How to create a website

Building a website is a great way to share your ideas and thoughts with the world. But if you never create one, it can seem daunting. It's time to create your own website in a professional step by step way.

You need to know about the basics of HTML

With HTML, you can create your own website.

HTML is easy to learn.

Example of an HTML page

Here is a complete tutorial that allows you to fully understand the HTML code :

https://openclassrooms.com/fr/courses/

Design your website

To be inspired. Look at known websites with their audience and their beautiful design and think about why they are great designs. It usually comes down to information, resources, links and pages that are arranged in an easy and easy to use way. For ideas on how to design your own site, look 

at sites that do similar things to get ideas on where you need to put different types of content.

• Stay realistic with your skills.
• Ease of access is the most important thing. If you have information that is not easily visible, make sure that getting this information is very logical.
• Generally, the simpler is the design, the less good are the pages.

Choose a subject and an objective. If you already have a pretty good idea of what your website will focus on, skip this step. If not, here are some things to help you understand this. First, it must be understood that there are billions of people on the Internet, and a large percentage have websites. If you limit yourself to something that has not been done, you will never be started.

• When you think of "Internet", what is the first thing that comes to your mind? E-commerce? The music? New? Socialize? Blogging? These are all good places to start.
• You can create a website that is dedicated to your favorite group, and have a discussion area where people can talk about it.
• You can build a page for your family, but be careful about things like that. The Internet is full of unpleasant characters and the information you put about your family could end up being used against you. Consider adding password protection to your personal site.
• If you're a news junkie, or if you want something less filtered than traditional media, build a website and get public feeds from news providers like Reuters, BBC, AP and others. Build your own custom news aggregator (which was used by the quaint "newspaper" name), and then see and view all the news that is able to scan.
• If you are creative at writing then you can start a blog where you can write about anything you want and attract readers!

Make a plan. Building your website will take a commitment of time and maybe money, so set a limit on both. The plan does not have to be a big, complicated spreadsheet, or a graphic presentation.

Gather the content. There are many different types of content and many have their own considerations. You will need to understand what is best for your website and your needs. Some things to consider, including:

• A store. If you want to sell things, you will need to understand how you want the items to be available. If you have relatively few things to sell, you might consider having a store with a hosting service. Society6, Amazon, and Cafepress are all well-established stores that allow you to sell a variety of items and set your own prices.
• Media. Do you want to view the videos? The music? Do you want to host your own files or do you want to host them elsewhere? Youtube and SoundCloud are great examples of hosting options, but you need to be sure that the way you design your website allows these types of media to display them properly.
• Images. Are you a photographer? An artist? If you plan to put original images on your website, you may want to use a format that can prevent them from being stolen. Make sure that the images are relatively small or hidden behind Flash code, to prevent them from being easily saved.
• Widgets. These are mini-programs that work on your website, usually to help you keep track of who is visiting, what they are looking for and where they are coming from. You can also find widgets for booking appointments, viewing a calendar, etc. Look what might be useful for you (make sure the widget comes from a reputable source).
• Contact information. Do you want to have contact information on your web page? For your own safety, you must pay attention to what kind of information you have. You should never post things like your home address or home phone number, because information like this can be used to steal your identity. You can set up a PO Box or a special e-mail address for people to contact if you do not have a business address.

Draw an organization chart. For most people, the website starts with the home page. This is the page that everyone sees when they first go to www.yourSite.com. But where are they from? If you spend some time thinking about how people can interact with your site, you'll have a much easier time down the line when you're doing navigation buttons and links.

Think about the devices that your visitors use. In recent years, smartphones and tablets have become incredibly popular platforms for surfing the Internet, and websites need to be adaptable to these types of devices. If you really want to create a website that will stand the test of time and be accessible to the greatest number of visitors, plan to create different versions of your site for different devices or plan to use a responsive design that adjusts to need.

Build your website

Decide the method or tool you will use to build it. When you have the basic idea on the subject of your website, the next thing to think about is how you are going to build it. The options seem endless, and people will try to sell you this or this "fantastic" app, and all the other things you "absolutely must have" on your site, but the reality is that there are some great tools for the Web site building, and one of them will be best suited to your situation and your needs.

Build yourself. This is the first option. If you have a website creation application like Adobe Dreamweaver, it is not very difficult to create a website from scratch. You may need to do some coding, but do not panic! HTML sounds complicated, but it's like listening to Shakespeare-it's hard at first, but once you get the impression, it's not that difficult.

• Advantages: Website design software simplifies the site building process by allowing you to drag and drop images, text, buttons, videos and anything else you can think of, usually without having to dig into HTML . Many web design applications will even allow you to create sites specifically for your smartphone or iPad. If you build a personal website, it's really a great way to go.
• Disadvantages: If you are in a hurry, this might not be the best solution. If you are not a graphic designer, you might end up with a page that is not beautiful to see. But there are a number of free templates in the apps and on the internet that you can use them.

Use a Content Management System (CMS). This is the second option. WordPress is an example of a great option for building websites. It helps you create web pages and blog posts quickly and easily, configure menus, allow and manage user comments, and has thousands of themes and plugins that you can choose and use for free. Drupal and Joomla are other great CMS options. Once the CMS is hosted, you can manage your site from anywhere (in the world) that has an internet connection.

