What Is Important When Building A Website
Having a well-functioning website is important for your company and nowadays it is very easy to build yourself. However, there are a number of things to keep in mind to ensure your website performs even better.
Take the following factors into account and you can immediately start building your own website:
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Useful Tips For Creating A Website
- Think about what your customers want to know, not just what you want to tell them.
- Use professionals to help you. An unprofessional website can potentially put customers off.
- Update your website regularly, especially if you include information about your prices.
- Make sure your contact details are correct and easy for your customers to find.
- Promote your website in your marketing material and include it on your business cards.
- Find out how you can make your website easy for search engines, such as Google, to find. This is called search engine optimisation . A web developer can help you with SEO for your website.
Do You Need Technical Knowledge To Make A Website
No, many platforms are available to help make website building easier without any technical or coding knowledge. For example, website builders have an intuitive interface and drag-and-drop features to help customize a high-quality design. Keep note that some platforms do require technical knowledge. So, it is essential to be aware of the platform you choose and adjust it to your skills. However, a deep understanding of coding languages always helps customize a website more suitable to your needs.
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Templated Websites Versus Custom Built Websites
While template websites are great when you are starting out and do not have a budget for hosting, a custom build is always better in the long term.
Template websites have the following weaknesses as compared to custom builds:
Templates are harder to customize and hence you will find it hard to change important website elements. For the most part, templates tend to be what you see is what you get, and hence changing aspects such as layouts may be difficult for a beginner if not impossible. With custom builds you can always change almost anything using shortcodes, plugins and thousands of themes that you can get online.
A template website is not that great for branding given that your template may be used by tens of other websites online. With custom websites, you can always customize your website and make it as unique as possible, which is great for branding.
Pre-made website templates provide significantly less functionality as compared to custom builds. For the most part, you are limited in how much functionality you can add to say a Weebly website as compared to a custom WordPress build, where you can add anything from chat, cart, and forum functionalities among many others.
What Does Website Mean
A website is a group of web pages under a website name that is available publicly on the internet. A website typically has a cohesive goal ortype, including ecommerce, portfolio site, informative blog, About Us landing page, etc.
We believe every individual or business deserves to have a website. Our name is Website.com for a reason – we aim to be the ultimate providerof websites for any need. That’s why our tools give you the freedom to make a free website at any skill level.
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Video Introduction: Our 4 Favorite Free Website Builders
In only 4 minutes well show you our top picks:
Found your favorite? Try out Webnode, Ucraft, Wix or Weebly.
Now its time to find the website builder that is right for you!
Feel give our Smart Finder Tool a try, which will determine the best free website builder for you in 5 questions. Or you simply scroll down and read the profiles.
Using Cloud WordPress To Create Your Clients Site In The Cloud
Cloud WordPress allows you to create a fully functional, free WordPress site for sandboxing and staging in just a few clicks. You can use a Cloud WordPress installation to design your clients website and easily share it with them for approval. When everythings ready, you can use the BoldGrid Total Upkeep backup plugin to quickly migrate the Cloud WordPress installation to a live host.
Its by far the easiest way to develop your clients website without launching it on their domain. What else does Cloud WordPress have to offer?
Use Our Design Tools Or Install Your Own:
With Cloud WordPress, you can use BoldGrid Crio and our WYSIWYG Post and Page Builder Plugin to create your clients site, or you can use your own tools.
Easily Share Your Work With Clients:
Each Cloud WordPress installation comes with a unique URL. Simply send that URL to your clients to allow them to view and provide feedback on your design.
Fast and Easy Site Migrations:
Once a client approves your design, you can use the BoldGrid Total Upkeep plugin to migrate your site to a live host
Use Multiple WordPress Demo Sites:
BoldGrid Premium provides 15 Cloud WordPress installations, while free keys are limited to one. Unlimited Premium installations can be purchased ala carte, with or without BoldGrid Premium.
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But My Site Is Just For Fun I’ll Get A Domain When I’m Serious
“But my site is just for fun,” you say. “I’ll buy a domain when I’m serious about making a proper website.”
When I started my first website, it was just for fun. It was a place for me to post a few of the programs I’d writtenand dump my bookmarks which I had annotated with my own notes. Later, I also wrote short articles about my experienceswith creating websites to help visitors who kept emailing me for help. I never planned for that initial play site tobe anything other than a toy.
The beauty about websites you create for fun, as a hobby, is that they are genuine. They are not fake websites createdso that you can earn a quick buck. You pour your soul into it, and the love you lavish upon it can be seen inyour content. And people notice. And when they notice, they’ll come back for more.
What I’m trying to say is don’t underestimate this first website that you’re creating “for fun”.I never stopped working on that first site. It is still here today. You’re looking at it. It’s nowsplit into two,and known as thefreecountry.com and thesitewizard.com.
Your site may be a hobby site now. But who knows what will come of it in the years ahead?
Which Free Website Builder Is Best For Ecommerce
Now that weve seen its possible to have a website at no cost, you might be wondering if you can also create free online stores. Weve taken a look at these four tools and checked their offer:
| Provider | |
|---|---|
| Add-on for existing websites | This plugin will turn your current website into an online store. Be aware that the free plan is limited to 10 products. You can also add Ecwid to one of the aforementioned free site builders. |
If you are looking for a store builder, check this guide to find more alternatives.
