Are you thinking of creating a website? Building a website from scratch might be a scary idea, especially if you are not a coder. Mistakes can be made without the right knowledge. But don’t worry, technology has evolved massively in the last few years which means even if you are not a techy, you can still build a popular and professional site. Below we have made a comprehensive step-by-step guide so you will know how to create a website without having to code anything. Our guide is going to be useful for all users regardless of age and skill levels.
What is needed to build a website?
To start creating a website, you need the following two things:
- Domain Name – This is going to be the name of your website, for example, Yahoo.com.
2. WordPress Hosting – You will need a server that hosts your site.
How much does a website cost?
This depends on what type of website you want to build. An average professional website can cost as low as £100 per year, but if you need a top website with a lot of functionalities like CasinoBiggestBonus.com, you can go as high as 30,000 per year. We suggest you start your website slowly and you can always add more features as your business improves. This way, you will risk less money and also avoid overspending. If you follow our guide, you will have a professional website for less than £100.
What is the best website platform?
There are a lot of different website platforms available, but we do suggest you choose WordPress: this is the most popular website platform in the world, and 28% of the websites on the internet are powered by WordPress. The main reason for the company’s success is that WordPress is an open source, so it is free. There are thousands of website themes you can use and extensions. It is also very flexible, as you can upload third parties’ plugins to build new functionalities that can easily be added and removed without having to code anything.
First Step: The Setup
One of the main mistakes that is made is picking the wrong website platform. As mentioned, with WordPress you can create any type of website you are envisioning. WordPress is completely free and you can download and build any website you wish without any restrictions.
What are the costs if WordPress is free?
The main costs when starting a website are the ones related to your domain name and also the hosting. A domain name will reserve that address on the internet; it is like your brand name and nobody will be able to use it until you own it.
Every website needs to be hosted somewhere, and the hosting companies do charge a monthly fee. Usually, a domain costs around £13 per year while hosting packages start from around £5 a month.
Second Step: Install WordPress
Once you have opened your hosting account, you can download WordPress from the account dashboard which is also called cPanel. Don’t worry if you see lots of different icons when logging in. You can ignore them as the vast majority you will not need. Simply scroll down in the cPanel until you find the WordPress icon. Then follow the steps for quick installation of WordPress into your domain.
Third Step: Select Your Theme
Once you have uploaded WordPress into your domain, you will need to select a theme that will control the visual appearance of your site. WordPress has already built in some professionally designed templates that are free of charge. There are thousands of free and paid WordPress themes available, and you can control which theme to display by visiting Appearance > Themes page and then click on the ‘Add New’ button.
Fourth Step: Add the Content
Adding content to your WordPress site is very simple as you can do that by either adding a post or a page. Posts are usually blog posts and appear in chronological order. Pages are intended to be ‘one-off’ types of content, such as a Contact Us page, About Us page, and so on.
Posts will be shown on the homepage of your WordPress site by default but remember that you can customise everything and decide what to show in the different sections; it is entirely up to you. For example, you could create a blog section where all the posts will display on the screen.
Fifth Step: Customize Your Website
After you have added some initial content, you will be able to customise your site further so that it looks well-structured. Firstly, you will need to set up a static homepage. You can do so by visiting the Settings > Reading page in your WordPress dashboard. The next steps will be to determine the different sections of your website and create a Menu so that visitors will be able to navigate throughout your site intuitively and logically.
Sixth Step: Enhance WordPress
The good thing about WordPress is that it is very simple to use, yet it is a potent tool. By working on WordPress, you will realise that possibilities are endless and that even without the prerequisite of knowing how to code, you can get your website to do great things. If you are a shop, for example, you can quickly sell online by using a WooCommerce plugin. You can display videos and basically add any functionalities you wish by simply adding free or paid plugins.
