How to create a website?
You will be able to create a website within a few hours. This step-by-step guide will help with everything you need from web hosting to web design.
Updated on February 2024
Author – Subarnamoy Bose
How to create a website?
- Determine the type of website you want
- Sort out the requirements to create a website
- Get a domain name
- Get a suitable web hosting service
- Install WordPress CMS to create a website
- Install a multipurpose theme
- Create necessary web pages
- Customize and design the web pages
- Install necessary WordPress plugins
- Create a backup
- Optimize the cache plugin
- Install CDN if needed
- Install security and anti-spam plugin
- Launch your website
- Maintain your website
Do you know how to create a website?
Maybe you want to create a website for your business or you want to create a website for your blog. Or maybe you’re searching for a detailed guide so that you will not face issues after launching your website.
You’ll find solutions for every type of website and also find solutions for common problems that every beginner struggles with.
You don’t need any technical expertise to follow along.
An experienced person can create a website within 20 – 25 minutes with this process. This a very well-known method for creating websites. As of 2024, 810 million websites are created this way that are currently live on the internet.
Since this is a proven method and well-matured platforms are being used, you will be smooth sailing in your journey after you understand the platforms & services that are being used.
Moreover, there are a lot of advantages you will get by using this process
- You’ll save a lot of capital in the long run
- You will be able to fix your website easily if you break it
- You don’t need a lot of time to manage your website
- Your website will be flexible and scalable
Now let’s start with the 1st step i.e. determine the type of website you want. This will help you figure out the things you need to implement on your website.
1. Determine the type of website you want
There are many types of websites. Every type of website has a different functionality, design aesthetics and best practices to get visitors.
Here are the most common types of websites –
- Business website
- E-commerce website
- Product showcase website
- Portfolio websites
- Personal websites
- News website
- Blogging website
- Knowledge base websites
- Entertainment website
- Event websites
- Travel website
- Membership websites
By determining the type of website you want, you can search for similar websites and study those to get ideas about, functionality, web design, and how the top websites are attracting visitors in your website category.
Let us explain this work with an example.
Suppose you want to create a website to promote your restaurant business (business website).
In all the top-ranking websites, you’ll notice that most of the restaurant business websites have – a landing page showcasing dishes, a section to book a table in their restaurant, a restaurant location, a contact page, a detailed food and beverage menu, and a reviews section.
So by looking at this, you can guess that the beautiful images are being used to attract visitors. To engage with visitors, booking features and a contact page are being used. Reviews are being used to create trust.
This is how you can get ideas about website functionality, web design and best practices by determining the type of website.
You can create your website for multiple purposes. Many website owners create a website for their products but they also do blogging on the same website for getting visitors.
For example – Neil Patel (One of the top entrepreneurs) built neilpatel.com. On his website, he blogs about marketing and he has also created his web app on the same website. You can consider his website as both a business website and a blogging website.
After determining the type of website you want, you need to sort out the things required to create a website.
2. Sort out the requirements to create a website
Whether you want to create a website to promote your business or you want to start a business with your website. You need to have a few things that are required for every website on the internet.
Basic requirements to create a website –
- Domain name: Domain name is the URL that visitors use to reach a website. It is also used as the name of a website.
- Web hosting service: Web hosting services provide server space to their users to host a website on the internet.
- E-mail hosting service: E-mail hosting service is similar to web hosting. The only difference is that it is used to create business email.
- Content management system (CMS): A content management system is a web application that is installed on a web hosting server to create a website and publish content on the internet.
- Web design tools: Web design tools are installed in content management systems to create content and design the website.
- Logo: A logo is used for branding. It is also used to promote a website with advertisements and grow the brand.
- Security services: To prevent bad actors and hackers from harming a website a website owner must have security services.
- Analytics services: Analytics services are used to collect visitor’s data and analyse website visitor’s actions.
- Additional features: Every type of website has a distinct feature, design aesthetics and best practices. So, additional features are installed in the content management system for a specific type of website.
Please note that we have only mentioned the things that are required to create a website with zero coding skills.
If you want to have a custom website you need to hire a developer.
All the things that we have mentioned in the list above are important if you want to create a website.
Now, that you know about the basic requirements we can start with the main part of how to create a website.
3. Get a domain name
A domain name is the URL (link) of a website. It is used as the name of a website as well as the name of the brand. So, it is a must-have requirement to create a website.
To get a domain name, you have to check the domain availability. If the domain name is available, you can get it from a domain registrar.
