How to create my own website

A few years ago, creating your own website was only a possibility if you had a lot of time and were prepared to learn HTML. Thanks to new online technologies and user-friendly software, setting up a basic website is no more difficult than using a word processing program. In this article, we'll show you how you can build a website without any technical knowledge.

Choosing hosting

The most difficult decision that you'll have to make is to work out whether you need a server host or if you can make do with a third party service such as Wordpress.com or Google's Blogger. If you are expecting lots of traffic or are planning to implement custom web applications, then self-hosting is essential. Choose your hosting Choosing hosting for most first-time users is a straightforward service. You need to make sure that you have enough disk space to host your site, which is usually about 1 gigabyte for most people, enough bandwidth to support the traffic and acceptable customer support. Be wary of companies that offer 99.9% up time as in real terms, this promise means very little. If they break this "guarantee", then at best you may receive a discount from next month's bill, not ideal if your business depends on a working website. Third party hosting For most first-time users, third party hosting will be more than adequate. However, you may find that you have to pay for extra-storage space if you have lots of media. If it is important that you have your own .co.uk or .com domain, you'll need to buy the domain from a domain registrar like Krystal.co.uk.

Building the site

If all that you want is your own web page, Wordpress.com is the best solution. To sign up, you will need an email address. Customising the site with themes and plug ins is easily through a drag and drop interface, and for a small fee, your site can be upgraded to use your own domain that you have purchased through a separate registrar. There are many similar services available on the web, should WordPress not fit your exact requirements. If you are prepared to accept that your site might not work on mobile devices, a possibility is to use a flash website builder such as the one found at Wix.com. In a very short period of time, you can build a professional-looking site with animations, graphics and video. Most of these templates are free but you will need to upgrade to your own server hosting to get the best performance from the site. These pre-built packages are the easiest way to get an online presence without having to learn any code or development techniques.