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How To Actually Physically Build a Website

This short series of articles explains the basics of building a website from the ground up. I don’t know what your level of experience is, as I am writing this for all existing Internet audiences. But if you have come to this page, chances are you are looking for information about hosting your website and registering a domain name, just to get you started.

Creating a website follows a straightforward process. Start by identifying the purpose of your website. Once the purpose is determined, try to associate a few words with the general goal of your website. These words may be used in your domain name.

Your domain name doesn’t have to reflect the purpose of your website. As an alternative, you can use your real name in your domain name URL, especially if it’s catchy. Your domain name serves as a textual logo. If people love the content on your website, this name will pop into their heads first, and that is what they will be searching for in Google to find your website again.

Know What You are Building First (simple, simple layout)

One mistake people commit often is rushing too fast to create a website. It’s easy to get a hosting company and register a domain name. But it’s not easy to create a great website people will love browsing. Most websites on the Internet are designed in this fashion and ignore the basic rules of web design and site navigation.

If you are looking for information about how to make a certain type of a website, you may be looking for easy advice and general information on how to accomplish something difficult. Try to avoid doing this by always starting a simple website first. There are many things you will learn by making a simple site.

It is much easier to create a simpler website than it is to make a complex one. By building a basic website, you will still be learning about complex issues along the way and make many new realizations that will improve your overall knowledge of building websites of higher complexity.

What Are The Domain Name And Hosting?

A domain name (also known as URL, or the Web Address of your website) is a name chosen by the future owner of the website of that name. In my experience, I learned to distinguish between two types of domain names. That are mostly to do with naming conventions of domain names.

The first one is where the author brainstorms about the general purpose of their website and come up with a few words that possibly summarize that purpose. Then the author can further use help of an online word synonym tool such as the Thesaurus.com website.

Try finding two words that describe your website well and randomly match different combinations and synonyms until you come up with a name that has strong identity value (easy to remember by reading the name once) and that you are generally satisfied with. Using this technique it is actually surprising how many unique domain names it is possible to still register without sacrificing uniqueness.

Getting a Web Hosting Account

The most common question, when trying to find good hosting company, is perhaps what is the best hosting company and how to choose one?. The article this link points to will lead you to another article I have written that investigates the nature of a good hosting company and what to look for.

Getting and Registering a Domain Name

I wrote another full article on Getting a Domain Name named How to Register a Domain Name.

Creating The First Page for Your Website

I have created dozens of websites on various subjects that I find interesting and think that I can use in order to share my knowledge on those subjects.

In my experience it is always best to make your first webpage the homepage of your site. The homepage is a very special page on your site unlike any other. The homepage must express the purpose of your website and give people a reason to continue browsing your site.

An incredibly important bit of knowledge is that when building your site, nothing is set in stone. Many people try being perfectionists and worry about every single detail. There is nothing wrong with that other than it is incredibly time consuming.

Remember that while it’s completely fine to worry about the quality of your homepage and the site in its entirety, but it is not necessary to make the perfect website today, or even in a week or a month from now.

Because popularity of a website often depends on the quality of its content and quality content is difficult to create (it’s time consuming, it requires experience with the subject matter, etc.) that means that the only proper way of thinking about building websites is thinking about building it on a very long term scale.

This mentality will help you create an even better website. Our brains are limited as to how many things we can focus on at any one time. What if, by making a revision every week, or even every two weeks, we will be able to spot new inconsistencies or faults with our website? We can then fix them at that time. But we cannot create a perfect site on day one.

When making websites with the intent of creating a great website, one must take on the role of an opportunist. People are often in the mood for different things during different stages in their life, or even during different stages in the day. Do you feel like working on the site layout today? Or do you feel like writing?

By doing more of that which you are feeling like doing at that moment, the quality of your work is more likely to increase. This is often conflicted with the website’s ability to make money. For example, people want all elements of their site to be perfect right away, because they think that is what will enable their sites to start making more money sooner.

This is not advisable because even programs such as Google AdSense are not designed to be profitable on a website that is not well constructed or doesn’t receive a decent amount of traffic. And to build traffic will also take time.

The problem with many people, however, is that some of them are even considering quitting their jobs in pursuit of AdSense money. Probably because they are fed up with their daytime jobs. If you find yourself caught in this situation yourself, don’t hurry to quit your job yet. Instead, try to dedicate one hour of your time, perhaps in the evening, to working on your site.

As you can see, most of the aspects of web design and development of profitable websites are focused on long-term impact. Is it worth it to think this way about building a website? Absolutely! Even though it might take months, and sometimes years to develop streams of traffic to your websites, this traffic can almost certainly be converted into money.

Creating the Second Page of Your Website

If you are looking to stay efficient while building your site, it is important to make your second web page your content page. The design of the content page should naturally be different. This page is the placeholder for your content, it has a different purpose than the homepage.

When I say the second page of your website I mean the second template layout for a page to store your content on. The homepage will use one template, the content pages will use another. Website templates serve as ways in which information is presented with regard to its function.

The second page of your website shouldn’t be completely different from your homepage. Try to maintain some type of uniformity between the two, so even when going away from the homepage, the visitor still feels like they are on the same site.

Usually the template designed for content will be used throughout the majority of your site’s pages. This second page is a perfect place for figuring out where you wish to place your advertisement. Again, there isn’t a perfect spot for each Google AdSense ad. There are hundreds if not thousands of variations of web templates which, in combination with the niche subject of your website will produce different click through rates and per click costs.

Taking this concept even further, the profitability of your Google AdSense campaign will normally happen only on a few pages on your site, at least at first. Usually it is the best, most educational, well-written content that will get you the highest revenue.

It’s funny how sometimes, articles you didn’t think were going to produce great AdSense results actually do, when you compare them against other articles in your Google Analytics account. Pay close attention to scenarios such as this one, and try to figure out why one of your pages generates 90% of the entire AdSense income on your site. And try to replicate its qualities.

The web is so complex that sometimes the reasons for making money using just one very profitable page are completely unrelated to the quality of content on that page. For example, someone could find your advice useful, and place a link on a high traffic page back to your article simply because it meant something to them. Something like this will generate a lot of website referral traffic.

On the contrary to that, I personally like to focus on generating search engine traffic, as it is the most rewarding experience for me. Also, by writing content on specific subjects that I know exist, even a few visits to one page are very rewarding because I know I am delivering the right content to the right audience.