In a nutshell, if youd like a really simple, free ecommerce site, our recommendation would also be Webstarts. Feature-wise they offer much more than all the other store builders in this test.
Another option to sell online is Ecwid, but youll need to already have a website to add this ecommerce plugin. Also, we would only recommend a free store if you have means, other than Google, of getting traffic to your website. Without being able to use your own domain name, it will be rather difficult to receive organic search engine traffic. For more information, check out our article about online store creation platforms.
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Decide If WordPress Is Right For You
Almost a third of all websites are built on WordPress. Its a subtle, essential part of the internet. But it also requires more setup work and maintenance than most website builders do. The first step of building a website using WordPress is taking stock and knowing what youre signing up for.
WordPress is not an all-in-one package. Its a Content Management System . A CMS allows you to create and organize digital content. Other elements like hosting and domain registration are best done separately. Its up to you to bring these together in service of a WordPress site. This isnt nearly as complicated as you might think, but its not the easiest way to make a website. We wouldnt recommend it to people uncomfortable with technology.
What Is The Github Student Developer Pack
Fewer users will take your website seriously, and having an unnecessarily long domain name is never a good idea. But hey! We are not here to talk about the perks or caveats of GitHub Pages. I promised a way to let you create a free website with the custom domain name, and heres how you can do it.
GitHub offers a chance to avail a fantastic kit filled with handy online tools to every student enrolled in a degree or diploma course, known as the GitHub Student Developer Pack. The pack includes pro subscriptions and jaw-dropping discounts on popular tools like Canva, Namecheap, Microsoft Azure, Discord, Name.com, and StreamYard, amongst a gazillion others.
In this article, we will use Namecheap to register a free custom domain and use GitHub pages to host our website. We will then look at ways to design and upload your HTML, CSS, and JavaScript files to GitHub pages. Eventually, we will also enable SSL encryption for the website, but first and foremost, we need to register for the Student Developer Pack.
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Best Web Hosting Plans For Sites Without A Domain Name
While registering a domain name without web hosting is a more common transaction, those looking to get started right away can still build their website without one. A handful of providers, mainly those offering free web hosting services, will set new customers up with a subdomain on one of the domains the company owns.
For example, your host may use hostname.com for its domain name. New customers that dont want a domain name can register a subdomain, something to the effect of yourname.hostname.com. Because your hosting provider controls the domain , they can offer subdomains for free to its customers.
Given the risks associated with free hosting, were hesitant to recommend this route for professional or small business websites. Although the companies that made the cut here are the cream of the crop, most hosts we recommend instead offer a free domain registration with web hosting plans . For now, though, here are the best hosting plans that let you get started without a domain name.
Squarespace A Powerful Web Building Solution
| Product Name: |
| Try It for Free |
Squarespace is a powerful web building solution, which provides deep functionality required to start all types of websites. The system is used to launch blogs, digital stores, portfolios, small business projects, restaurant and cafe websites. No coding knowledge is needed to create the projects, which makes the platform a worthy solution for beginners. The website builder ensures creative and intuitive web design approach, making it possible to choose from dozens of quality templates available in stock.
The major Squarespace merits involve:
- eCommerce Engine. The website builder boasts a powerful eCommerce engine, which delivers niche templates, extensions, tools and features required to start professional small and medium digital stores.
- Acuity Scheduling Platform. This is an advanced business tool, which lets you launch and manage business projects by applying a set of specialized niche features.
- Social Widget Connection. The system allows integrating social widgets into any website to share business-related info via these accounts.
Squarespace offers a free 14-day trial, which allows testing its features before upgrading to premium plans. As soon as you are ready to manage your web project and go live with it, youll be able to pick one of 4 subscriptions. Their price starts from $12/mo.
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Having A Landing Page Without The Need Of A Website
The old way of thinking of your website as the sun to your digital media solar system is outdated. Social media has become one of the most important tools at your disposal to develop both a network of clients and trust.
Landing pages are there to direct your traffic towards both your social media and website. Most importantly, landing pages are objective-driven. In other words, you tell your clients exactly what you want them to do.
This allows you to drive sales, subscriptions, or any other goal. A landing page without a website is perfectly fine.
Pick A Design Template You Love
OK, so youve followed our steps to the letter: youve chosen a website builder, signed up for a plan, and registered a domain. Youre ready to start creating a website. Rather than leaving you to do this all by yourself, website builders support you through the process with templates.
Templates provide a framework for your website a canvas for you to paint the content of your site onto. Theyre how you can have a site that looks good without having to hire a designer.
Whichever website builder youve chosen, youll have an extensive selection of design templates to choose from. Generally speaking, the better your plan, the more templates youll have access to. The top builders provide hundreds of templates across dozens of categories. Whatever the focus of your site is, there will be a template for it. For example, if youre thinking of starting a fitness website, most builders will let you filter your template search accordingly.
These are just a handful of the other categories you can expect to find when starting your own website:
Think of templates as clothes for your website. If you dont like one set of clothes, just change to another one to give your website a completely different feel. And again, dont rush into it. Choose different templates, browse them, see if they fit. The whole point of templates is choice, so dive in and find one that feels right for what you want to achieve.
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