Note: Some of the web hosting services provide a free domain name with their web hosting service.
Usually, .com and country-specific domain extensions like .in cost around $10 to $20/year. The pricing structure may vary depending on the domain extension. Some of the domain extension costs around $100.
So be sure to check your domain extension when you search for an available domain name.
But before getting a domain name you need to know a few things.
What is a domain name?
A domain name is a unique combination of alphabets & numbers used with extensions like “.com”. A domain name is connected with an IP address of a web server, so when a user tries to reach a domain name via a web browser, they get to access all the content (web pages) stored in the web server.
In layman’s language, a domain name is the website link that you type inside the search bar of your browser to visit a website.
For example – To use the Google search engine, you need to visit google.com. And “google.com” is the domain name of the Google brand.
So in short, without a domain name, you will not be able to create a website.
If you create a website without a domain name, your visitors have to remember the long IP address of your web server to visit your website.
So choosing and getting a domain name is important if you want to create a website.
How to choose a domain name?
As we have already mentioned, you have to choose a domain name that is brandable and easy to remember. A domain name is used as the name of a website and is also used for the name of a brand.
There are a few rules you can follow to choose a domain name. However, by following the standard rules, it may become a bit hard to choose a good domain name. So you may have to break a few rules.
The standard rules for choosing a domain name are –
- Choose a domain name that you can use for your brand name
- Keep your domain name short and simple
- Make your domain name catchy
- Use either a global domain extension (.com) or a country-specific extension (.in)
- Try to avoid symbols, numbers, or spelling mistakes
- Use keyword research tools to find a good domain name
There are several billion websites on the internet. This means several billion domain names are already owned. So you may not get the domain name you want.
Depending on your website niche and language, you may have to spend a bit of time to find a good domain name that is available at the moment.
There are many brands with great domain names but their domain is not created using these rules.
Example – crazyegg.com. This is a tool to analyze a website visitor’s journey using heatmap data. The brand name has nothing to do with the service they provide. But the brand name is very easy to remember.
Our recommendation: Try to think out of the box to choose a domain name. You can use rhythm, combinations of broken words, or use different languages. But make sure your brand name is easy to remember.
To check domain availability please click here to scroll up to the domain checker available on this page.
Where to get a domain name?
You can get your domain name from any domain registrar.
Be sure to get your domain name from a good domain provider otherwise, you’ll face a lot of technical issues later on.
There are many domain registrars but we recommend using Namecheap. We have been using it for years and we have never faced any issue.
Apart from Namecheap, you can also use Domain.com to register your domain name. They also have good services.
Namecheap is a little bit cheaper than Domain.com. Moreover, you’ll get free domain privacy with Namecheap. Having domain privacy is essential because in WHO.IS database anyone can search and find out information about a domain’s owner.
Both Namecheap and Domain.com have similar features. You can check the comparison below.
Comparison | Namecheap | Domain.com |
---|---|---|
Domain price (.com) | $7.98/year | $11.99/Year |
Renewal Pricing | $13.98/year | $11.99/Year |
Domain Privacy (Important) | Free forever | $8.99/Year |
Security addon | ✅ | ✅ |
Premium SSL addon | ✅ | ✅ |
Premium DNS addon | ✅ | ✅ |
Web hosting services | ✅ | ✅ |
Total pricing for 1 domain | $7.98 for 1st year After 1st year, $13.98/year | $20.98/year |
Visit | Namecheap | Domain.com |
Apart from domain registration both of these services provide web hosting services and other additional services.
For example: Namecheap is known for domain registration but it has also established itself as one of the fastest hosting providers.
Our recommendation: If you’re planning to create a website with a low budget, don’t purchase your domain name separately unless you’re purchasing your domain name from Namecheap. Its shared hosting is so budget-friendly that even when you compare it with other hosting providers with a free domain name, Namecheap is still cheaper with a domain name.
4. Get a suitable web hosting service
Along with a domain name, you will also need a web hosting service to create a website.
Web hosting is a service in which users rent server resources (CPU, RAM & SSD Storage) from a hosting provider to host website content on the Internet.
Many types of web hosting services are available in the market. Every type of hosting has some advantages and some disadvantages. You need to choose the right web hosting for your website.
We’ll ONLY discuss about the services that are the best choice for your requirements.
Among every type of web hosting service, these 4 types of services are the most popular.
