Getting Started

Abstract:

How to build a website from square one. Covers everything from registering a domain to putting up your first web page. No special skills or prior knowledge required. This article is targeted for those completely new to web-mastering.

Myth: Creating a website is extremely difficult and is too much of a hassle.

Step One:

Forget the myth. Starting a website can be a simple as setting up a domain, hosting, and the uploading your site — a process that could potentially take less than 5 minutes! Here’s how:

Step Two:

Pick an unused domain name and register it. Your domain name is simply the top-level name of your website. For example, my domain name is “digitalminsitry.info”. I would suggest using GoDaddy.com as your domain registrar. A domain registrar allows you to purchase a domain (or to renew an existing one). When you buy a domain, it is registered to you (or your organization) for a certain number of years. To buy a domain on GoDaddy, simply search for the one you want, pick a domain name that is available, and pay for it. All that you need to purchase is the domain itself. Extras like email forwarding and such are not necessary, and depending on your hosting plan, are usually a waste of money.

Step Three:

Get hosted! Hosting doesn’t cost an arm and a leg. As a matter of fact, for $3.5o a month, you can get a hosting account almost big enough to host a mega-church website like Saddleback.com. On top of that, it comes with an easy-to-use control panel called cPanel, which allows you to easily create and manage email addresses, sub domains, and the likes. May favorite company is Zernebok, and their starting sign-up form can be found here.

Step Four:

Point your domain. If you haven’t already done so, set the nameservers for your domain to match the name servers given you by your webhost. This can be done by logging into GoDaddy and managing your domains (https://dcc.godaddy.com/default.aspx). Just click on the domain you recently purchased and then click the nameservers button up top. Simply fill in the nameservers your host gave you (usually ns1.yourhost.com and ns2.yourhost.com), and click okay. Changes may take up to 24 or 72 hours be applied.

Step Five:

Create a web page. For the purpose of simplicity, we can use cPanel to create your first web page. Once your nameservers have been set (your domain should now point to your webhost), login to cPanel by visitng http://www.example.com/cpanel (replacing example.com with your domain name) using the username and password that your webhost gave you. Click on the “File Manager” icon, click on the icon next to the “public_html” folder, and then click on “Create New File“. The right-side panel will now ask you for a file name and file type. Name it ‘index.html’, and select the “HTML document” type. Click create.

Step Six:

Fill in your web page. Click on the newly created “index.html” file in the left frame. Click “Edit File” in the right frame, and a text box will come up. Paste in the HTML below: