Hey there, it’s Smart Income 101.
Today I will be be showing you how to set up a website. Seriously, if you want to make money online and you don’t have a website what have you been doing? You need a website to make money online in >90% of cases. Follow along and take action!
How to easily make a website – look it’s 2016 now, you don’t need to bust out the HTML and CSS to make a website nowadays. Have you heard of WordPress? Yeah you should have. Use it. You can get a website up and running in under 15 minutes for less than $15.
How to Register a Domain
To start off, you will want to come up with a domain name. Two main things to consider when choosing a name are: the name should be easy to remember and the name shouldn’t be too long. There are many extensions you can choose to have on the end of your domain (extensions are the “.com” or “.org” after the website name). I personally recommend that you just choose to have “.com” as an extension or an extension specific to your location such a .co.uk if you live in the UK. You get the idea.
(Optional) You can read about the different domain name extensions here to find out their meanings.
The price for a domain with a .com extension can be registered for around $8 per year. When registering a domain I usually use Namecheap, I strongly recommend using them too, they have a great interface for managing domains, good customer support, cheap pricing and free WhoisGuard protection (“WhoisGuard is a privacy protection service that prevents people from seeing your name and gaining access to your address, phone number and email when they do a Whois search on your domain“). Register with Namecheap.
How to Set Up Hosting
All you need to know about what web hosting is, it’s a server which will store all your files for your website and connects this data to the internet.
Before you just heard me tell you how great Namecheap is, yes I do believe they are great, just not when it comes to hosting. For people new to creating a website I always tell them to get hosting with Hostgator. They have a simple plan where you don’t have to worry about selecting the right amount of storage space or bandwidth and it is relatively cheap. To start off with you should get the Baby Plan under web hosting. I recommend this option even when running your site on WordPress even though they have “WordPress Hosting”. Although the WordPress hosting does run faster and has some benefits, I find it’s not worth the extra cost especially for someone just starting out. Get started with Hostgator.
When you have purchased your hosting you will be given the nameservers. Simply go to your NameCheap account (or whoever you registered a domain with), go to dashboard then select manage next to your domain, on the nameservers row click the drop down and select custom, now copy and paste the name servers you received off Hostgator here.
Platform for the Website
Now the platform we will be using for our website is WordPress, it is the most widely used platform and the only one you will ever have to use unless you want to build a forum or something.
You will have to install WordPress onto your hosting server. You can easily do this through the Cpanel. The process for this is explained simply in the video below. Note: I strongly advise against purchasing any of the “premium options” where they install WordPress for you, these packages are unnecessary.
After doing this you can edit your site by going to www.yourdomain.com/wp-admin
Selecting a Theme
Now that you have installed WordPress, it is time for you to choose a theme. A theme is just a template your site will use so it can easily be edited and customised without the knowledge of code. Two of best places to get a theme from are WordPress and Themeforest.
WordPress
When getting a theme from WordPress I usually go with a free theme (if I want to pay for a theme I usually get it from themeforest). A free WordPress theme is good enough if the site is just starting out or if you are a beginner still getting used to using the WordPress platform. However, the theme being free comes at a cost, most free themes don’t look very good and it is hard to find one that reflects the image you want to create for your site, they also lack the customizability most premium themes have.
Themeforest
If you want to create a more professional looking site and don’t want to run into problems customizing your site I suggest buying a theme fro Themeforest. Themeforest is a marketplace on which the authors sell their theme templates. To find a good theme on here I suggest searching through the most popular themes under the WordPress theme section. Check out Themeforest.
Install Your Theme
If you want a theme from Themeforest you should go through the link above and browse the popular WordPress themes until you find something you like and buy it. When you buy it you will be able to download your theme. This theme will come in a zip file which you can upload directly to WordPress. Got to appearance, themes, add new, then upload theme . You can upload your zip file here.
If you want a WordPress theme then simply go to appearance, themes, add new and then browse through the themes until you find one you like, click install and then click activate.
Finishing Notes
You have done it, you have just made a website. Play around with the different tools on WordPress to get started, it will be pretty easy to learn and after using it for less than a week you should be able to grasp everything. Now it’s time for the fun to begin – the money making.
Go take some action.
Peace!
– Smart Income 101