Easy Start Website

Easy Start Web Page

I want to explain the steps I went through to get unselfishhelp.com up and running for under $60.12 You may ask what that has to do with self development? Self development covers a broad range of topics. I provide a description of self development in my article What is Self Development . Knowledge about creating a website falls under self development in the following areas:

• Developing strengths or talents
• Building employability or human capital
• Enhancing lifestyle and quality of life
• Realizing dreams
• Fulfilling aspirations
• Executing personal development plans

Developing or knowing about websites can contribute to your personal growth in each of the above listed areas. As a part of your personal development plan you may use a website to promote your business, enhance your personal life with a family site, share information, etc. Websites can overtime turn into lucrative residual incomes and there is no better income than residual income.

I will explain the steps and then give you easy resources to make this happen.

The Steps

First, you will need to purchase a domain name, which is the ‘www.what-ever.com’ name. You don’t have to buy just a .com name. When you go to the site to purchase it you will have options such as .et, .org, .info, .us, and the list goes on.  I purchased several names with unselfishhelp, so I would have them later if I needed them.  Choose your name wisely.  You don’t want it too long and complicated, or people won’t remember. Look at yahoo and google – who will forget those.  Also, sometimes a cleaver name is good for branding, but sometimes a very descriptive name is better.  Just think about it.

Second, you will need to purchase hosting services. There is a way to host a site from your own computer, but if you are serious about a website I would not do this. It requires your PC to be connected to the internet 24/7 and your system will not handle the traffic when your site does start attracting large numbers of visitors. Also, hosting the website from your own PC adds additional security issues.

Third, you will create a webpage or website with multiple pages.  I will provide templates and point you to resources. These are all free. I created unselfishhelp.com with free information and tools. In fact, unselfishhelp.com was my first attempt at HTML. You will also hear about XML and PHP. Because there are so many resource out there you can do a lot with HTML and just cut and paste PHP and XML when you need it.

Resources

There are a lot of websites to choose from when purchasing your domain name and there are a lot of choices out there for hosting your site. I use and recommend godaddy.com.  Please use the link on the unselfishhelp.com home page, so I can get credit for the referal!

Godaddy.com is easy to use to get your domain purchased, they have easy to use tools for setting up your site, and easy tools for managing your site. Also, it does simplify things if you purchase your domain name and hosting services from the same website. With godaddy.com they built the domain purchase process so it steps you right into the hosting services purchase and by buying them both at the same time they give you a little better deal. If you already purchased your domain from some other site, godaddy.com does provide instructions on how to transfer that name to them for hosting.

I did not buy a lot of the advanced features up front (e-mail, etc.) and I only purchased the domain and hosting services for a year. I do have them set up on auto pay so I won’t forget to get my services for next year. You can add all of those services on later if you like. I also recommend you buying the business package rather than the personal home package. It just seems like a little better deal for the money. Another thing to know is that when they say hosting costs $X.XX each month they will bill you for the entire year up front, so don’t be surprised. Like I said in the opening paragraph. I started my page for $60.12.

With godaddy.com it may take as much as 24 hours for the domain name and server to be active. Unselfishhelp.com was ready in about two hours but I have had them take 24 hours on other sites I have created.

Godaddy.com also gives you some free advertising on google, facebook, and myspace, but don’t use that yet. Wait until your site is up and going, with content.

Blog Software for Free

Godaddy offers a lot of free software to use on your website. The blog I use is WordPress. It is a free tool with no built in advertising to clutter up the screen. Use godaddy’s install on their applications page to install it and it goes up easy. To access it all you need to do is type ‘www.your-site-name.com/worpress’ please insert your site name into the sample I just provided. From inside WordPress you can download new themes to change the appearance. Be aware that not all themes are equal in functionality, so you should consider appearance and functionality when making your choice on a theme.

Website Creation

Godaddy offers custom website development services, which I did not use, so I can give you no opinion. You may want to search for articles, or reviews of that service from them. You can also hire someone to build your website and they can manage it for you or just load it onto the server and be done. If you have more money than time then that is a great choice. Godaddy also has a website creation tool called WebSite Tonight. Again, I did not use it, but it seems like it would be easy to put up a site in just a few hours.

Godaddy.com has a nice easy to use manager dashboard for all of your sites, tools and website technical stuff, like file management, FTP (the tool you use to load your website onto their server), and applications you add to the site. I like using their products from their manager interface. Many of them are support by godaddy so they can help you work through any technical problems, but I have figured all of my own issues out, so I have not used their customer support! Good sign that their products are easy to use, but I can’t give you a review of their technical support line.

I created my own site in HTML and I had never done that before. It was not that hard, but it did take an investment in time and energy, but I considered it part of my personal development skill building. I used some easy tutorials online which I will provide links to. I will give some tips in a future article. One thing to know right off the get-go is you need a page loaded on server called index.html. Now, for the more advanced users there are other names that you can use, but just for starters be sure you have that one if you decide to build your own site. When someone enters your domain name into their web browser it will look at the site server and open the index.html page first, so that is your home page. You can link a lot of other pages and sites from there.

If you decide to go my route and create your own page you will want an editing tool.  There are a lot out there and I have not tried many, but I am using a free one that does everything I need it to… for now. HAPedit I use HAPedit for all of my website development.

I will be creating some more easy guides to setting up a webpage. You can always google any question and with just a little bit of research you can find a solution.

Here is a list of my favorite sites for creating a web page:

  • Godaddy.com – use the link on unselfishhelp.com home page.
  • htmlgoodies basics This site will give you a beginners tutorial to website creation in HTML. You will be able to get a basic page up and going quickly with this.
  • html color codes Here is a great site for getting color codes so you can change the color of your site.
  • quackit Here is website for getting more advanced information. I use them to get the basic code for building the frames in unselfishhelp.com. I will provide an explanation on how I did that in a future article.
  • HAPedit I use HAPedit for all of my website development.

Up Coming Topics in my Website Series

  • How to manage your website development – avoiding problems with some simple development techniques
  • Creating a Frame website – unselfishhelp.com uses frames to display the page.  I will explain what they are and the advantages.
  • Creating a Table website – biblechirp.com is an example of a website that uses a table rather than frames.  I will explain what they are and the advantages.
  • Making money from websites – how do you do that?  There are several ways.
  • improving website traffic – who wants a website that no one visits?
  • Improving Alexa scores – what and why?
  • Advanced Website topics – ways to make your site better and better.

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Author: Jeff Harris

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