How to Build a Website

Building a website is a great way to share your ideas and thoughts with the world. But if you've never done one, it can seem daunting.

Get inspired. Look at websites with great designs and think about why they're great designs. It usually comes down to the information, resources, links, and pages being laid out in a way that is easy to see and use.
To get ideas about how to design your own site, look at sites which do similar things to get ideas about where you should put different types of content.

• Stay realistic to your skills.
• Ease of access is the most important thing. If you don't have a certain piece of information easily visible, make sure that getting to that information is very logical.
• Generally the simpler the design, the fewer the pages, the better.

Choose a theme. If you already have a fairly good idea about what your website will focus on, skip this step. If not, here are some things to help you figure that out. First, understand that there are billions of people on the Internet, and a healthy percentage have websites. If you limit yourself to something that hasn't been done, you'll never get started.

• When you think, "Internet," what is the first thing that comes to your mind? E-commerce? Music? News? Socializing? Blogging? Those are all good places to start.
• You could create a website that's dedicated to your favorite band, and have a chat area where people can talk about it.
• You can build a page for your family, but be careful about things like this. The internet is full of unsavory characters and information you put up about your family could end up being used against you. Consider adding password protection to your personal family website.
• If you're a news junkie, or want something less filtered than traditional media, build a website and get publicly available feeds from news providers such as Reuters, BBC, AP, and others. Build your own customized news aggregator (what used to go by the quaint name of "newspaper"), then see and show all the news that's fit to digitize.
• If you're creative at writing then you can start a blog where you can write about anything you want and attract monthly readers!

Make a plan. Building your website is going to take a commitment of time and money, so set a limit on both, and then dig in. The first thing you want to do after you have your idea and are ready to build a website is to plan it out. This doesn't have to be a big, complicated spreadsheet, or a fancy graphic presentation, but at the very least, you will want to know what goes where.

Figure out your content. There are lots of different types of content and many have their own considerations. You'll need to figure out what's best for your website and your needs. Some things to consider including:

• A store. If you want to sell things, you'll need to figure out how you want the items to be available. If you have relatively few things to sell, you might want to consider having a store with a hosting service. Society6, Amazon, and Cafepress are all well-established store hosts which let you sell a variety of items and set your own prices.
• Media. Do you want to display videos? Music? Do you want to host your own files or do you want them hosted somewhere else? Youtube and SoundCloud are great hosting options but you'll need to be sure that the way you design your website allows these media types to display correctly.
• Images. Are you a photographer? An artist? If you plan on putting original images on your website, you might want to use a format that can help keep them from getting stolen. Make sure the images are relatively small or that they are hidden behind some Flash code, so as to keep them from being easily saveable.
• Widgets. These are mini-programs which run on your website, usually to help you keep track of who visits, what they're looking for, and where they're from. You can also find widgets for booking appointments, displaying a calendar, etc. Look into what might be useful for you (just make sure the widget comes from a reputable source).
• Contact information. Do you want to have contact information on your webpage? For your own safety, you should be careful about what kind of information you have available. You should never display things like your home address or home phone number, as information like this can be used to steal your identity. You may want to set up a PO box or a special email address for people to contact you at, if you don't have a business address.

Draw a flow chart. For most people, the website starts on the home page. This is the page that everybody sees when they first go to www.yourSite.com. But where do they go from there? If you spend some time thinking about how people might interact with your site, you'll have a much easier time down the line when you are making navigation buttons and links.

Plan for platforms. 2012 and 2013 saw the real rise of tablets and other mobile devices as internetting platforms. If you really want to make a website that will stand the test of time and be accessible to the highest number of viewers, plan on making different versions of your site for different platforms, or plan to use a responsive design that adjusts as necessary.

Use a hosting site. Wordpress is a great option for building websites. Wordpress features more than 2000 themes that you can start using immediately. There are some options for customization, and you can manage your site from anywhere that has an Internet connection.

• Pros: Very easy to use, quick to get started with one click install, and lots of options for the beginner (with enough depth for more experienced users).
• Cons: Some themes are limiting, and not all are free.

Build more complex skills. If you decide to build your website from scratch, there are ways to extend your HTML skills and add more features and more depth to your website.

Hire a professional. If you are not up to designing, or learning languages and protocols—especially for more advanced sites—hiring a professional may be your best option. Before you hire, ask to see a portfolio of their work, and check their references carefully.

Register your domain name. If you’re on a budget, there are strategies for buying a cheap domain name. Find a domain name that is easy to remember and easy to spell. If you use domains ending with .com, you will end up with more traffic, but most of the easy ones are taken, so be creative!

Inspect your website. Before you post your site, check it out. Most web design software has a way to test your site without taking it online. Look for missing tags, broken links, search engine optimization, and website design flaws. These are all factors which may affect your website's traffic and revenues. You may also generate a free full-functioning site map to submit to search engines like Google, in a matter of minutes.

Test drive your website. When you finish your website, do usability testing. You can do this by asking a few friends or family members to try it out. Give them a specific task like "edit your profile" or "buy an alpaca sweater from the bargains page." Sit behind them and watch them navigate—do not help them. You will likely find areas where you need to improve navigation or clarify some instructions. Alternately use something like zurb.com to user test on specific demographics for different types of engagement. When testing a website in 2014 it's becoming important to keep the platform in mind and make sure the website is usable from smartphones and tablets as well as desktops.

Post it! Choose a web host and upload your website. Your web host may have an FTP feature, or you can download your own FTP program like FileZilla or CyberDuck. If you hired a professional to design the website, they should be able to take care of this for you (but it still pays to ask questions so that you understand what is happening).

Know the audience or market you want to reach. Which kinds of people will your website serve? Conduct market research to figure out more about your audience. Things to know or find out include: What do they do? How old are they? What are their other interests? All of this information can help make your website much more useful. However, be careful of assuming that your site is only targeting one group––always watch for trends that show other types of people becoming interested, so that you can cater for their interests too and make the most of new opportunities.