This is a simple guide for beginners wanting to know how they can make a website.

1. Register a domain name

A domain name is an address that people can find you by on the web. Every domain is unique– it consists of a name and an extension.

Example: frillymillyclothing.com.au

 frillymillyclothing is the name and .com.au is the extension.

You can buy an existing domain name (if it’s available) or create your own domain name. It can be very expensive to buy an existing domain name– especially if it consists of less than five letters!

2. Decide what kind of website you need

Brochure website
A ‘brochure website’ will consist of around three to five pages– Homepage, About Us, Contact Us and perhaps a page or two that describes your goods and services. This website does not sell anything directly. It’s there to tell web users about your business and as a contact point for new or existing customers. This kind of website is generally not updated frequently.

Although a brochure website is small, it can be of huge benefit to your business–  potential customers are increasingly searching the internet for local goods and services. You can also provide your website address on your business cards and letterheads.
You can gain traffic to your website through advertising, search engine optimisation or a blog that is attached to your website.

Ecommerce website
An ecommerce website sells or takes orders for goods and/or services. If there are going to be many categories and types of products, you’ll need it all managed by a CMS (content management system) and/or shopping cart software. A CMS or shopping cart might form the base of your website, with a template customising the look of your site. Templates might come packaged with your CMS or shopping cart or you might be able to purchase one. Better still, a web designer can create a unique template for you.

A community website
A community website can be commercial or nonprofit.  A community website can simply contain information and resources for a community, or/and it can also have a base of members who interact with each other. If you want to create a community website, you will first need to ensure that the program you use will be able to accommodate your members. Your options include forum software, free community websites such as ning.com and wetpaint.com and custom-built solutions.

If you intend your community to grow very large, this might mean you’ll need to upgrade the kind of web hosting you use. Many people use shared web hosting as it can cost as little as $15 (or even less) per month. Dedicated hosting will provide you with your own IP address and server space, which you do not share with anyone else.

Blog
A blog is a simple CMS (content management system) with a vast variety of applications. If you want a website with an informal feel– where people can comment on your pages and you can interact with them, a blog is the solution for you. People use blogs for everything from sharing personal life journeys to ecommerce websites. A blog can be just anything you want it to be. With the well-known blogging software, WordPress, there are hundreds of free themes and plugins available to extend the look and functionality of your blog. You can even start a blog where you offer your readers their own blogs– WordPress MU.

A blogger is known as someone who frequently writes posts to their blog (daily or weekly) and whom is usually known on a fairly personal level to his or her readers. Blogging is a form of internet culture– bloggers often interact with each other as well as their readers.

Special purpose
If you want to start a website that has a special purpose– such as a review website, games website, quiz website, survey website, real estate website or article website– you’ll generally need purpose-built software. If your plan is to build something small, such as a quiz for a class of school students, you might be able to find some free software on the web. But in the case that your plan is to build a large, complex website– paying experts to create it for you is the best option. If the kind of application you want doesn’t exist, you’ll need to pay to have it built from the ground up.

3. Decide how you will create your website

Web designer
A designer can create unique, customised solution for you from the ground up.

Knowing as much as possible about what you want in a website before contacting a web designer can help speed the process up, and will give your designer a clearer idea of what you you expect out of your website.

A web designer can also give you their expert opinion on the best website for your needs and budget.  It might suit you to have a website that starts out relatively small but can easily be expanded at a later date.

Website builder
There are lots of website builders on the market, both paid and free. If you have time and don’t mind dealing with a few of the slightly technical aspects of building a website yourself, a website builder might suit you.
Some require a little coding knowledge, while others require no coding knowledge at all. Some require that you build your web pages online, while others are built on your hard drive and sent via FTP to your web host’s server.

When it comes to buying online, web users expect highly professional-looking websites with very secure transactions.  If you’re building a large ecommerce website, trying to do it all yourself could prove to  be time-consuming and frustrating.

Programmer
If you require a special purpose website (see above)– you might need a programmer who can develop the software that you use or who can adapt existing software to your needs.

Free website
You might choose a free website option for a blog, for a hobby website, or for a business website in which you pay for upgrades further down the track.
Some free website companies offer a variety of features, including contact forms, user registrations and shopping carts. There are some great free website options out there on the web!

Note: We recommend registering a domain name as the first step, even if your website is going to take months in development.

Domain names are relatively cheap (starting at around $12 per year for an Australian domain)– so if you change your mind later on, you’ve only lost a small amount of money.

The benefits to securing your domain name early is to avoid losing it if someone else registers it, and you can also throw up a quick one-page website while your website is being developed.

Because we’re human, and we like to know what other people think and feel. We also like to know what they know, especially if it can benefit us in some way.

Blogs often have a ‘real’ factor, which is missing from other kinds of editorial.

The current number one blog in the Top 100 Australian women’s blog list at blogchicks.com.au (respected resource for women bloggers) is Down to Earth. Rhonda, who writes the Down to Earth blog, is a retired lady who blogs on the simpler things of life, including home cooking, preserving, worm farming, composting, planting– not to mention building a full and meaningful life.

Rhonda’s blog has struck a chord with many, many readers.

Blogs can chart a highly personal journey, with readers taken along through the highs and lows of the life of an individual. Popular weightloss blog The amazing adventures of Diet Girl takes us through the weightloss journey of Australian Shauna Reid.

Shauna became ‘half the girl she used to be’ by reducing from 160 kilos to 80 kilos. Shauna gives a down-to-earth and comprehensive account of her journey– which tooks years of determination to achieve. She describes how loving and respecting herself ended up being the key.

Bloggers can also share their views on breaking news or events–whether it be politics or current issues affecting the world.

Trivial news stories often capture the attention of the public, and it’s interesting to read the personal take of various bloggers.
In May this year in Australia, we all heard about the ‘Chk chk boom’ girl,Clare Werbeloff. (Well, actually, the whole world did) Many bloggers gave their take on the politically incorrect account of a Kings Cross shooting as told by Clare– such as this post by Aussie blogger, Morgan Bell:  http://www.deeppencil.com/chk-chk-boom  

(Morgan’s blog is from the http://www.orble.com site, where people from all over the world can create a free blog. It’s easy to spend a few hours there, checking out people’s blogs!)

You may disagree or you may relate to a person’s style and views, but it’s an insight into what makes the blogger tick, and an insight into the world you live in.

There are a few different Australian blog directories, including:

blogchicks.com.au

theaustralianindex.com

australian-web-directory.com

blogdirectory.com.au