Shared Hosting
Shared hosting is a type of web hosting service in which a single dedicated server is shared among multiple website users. Dedicated servers are the top-tier web server that can handle a million visitors a month easily. Shared hosting providers use these servers to provide hosting to multiple users.
Every user account of shared hosting has limitations depending on the hosting plan. Limitations are created to prevent users from using more than they pay for. So even if one user has a lot of visitors, other users are still able to use the allocated server resources. Usually, 1 basic allocated server can handle around 10,000 visitors a month.
Now that you know about what is shared hosting, you can look at the advantages and disadvantages of shared hosting.
Advantages of shared hosting
- Cheapest hosting service
- Pricing starts around $3/month
- You’ll get a free domain for 1 year
- Daily/Weekly backup
- Free CDN
- Free SSL
- Free security features
- Email account
- Partially managed server
Disadvantages of shared hosting
- The renewal price of shared hosting is more than double as compared to the initial charges.
- You may end up spending a lot more on top-tier shared hosting as compared to bottom-tier cloud hosting
By looking at the advantages and disadvantages you can guess that the value you get out of shared hosting is far more than what you pay for.
Shared hosting is the most popular among new website creators. Now let’s look at some of the shared hosting that we recommend you to use at the beginning.
Recommended shared hosting providers
Shared hosting is considered the cheapest hosting. But that cheap pricing comes with slow server speed. However, some of the shared hosting services have such a good page speed that you can not compare them with the usual shared hosting services.
Among all the shared hosting that we have used, Greengeeks had the best service. It has surprisingly better server performance, better customer service and a cheaper pricing structure than most shared hosting providers. No wonder it is considered the best eco-friendly hosting provider.
As an alternative, you can also use Namecheap. As we have already mentioned Namecheap is a popular domain name provider and in recent years it has established itself as one of the fastest shared hosting providers also.
Now let’s compare both shared hosting providers –
Hosting plan comparison | Greengeeks | Namecheap |
---|---|---|
Basic hosting plan name | Lite | Stellar |
1st year pricing | $2.95/month (12 months) | $1.98/month (12 months) |
Free domain name (1 year) | ✅ | ❌ (.com domain – $8.16) |
Renewal pricing after 1st year | $11.95/month | $4.48/month |
Websites | 1 | 3 |
SSD storage | 50GB | 20GB |
Web server | Litespeed | Apache/Litespeed |
Bandwidth | Unmetered | Unmetered |
Server uptime | 99.99% | 99.99% |
Free Backup | ✅ | ✅ |
Free CDN | ✅ | ✅ |
Free SSL | ✅ | ✅ |
Datacenter | United States Canada Europe Singapore | US UK EU |
Total email accounts | 50 | 30 |
Malware Scanning | ✅ | ✅ |
WordPress migration | ✅ | Migration assistance |
Support | Live Chat & Phone | Live Chat |
Total pricing for 1st year | $45.35 | $22.88 ($31.4 with .com domain) |
Visit | Greengeeks | Namecheap |
If you look at the comparison table above you can notice a few differences between Greengeeks and Namecheap. The differences are –
- Namecheap is cheaper than Greengeeks.
- Greengeeks has a data centre in southeast Asia. If you’re living in India you’ll get a good page speed
You may be wondering why we have recommended only these web hosting services only. The major factors for choosing these web hosting services are –
- Even without optimization, these services have good page speed.
- Both of these have the Litespeed server. After optimizing you can compare their page speed with cloud hosting service.
- Live chat support is great, and support agents are knowledgeable
- The usual shared hosting price starts from $90/year with security & backup add-on (important). But both these services have the best shared hosting service with the cheapest pricing in the market.
Greengeeks
Namecheap
The value you get out of shared hosting is great compared to the amount you pay.
Our recommendation: Go for the shared hosting if you’re planning to get the basic shared hosting plan for your website. Consider using cloud hosting or VPS hosting if you require features of high-tier shared hosting.
Managed Hosting
Managed hosting is the most user-friendly web hosting service. Every hosting server is managed by its hosting provider. These hosting services are popular among users who don’t want to bother with managing websites.
With managed hosting, you will be able to spend more time on your business and website growth. And if you’re planning to hire a developer to manage your website then managed hosting is a better choice for you.
Most of the managed hosting services are built upon cloud servers. Some of the hosting providers also use Dedicated servers and VPS servers to build their managed hosting services.
Since everything is managed and optimized by professionals, you’ll get the optimum page speed and best security. Even if you break your website and you start getting errors on your front end, your hosting provider will fix your server as soon as possible.