• Advantages: Very easy to use, quick to start with a click of installation, and lots of options for the beginner (with enough depth for more experienced users).
• Disadvantages: Some themes are limited, and not all are free.

Build the site from scratch. This is the third option. If you decide to build your website from scratch, you will have to start using HTML and CSS. There are ways to extend your HTML skills and add more features and more depth to your website. If you develop a professional website, these tools will help you get that edge that is needed in any business.

• CSS, which stands for "Cascading Style Sheets". CSS gives more flexibility to the style of HTML, and it's much easier to make basic-font changes, headers, color schemes in one place, and have these changes wobble across the site.
• XHTML is a web language established by W3C standards. Almost identical to HTML, it follows a stricter set of rules for marking information. What this means, for the most part, is minor changes to the way you write the code.
• Learn HTML5. This is the fifth revision of the basic HTML standard and will eventually integrate the current version of HTML (HTML4) and XHTML.
• Learn a client-side scripting language, such as JavaScript. This will increase your ability to add interactive elements to your site, such as graphics, maps, and more.
• Learn a server-side scripting language. PHP, ASP with JavaScript or VB Script or Python can be used to change the way web pages appear to different people, and allows you to edit or create forums. They can also help store information about people who visit your site, such as their username, settings, and even temporary "carts" for commercial sites.
• AJAX (Asynchronous JavaScript and XML) is a technique for using a browser language and a server-side language for the page to obtain new information from the server without refreshing the page, which significantly reduces the waiting time users and greatly enhances the user experience, Bandwidth Utilization. For a website that will see a lot of traffic, or an eCommerce site, this is a great solution.

Publish your website

Register your domain name. If you have a budget, there are cheap strategies for buying a domain name. Find a domain name that is easy to remember and easy to spell. If you use domains ending in .com, you will end up with more traffic, but most of the easier ones are taken, so be creative!

• Register your domain name with, GoDaddy, or Register.com are good in the United States and uk2.net if you are in the UK at. WordPress also includes a feature by which you can use a name that is tagged with their site, for example, mywebsite.wordpress.com. But if the name you choose is also available as .com, they will notify you when you sign up.
• You can buy domain names if they have been "parked" or are on sale online at corporate sales sites. It's a good idea to get legal and financial advice before buying an expensive domain name.

Inspect your website. Before publishing your site, it is wise to test it thoroughly. Most web design software has a way to test your site without taking it online. Look for missing tags, broken links, search engine optimization, and website design flaws. These are all factors that can affect the traffic and revenue of your website. You can also generate a free fully functional site map to submit to search engines like Google in minutes.

Test your website. When you have finished your website, do some usability tests. You can do this by asking a few friends or family members to try it. Give them a specific task like "change your profile" or "buy a sweater from the bargain page. "Sit down and watch them navigate, do not help them. You will probably find areas where you need to improve navigation or clarify certain instructions. Alternatively, use something like zurb.com to test the user on specific demographics for different types of engagement. When testing a website in 2014, it becomes important to keep the platform in mind and make sure that the website is usable from smartphones and tablets as well as desktops.

Keep a list of things that you notice that seem difficult or unintuitive to the user.

Run it! Choose a web host and download your website. Your web host may have FTP functionality, or you can upload your own FTP program like FileZilla or CyberDuck.

If you hired a professional to design the site, they should be able to take care of that for you.

Note that there are ways to host your own website for free.

Things to consider

Refine your concept. If you are doing this for money, what ideas can make the most of it? Which ideas require the most commitment? What ideas seem like fun to pursue? You will spend time working on your website, so choose the idea that you are the most passionate (which is also profitable and convenient for you).

Define your goals and work towards them. The website you create can be for fun, it can be for-profit, or a combination of both. Knowing your expectations makes it much easier to both design your website, and track and understand the results.

Be ready for the competition. Content sites require less investment, but they also face more competition, since anyone can start a content site. To earn money from this type of site, you provide information and generate revenue from the traffic you receive through advertising, such as through Google AdSense. In order to optimize AdSense, you will have to write your content on purpose and make it interesting for people to come to your site. Use specific keywords directed to people looking for specific terms; Just do not get carried away by this aspect or the content may suffer and readers will not like it.

Make your site known. Now you want people to come, so let them know!

• Submit your site to the major search engines. There are sites that will do it for you, or you can do it yourself.
• Tell your friends. Tweet about it-constantly! Add it to your Facebook status updates, post photos of it on Flickr, add it to your LinkedIn account, everywhere and everywhere is the key here. The more people who come to your site, the better.
• Use an email address with your domain. Visit other websites that complement (do not compete with) yours and offer to exchange links or a guest / write blog. Publish constructively on blogs and forums, and put your URL in your signature.
• Use article marketing. Creating optimized SEO articles and posting them on other sites is sometimes a useful way to create back links to your website. This could help you increase the ranking of your website search engine, but always keep up to date with search engine updates that often have SEO strategies that may make them less useful or even downgrade your ranking. site.