First Steps to building your own FREE Website
Building your own website is your first step to starting your own business. Yet when you research how to do this you can spend days reading sites that are basically trying to SCAM you! Everything is at a price and usually a monthly subscription. DON'T WASTE YOUR TIME!!! Follow these simple steps and you will create a website in minutes for FREE. After that it's up to you as to how much work you put into it. My guide uses FREE DOWNLOADS FROM THE WEB and you have nothing to loose.
Step 1 - Find a Web Builder
There are many Web builders available but you will have to pay for most. The web builder with which I have created this site is CoffeeCup and is absolutely Free. If you go to the CoffeeCup website you can download this immediately and you are ready to start!
Step 2 - Add your HTML
OK if you are a web novice like me you are saying 'this is code and I dont know code'.
Well stop there! Most websites are built using HTML. The HTML for any website is easy to retrieve and view.Take this website as an example,
- at the top of the page click on 'View' and tab down to 'Page Source' and you will now see the HTML code for this website.
- Copy this HTML into a notepad document and save it ensuring that the file is called 'index.html'.
- Using CoffeeCup, open this file and you will now see the HTML in the CoffeeCup editor.
- Click on the 'Preview' Tab and you will see this website as you have built it.
Thats how easy it is! You have the HTML, you can build the website, now all you need to do is learn how to play with HTML to manipulate the look, feel and content.
Now just as you have taken the HTML for my site, you can also do for any site, however it is essential that you build your own HTML. There are many sites that provide free HTML which are free templates for your site.
Click here for web site templates that you can use for your site.
Now choose a free template that you like, save the file as above and open in CoffeeCup and you can start working on your site!
Step 3 - How to work with HTML
Learning HTML can look quite complicated but in fact is quite straight forward. The following tags are just a few you should learn how to use:
<TITLE> - This tag allows you to give your web page a title.
Once you have a grasp of basic tags, you can start learning some of the major design elements required to make your website look great. HTML is very versatile and can be used to deliver a wide range of effects. If you start with a solid understanding of the basics, you will be better equiped to use HTML creatively to design web pages.
Click here for a HTML Tutorial download.
Step 4 - Name your Web Site
If you want your website to be picked up by the search engines it is best to put key words from you website topic in the name of the website. Search Engine Optimisation is key for having your site found on the various search engines.
For example if your site is about training scottish terriers then an appropriate name would be www.scottishterriertraining.com. This will help the Google's of the internet to find your site and get it to the top of the listings. Click here for more on naming your site.
Step 5 - Choose your Web Host
There are many companies who offer web hosting services and some are even for free. Web hosting means that they will take your web files and make them available on the internet. Therefore it is most important that you choose a solid company that provide highly available service and will not go out of business leaving you with no web site!
The good news is that most of these are very cheap starting at under $5 per month and you can also get your domain name for free with this. Click here for my choices on the best web hosting companies.
Final Thoughts - My Experience so far
With the above simple steps you can create your first web site. For me it took about 2 days to discover how but once I had my templates copied into CoffeeCup I was up and running.
I have got very familiar with HTML in a short space of time by copying free templates into CoffeeCup and playing with the code. Your first HTML files dont have to be your site but I find it better to work with a purpose. You can change one piece of code at a time and see its impact immediately. I found it very useful to buy a HTML book to have as a refence at hand instead of having to go to the web every time but this is not necessary as there is plenty of good sites that will give you free HTML tutorials.
So take the first steps above now and I guarantee that once you have something to work with you wont stop!....This site is a testament to that.