Advantages of managed hosting
- You don’t have to pay upfront for a whole year.
- The pricing structure is similar to cloud and VPS
- Professional email is included with every hosting
- Good server performance (managed)
- Good security (managed)
- 24/7/365 customer support
- Disaster recovery assistance
Disadvantages of managed hosting
- Usually basic managed hosting plan has very low SSD storage. So e-commerce websites and other types of image-heavy websites cannot use basic managed hosting for a long time as SSD will be filled sooner or later.
Recommended managed hosting providers
There are many managed hosting services available in the market. Some of the managed hosting providers only provide optimised server-side cache and sell their shared hosting in the name of managed hosting service.
So if you’re planning to get managed hosting, try to get your hosting from the services that are primarily built for providing managed hosting like Nexcess (A Liquid Web Brand)
Before transferring to cloud hosting, Aikubus.com was running on Nexcess managed hosting service. Their customer support is top-notch. The customer service is handled by Liquid Web which has been recognised as the hosting provider with the best customer support in the industry.
You can also try Flywheel (Acquired by WP Engine) It is also recognised as one of the fastest web hosting providers.
Now let’s compare both of the hosting providers.
Because of the features and pricing structure, the basic plan of Nexcess should be compared with the 2nd plan of Flywheel to make the comparison more balanced.
We have also added details of the basic plan of Flywheel.
Hosting plan comparison | Nexcess | Flywheel |
---|---|---|
Hosting plan name | Spark | Starter (2nd plan of flywheel) |
Monthly pricing | $21/month | $25/month ($13/month for the basic plan) |
Yearly pricing | $210 | $300 ($150 for the basic plan) |
Websites | 1 | 1 (for both plans) |
SSD storage | 15GB | 10GB (5GB for the basic plan) |
Disaster recovery assistance | ✅ | ✅ (Auto-healing) |
Bandwidth | 2TB | 50GB (20GB for the basic plan) |
Server uptime | 99.99% | 99.99% |
Backup | ✅ | ✅ |
Development environment | ✅ | ✅ |
CDN | ✅ | ✅ |
SSL | ✅ | ✅ |
Managed Server | ✅ | ✅ |
Managed server performance | ✅ | ✅ |
Datacenter | United States UK Netherlands Australia | US Canada UK Europe Australia |
Professional Email | ✅ | ✅ |
Managed Security | ✅ | ✅ |
Pro WordPress theme | ❌ | ✅ |
Support | Live Chat | Live Chat |
Visit | Nexcess | Flywheel |
If you look at the comparison table above, you’ll also notice that Necess plans are very different from Flywheel.
The differences are –
- Nexcess has a very high bandwidth. High Bandwidth helps maintain speed during high traffic.
- Flywheel is fast. But the speed can be maintained up to a threshold.
- Nexcess provides more storage than Flywheel
- Flywheel provides pro-WordPress theme
Nexcess has 10 times more bandwidth than the basic plan of flywheel. High bandwidth helps maintain good page speed when you start getting a lot of visitors. This means Nexcess can handle a lot more visitors with better server performance.
But this doesn’t mean Flywheel is slow, Flywheel is known for having fast page speed.
You will get good page speed up to a threshold. The threshold of each plan is clearly mentioned in the pricing table of Flywheel.
You will not be able to see a significant difference in speed until you cross the threshold of your plan.
Another difference between both managed hosting is SSD space. With the basic plan, Flywheel only provides 5GB SSD storage. 5GB storage may not be enough for a year-old website but for a new website, it is more than enough.
Since web pages are usually lightweight, so most websites don’t need more storage.
Storage space is only necessary for image-heavy websites like e-commerce websites or photography websites.
Flywheel has a huge advantage over Nexcess. The advantage is the Pro WordPress theme provided by Flywheel. Pro WordPress theme usually costs around $50 to $150 depending on the Theme provider.
And the theme Flywheel provides is Genesis. Genesis is known as one of the fastest WordPress themes in the market.
The reasons for choosing –
Nexcess
Flywheel
Cloud Hosting
Cloud hosting is a type of hosting in which a server cluster of virtual servers and physical servers from a diverse geographic location is used to provide web hosting services.
Because a big network of server clusters is utilized to provide hosting services, it is very easy to scale up or scale down to the required server resources.
This makes cloud hosting very popular.
Cloud hosting takes the efficiency of traditional hosting to the next level.
