If you’ve ever wanted your own website – a blog, a forum, a gallery for your photos, or anything else – now is the time to build it. Whether you want to make money online or simply want to establish an online presence, setting up a website can be a confusing process if you’ve never done it before. It’s easier than you might think, though. To show you, we’ve compiled a guide on how to setup a website in 10 easy steps.

Step 1: Determine Your Needs
The first thing you should do is create a list of your needs. What do you want the website to do? Do you want a blog? Will you be posting a lot of photos? Do you want any other interactive features? How much traffic do you think the website will receive? These are all questions you should have answers for before you go any further.
Writing the desired purpose of the website down will make it easier when you proceed to the next steps. By writing down your needs, it will be far less likely that you get entangled with numbers you might not understand. Even if you don’t know what all the numbers mean yet, having a list of what you want your website to do is important.

Step 2: Shop Around
The next step is shopping around. If your needs are basic and you don’t expect a lot of traffic, you should be fine with what is referred to as ’shared hosting.’ You can expect to pay anywhere from $4/month to $20/month for this service, depending on which company you choose. Sometimes, paying a little more each month can be a good idea when you are starting out, because more customer service or personal help with setting up the website is offered.

If your first website is going to instantly have a lot of traffic, you’ll want to shop around for a Virtual Dedicated Server. Prices for VDS packages range from $30/month to $150/month. Obviously, you should expect a lot more service when paying in the higher price range.

No matter what type of server you’re looking for, shopping around will give you an idea of what’s available. As you browse, you’ll begin to notice the same numbers mentioned over and over again. The more you shop and browse, the more familiar you’ll become with the lingo of web hosting.

Step 3: Buy the Domain
After you’ve found a web hosting company you want to work with, the next step is to buy a domain for your website. It’s generally the best practice to purchase the domain name with the same company that will be hosting the website, but this isn’t an absolute necessity. If you can find a cheap registrar to purchase a domain name, that domain name can be used with whatever company you decide to host with.

Step 4: Buy the Hosting
After you’ve secured your domain, the next step is to buy the actual server or server space where the website will be hosted. For shared or even VDS hosting, you’re not going to have a web server all to yourself. If you carefully match your needs with the specifications of the server packages, though, you’re sure to get something that will more than handle the website you have envisioned.

Step 5: Buy Extras
When you’re purchasing your web hosting, you’ll usually be bombarded with offers for ‘extras’ for your web server. Depending on your experience level, these may or may not be helpful for you. From a fancy ‘control panel’ to administer the server to ‘instant blog set-up’ – sometimes the extra features are worth the money if you don’t have a lot of experience or time to set things up yourself.

Step 6: Set Up Domain Information
Once you’ve purchased your domain and a web hosting package, it’s time to tie the two together. Without getting too technical, the domain name you bought must be “pointed” to your web server. This is done by changing your domain name server for the domain.

Whatever web host you decide to go with will have special instructions on what Domain Name Servers you should use to tie your domain to your web hosting account. Usually this is information is provided when you sign-up; if not, check their knowledge base. If you bought the domain name with the same company you bought server space on, this step should be super easy.

Even if you’ve bought the domain with one company and went with web hosting somewhere else, it’s just a matter of using the administration screen of the company that handles your domain name to enter the Domain Name Server information.

Once that’s done, after a while, typing your domain name into a browser will show whatever is on your web server. If you haven’t set-up your website yet, you’ll most likely see a default welcome screen that indicates that no content has been uploaded yet.

Step 7: Install Software on the Server
The last step will take anywhere from a few minutes to 48 hours to ‘propagate’ throughout the web. In most cases, even though you can’t type the domain name in a browser and see the web site, you can still access your server using its IP address and begin to install software on the site.

One of the ways that software such as content management systems or other backend software can be installed on the server is by simply uploading required files using FTP software and running the installation script from the server. Another option which most web-hosting companies offer is to use the control panel software on the server to install software that may be required to manage the website.

A consideration when choosing the software to manage the website would be the amount of traffic your site is expected to get and the amount of resources the software uses. Some of the software is more resource-intensive than others and may require more server computing resources than what shared hosting packages are able to offer. In such a situation it is more advisable to purchase a Virtual Dedicated Server.

If you have purchased a virtual dedicated server package, you’ll want to make sure that you have the versions of PHP, MySQL and Apache that you want. While most hosting companies keep up with software upgrades, sometimes it’s up to you to update the software on your server. This is something you should consider when setting up a website, depending on the amount of traffic you are expecting, as well as your own technical skills. If you are concerned about technical issues, managed web hosting is another option to consider if necessary.

Step 8: Build Your Website
Once the server is ready to go, you have several different options. Either you’ve installed blog or forum software – or a more general CMS (content management system). If that’s the case, it’s just a matter of entering information and filling your website with content. Even if you go with a pre-built CMS, there are usually options available to style or ‘theme’ your website to fit a certain look.

If you don’t decide to use a CMS (for example, if your website is strictly informational in nature and won’t be updated often – but is not your primary website) you’ll have to FTP your HTML files to the server, along with any images or CSS files you might use. If you use a product like Adobe Dreamweaver or Microsoft FrontPage, you’ll have settings to connect the design program to your server so you can design the site locally and then activate it on the Internet through a “publish” button.

Step 9: Market Your Website
Having an online presence is only the first step. So many websites are added each and every day that if you don’t do anything to get noticed, you’re likely to be lost in a flood of information, and become a small blip on the radar that is the Internet. There are a lot of theories and ideas on how to best market your website, but there is one golden rule – content is king.

If you have great content – reviews, blog posts, videos, or whatever else it happens to be – you’re going to attract many more people who are looking for great content. It is with great content that your website is more likely to be in a position to form a community that can expand in popularity and generate interest, as more people become aware of the site.

Step 10: Upkeep
Even simple hobby websites, newsletters or blogs for a small group of friends can become very popular either much sooner than expected or over time. If you find your website attracting more and more people, you’re going to want to make sure the website is available each time they visit. Much like an automobile, web servers run better when they’re frequently tuned and maintained.

If you don’t know enough about web server maintenance or don’t want to learn anything about servers, it would be wise to find someone who does or go with a web hosting company that is known for their great service and help for people new to the Internet.

As a bonus, we’ve included a possible eleventh step if you’re able to get through the first ten steps without any problems.

Step 11: Website Expansion
Once your first website becomes very popular, it is time to take a look at assessing search engine popularity. Google is one of the top search engines to consider to determine just how popular the website is, and what else can be done to get and maintain a top search engine presence. There are many tools go to check out on their website that can be very instructive. There are also numerous search engine optimization techniques offered in articles to study. By adding these steps to the plan, you can increase the popularity of the website even more.

The thing to always remember about the Internet is that the sky really is the limit. Every website that was ever started began in the same way. Just as Rome was not built in one day, neither were powerful and successful Internet giants such as Google. If you can make it through these ten simple steps to get your site on the web, you have a chance to really build an online presence, if you stick to it and apply yourself. If you take it one step at a time, anything is possible – and online success is often more easily attained than it is thought to be.

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