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.

Anyone can make their own website for free– sometimes within minutes!

There are free website options flying everywhere on the web these days!

But what are the pros and cons?

The following is a general guideline on things to look at and look out for:

PROS of free websites

Quick to start and get online.

An ordered, clean-looking website.

Everything taken care of for you– you don’t have to worry about the cost and effort of finding hosting, and you don’t have to build a website from scratch or know how to code.

Amazing websites that you can create, such as thriving community websites, with the latest social networking features included.

Hundreds of free templates and themes available for some free website options, such as at wordpress.com

No need to worry about renewing hosting; your website stays online year after year.

Great for kids to make their own website.

Great for businesses to try, and then update to professional features later on.

CONS of free websites

You could end up with a cookie-cutter website (one that looks like thousands of others.)

Your website might carry advertisements from the free website company.

Your website might carry links to the free website company.

Your website might have limited customisation options.

If you’re not using your own domain name, your website URL will look like a subdomain. Example: www.mywebsite/freewebsitecompany.com

There might be a charge if you want to use your own domain name.

The best features might involve paid upgrades.

You might not own your own content!
Check the terms and conditions carefully for statements that the company can use your content in any way it sees fit.
(This might just involve promotion – but even then, do you want it broadcast to the world that you’re using a free website provider if you’re running a professional business?)

You could lose your content and website if the company decides on a different format, or if it goes out of business. 
(As an example, at the moment, Yahoo 360 is changing over to Yahoo Profiles. If you want to keep your content, you have to change it over. If you didn’t get the message, you’ll lose your website.)

If your website is hacked, the company could decide to delete your account without warning. There are stories of this happening with free blog accounts.

Free websites in this post refers to programs where both the web builder and hosting are free.

With so many different kinds of free websites on offer, it’s impossible to comment about the individual terms and features of each company.

Free websites are are a booming business on the web, and many people seem to be very happy with what they offer. The sheer amount of Wordpress.com and Blogspot sites is testament to that!

You can make your own website completely for free– just be sure to look at the whole picture before jumping in!

Image credit: http://www.dubbelklikdesign.nl/

Great for nonprofit, social and sporting groups to have their own space to get together and to organise their events. 

A commercial venture can also make a start with a free community website and move up to paid upgrades at a later stage.

ning.com

When you head to ning.com there is not a lot there to tell you what’s about. Just a screen where you can sign up. A bit like Facebook. And just what is different about Ning compared to Facebook and MySpace anyway?

Well, Facebook and MySpace are about profiles–even within Facebook and MySpace groups, you flip through pages and profiles. Which is all good. But if you want something more integrated where you can see more of your group at a glance– Ning might be the option for you.  You can keep track of your group’s events, connect with others in your own forum, The look is clean, and you can customise your ning to suit your group. And once you sign up, you can interact with other groups within Ning with the same ID.  Ning was co-founded by Marc Andreessen and Gina Bianchini, with Gina as the CEO.

Ning says: “Ning was started with a simple premise: when people have the freedom to create a new social experience online, uniquely customized for the most important people and interests in their lives with no effort, no cost, and infinite choice, the world is a better, more colorful and certainly more interesting place in which to live.”

webs.com

webs.com is a very slick-looking site where you can create a fully-featured home for your group. You can share photos, keep a calendar of events, invite members and allow them to add their own profiles, create your own forums and even assign moderators to manage the forums. You can be in widget-heaven with easy widget installation. Paid upgrades include a web store.

Webs says: “Whether you are part of a volunteer fire department, organizing a running club, planning your high school reunion, seeking a spot to post news and events for your local swim team, or looking to connect with fellow Tay Zonday fans, it’s easy for you and your group to communicate online with Webs. Our completely customizable templates and tools help you build a site unique to the needs of you and your members.”

(We have no idea who or what Tay Zonday is!)

wetpaint.com

Boxloads of features and options for your community group at wetpaint.com.  Private onsite messaging, photo galleries, video galleries, dynamic page organisation and much more. Wetpaint was started when a friend of the founders developed cancer and was unable to find a social group where he could connect with others going through their own cancer journey.

 wetpaint says:  A Wetpaint website is built on the power of collaborative thinking. Here, you can create websites that mix all the best features of wikis, blogs, forums and social networks into a rich, user-generated community based around the whatever-it-is that rocks your socks. A social website that’s so easy to use, anyone can participate. Paid options include the power to integrate social publishing into your website.

ourcommunity.com.au

In Australia there are a number of initiatives for nonprofit community groups that you can find through this website: ourcommunity.com.au  It’s a large website full of advice and resources for Australian community groups. The page for resources on free website options can be found here