
obtain a web hosting service
prepare website content offline
upload website

1. Domain name

This is similar to obtaining an address to the premise of a physical business entity. A place where people can go to buy products or services.

Before you register for one, you need to find out if it is not taken yet by doing a simple research. A good site to go for this is:

www.nameboy.com

Generally, a ".com" is always recommended to be picked up.

Next, you need to register the domain name with a registrar. One example is this one:

www.namecheap.com

In principle, domain names can never be owned. They are purely to be leased for a certain time period usually on yearly basis. This means that if you failed to renew the domain registration when it's due, it can be "leased" to other people. So take note of this if your website domain is important to you.

Now, having a domain is like having an office address without access to enter it yet. So you can't setup the office with signages, furnitures etc.

2. Web Hosting

This is necessary to keep the content of your website to be accessible to vistors all the time.

You may do this on your own computer but it's not technically advisable. Just use your computer to prepare contents and upload them to your hosting server.

Hosting provider will help you manage your website so that it's accessible "almost" all the time. Most providers quoted a guaranteed 99.9% uptime.

Some features you may need to look for when shopping for a hosting provider: