Building a website for the first time can seem daunting especially if you don’t have any experience doing this before.
Don’t worry, we just need to break the problem down to a few simple steps.
What you need to run a website on the internet:
- Server (a computer than runs your website) – you get this from a Hosting Provider
- Tools to install, maintain and manage your website and server – Hosting Provider and Hosting Plan
- Name for your website, e.g. mywebsite.com – various companies provide this, also some hosting providers
Okay, now we know the basics we can go into more detail on these steps.
Steps to build a website – Table of Contents
Select a Hosting Provider
Select a Hosting Plan
Choose a Domain Name
Create website using Siteground
Select a Hosting Provider
So, a hosting provider has the physical hardware to run your website. They will also have a lot of tools and software to help you run and maintain your website. They will employ lots of software and network engineers to maintain the security of your servers to keep them safe from hackers and spammers.
For more on keeping your web server secure you can read this article: Web Server Security Threats and how to fix them
Customer support is provided so you can quickly get help with an issue on your website – assuming it is not a software issue with your website.
I recommend Siteground because that’s the provider I use for this website. I have used this hosting provider for many years for running WordPress websites. I found their customer support to be quick and technical issues were resolved quickly.
Select a Hosting Plan
Hosting Providers usually provide a range of plans depending on your needs. You can always upgrade a plan later if you need to.
For Siteground, here are the hosting plans:
- Startup – limited to one website, 10,000 visits a month
- GrowBig – unlimited websites, 100,000 visits a month
- GoGeek – unlimited websites, 400,000 visits a month
All plans provide daily backups. Typical hosting costs are lower if you sign up for a year and pay in advance.
Check out the hosting plans to see all the details.
Choose a Domain Name
Your domain name is the name of your website, it’s what visitors will type into the browser. The name needs to be not taken already so you may need to try many different names before you find one you like and is available.
For Siteground, this is what the choose domain name screen looks like.
If you don’t have a domain already then select “Register a New Domain”. You will need to pay for this as well, typically a domain name will cost you under $20 a year.
Then once you have selected a hosting plan and a domain you review and pay for the plan.
Cool! Now you have a hosting provider, a hosting plan and a custom domain for your website. The next step is to install the software for your website.
Create a WordPress Website using Siteground tools
The following screenshots assume you are using Siteground to create a website.
Log in to your hosting account. Select WEBSITES from the top menu.
Select “NEW WEBSITE”. You will see this screen.
Click on “Start New Website”. Select “WordPress”. Enter your login details for WordPress, you will need this information to access the back end of your WordPress website to create content, maintain the website, install plugins etc.
Once you have entered your login details press the “CONTINUE” button to start the installation process. Siteground now has all the information needed to create a new WordPress website for you.
This can take several minutes so don’t worry, it hasn’t stopped working. Go and get yourself a cup of coffee while the tool installs WordPress and configures it for the first time.
WordPress website installed and working!
To log in to the admin area of your website, append “/admin” to the url. E.g. yourwebsite.com/admin. Log in using the username and password you provided in the setup screen. This will show you the back end of your website.
That’s it!
You now have a fully working WordPress website running on Siteground.
I haven’t covered other Siteground tools or how to create posts in WordPress. I will cover those topics in future posts.