With flexibility and scalability, you also get the advantage of managed services
Most cloud hosting services are built for WordPress CMS.
Even if you don’t use WordPress CMS, you will still be able to take advantage of the managed cloud hosting.
Few managed cloud hosting providers like Liquid Web provide fully managed services for other CMS and frameworks to create web apps.
Popular managed cloud hosting providers:
The pricing structure of the basic managed cloud hosting service is similar to the top-tier shared hosting services.
Pricing of managed cloud hosting starts around at $15/month.
The pricing structure may vary depending on the hosting provider.
Some providers charge more than $45/month for the basic plan but those plans are for websites with more than 100,000 visitors.
Advantages of managed cloud hosting
- Performance, security, and server-side caching, everything is optimized from the beginning
- To create a website on your managed hosting, you only have to work on web design and website function
- You will get features like auto-healing to mitigate WordPress errors as soon as they occur in the dashboard
- Managed cloud hosting is highly flexible and scalable, you will be able to scale up or scale down your resources with a click of a button
- Every managed cloud hosting has a few features to add and manage team members to work with
There is not much to discuss about managed cloud hosting’s disadvantages.
Disadvantages of managed cloud hosting
- Unlike shared hosting, you will not get a free domain name with the most managed cloud hosting services
- Sometimes it becomes a hassle to connect your domain the your hosting
Our recommendation: If you’re creating a website for your business or start-up, consider using managed cloud hosting. It will help you save a lot of time.
VPS Hosting
VPS Hosting (Virtual Private Server Hosting) is mostly used by web developers and app developers. So if you have a team to manage every aspect of your backend and frontend, go for VPS hosting.
VPS Hosting is a type of web hosting in which a dedicated server is used to create multiple small VPS servers with the help of Virtualisation technologies like Hypervisor.
Usually, VPS servers are not as flexible as cloud servers but it is possible to add more VPS server resources to your main VPS server. This allows users to scale up the VPS server when needed.
VPS Hosting is popular because it is possible to integrate cloud computing technologies. You can use a pre-built stack application on your VPS to start working on development right away.
There are many Managed VPS hosting services. However, the pricing structure is way too high to be used by beginners.
Popular VPS hosting providers
Pricing structure may vary depending on the type of VPS you choose for your project.
If you choose a shared CPU VPS server, it will cost around $6/month. If you choose a dedicated CPU VPS server, it will you more than $40/month. And if you choose to get Managed VPS hosting with a dedicated CPU, it will cost around $70/month.
VPS server is for developers but still, it is popular. The reason behind this is that when a website grows a lot, website owners tend to transfer their website to VPS services so that their team can handle every aspect of the server.
Advantaged of VPS hosting providers
- VPS hosting is developer-friendly
- VPS is very cheap but you’ll have to build your website from scratch
- VPS is also used for web development as well as app development
- If have a team to manage your website, VPS is a better choice
VPS can only be utilized when a website grows too big to be managed by a single person.
DISAdvantaged of VPS hosting providers
- Beginners with zero technical knowledge will not be able to do anything with the VPS hosting
Our recommendation: If you’re a developer or if you have a team of developers go for VPS hosting, otherwise stay away from it.
5. Install WordPress CMS to create a website
Now that you have a domain name and web hosting, you can start working on creating a website.
To create a website, all you need to do is install a content management system (WordPress) on your web hosting and start working on it.
Content management system (CMS)
Content management systems (CMS) are a type of web application in which users can create, manage, and publish content on the web.
In simple words, content management systems are a type of web application in which you can create content to showcase on the web and manage that content from the backend.
There are many content management systems and the most famous content management system is WordPress CMS.
Keep in mind that there are 2 official websites for WordPress (wordpress.org and wordpress.com). Open source WordPress CMS of wordpress.org is the most popular.
You can check the usage statistics of content management systems from W3Techs
How to install WordPress CMS on shared hosting and managed cloud hosting
Important
Many popular hosting services provide pre-installed WordPress.
This means as soon as you create your hosting account you will be redirected to another page to create a WordPress account.
If your web hosting doesn’t have pre-installed WordPress, you need to navigate to the website creation section and create a website with the available content management systems.
Installing WordPress CMS on normal web hosting is very easy. Most shared hosting and managed cloud hosting have similar procedures.
To demonstrate, will use Hostinger cloud hosting to create a website.
Let’s start with installing WordPress on Hostinger cloud hosting.