A modern website is like a magazine, newspaper, gallery, store, and much more all in digital form. It is available to anyone with access to the Internet. Through a personal, professional, or business website, anyone can publish content to reach a vast worldwide audience. Have a topic that interests you or something to say? Create a website or blog to publish your ideas or thoughts. Want to publish professional articles and ideas? Do that with a website. Have something to sell? Create a website. The uses are endless. But, how do you know when you should get your own website? How hard is that to do? Let’s explore what you can do with a website and how hard (and expensive) it is to create.
Websites are collections of information
What is a website? Primarily, it is a collection of information that is usually related in some way. In addition, it is generally published by a person or organization. This information is presented as articles or blog posts, as images, as graphics, or even in more abstract ways. Finally, this information is usually organized as a series of pages that are related to one another through links. These links may also refer to external sites and pages that are not part of the website.
The article that you are reading now is a web page that is one page as a part of a bigger website, findushere.com. It contains words and graphics centered around the topic of this article. The home page of the site links to the articles and the site is organized by topic. This helps users find information that they are looking for more easily. This is typical of many informational websites.
Flexible content and organization are characteristics of a website
A website can be about anything! It expresses opinions or it is centered around a hobby or interest. It collects information or sells professional services. A website publishes expert information for peer review or is used to operate an online store. It is this content flexibility that makes having a website a good idea for many people and organizations.
Personal websites are used to blog about interests such as travel, cooking, fashion, or finance. These websites are easy to build and lead to a “community” following for the publisher. These personal sites are also used to sell goods and services that sometimes develop into sizable online stores.
Websites for professionals are used to give expert advice, collaborate with peers, and sell professional services. While these websites are often designed by professional website designers, it is certainly within the realm of anyone to create a professional website.
Business and e-commerce sites are generally the most complex sites and offer services from professional articles and advice to scheduling and booking services. These sites often feature e-commerce with all or a large portion of sales online. These sites, though complex, are often started by owners.
The organization of any website ranges from a single page article about one thing or a page selling a single item, to a massive site with thousands of pages of related articles or selling thousands of items. All of these sites have one thing in common. They started from an idea and were created and published to reach a large worldwide audience that only the Internet can reach.
How do you know if you should get a website?
Do you have something other people will be interested in? Do you have knowledge of a topic that other people have questions about? Are there things that you are an “expert” on that others will be searching for? Are you already operating a business or service that adapts and scales well to an online environment? If you answered “yes” to any of these questions, there is a good chance that having your own website is right for you.
If you are considering creating a website, ask yourself the question, “What is this site for?” Then, get more specific and ask what people who go to the website expect to find or be able to do. For example: Is it to inform or educate, to sell something, or maybe simply to entertain. If you can answer these questions, creating a website is worth consideration.
With today's tools, website creation is within anyone's reach
With the proliferation of WordPress, starting a website is much easier than it once was. Over one-third of the sites on the Internet are created with WordPress and that number is growing every day. Learning to create with WordPress offers an easy and quick learning curve and the ability to get a website up and running quickly. Almost all hosting companies today have WordPress installed and ready to go for their customers to begin building their websites. By using WordPress and a host, creators are basically presented with a blank pallet and are free to make a website that looks and feels the way they want while maintaining control over the design process. The website you are using now, findushere.com, was created and is maintained using WordPress.
The expense involved in owning and maintaining a website can be very minimal
The cost of starting and operating your own site is broken into two parts: domain registration and hosting. A domain is the name that a user types into a web browser when they access the content on your site. The domain for this website is findushere.com. Before creating a website, you must choose a unique name that is not already in use to identify your site.
The most common names end in .com and generally this is the best choice for a new website. However, it is sometimes hard to find a name that is not already taken. One thing that helps is to add a prefix in front of the name (without the plus) such as my+, the+, web+, or go+. Another choice is to add a suffix after the name such as: +online, +web, +media, or +world. Once this name is chosen, registration for a year is generally less than $20 and the first year is often included with a hosting plan.
Hosting for multiple domains generally costs less than $10 per month and even less when purchased a year or more at a time. This hosting usually includes unlimited storage for pages and online files, unlimited bandwidth to connect to the Internet, email accounts, and WordPress, as well as with many other features that allow users to build and maintain a website.
Interested in jumping in?
If you have decided that a website is right for you, where do you start? First, get a domain name and hosting. Web hosting is very competitive online. Search for the term hosting. This reveals an almost endless number of choices. In addition, most hosts handle domain registration for you and many include the first year of domain registration for free. If you’re interested in the host that we use, I am an affiliate of Bluehost and get paid a commission (at no cost to you) if you click on my link and sign up for hosting (and a free domain). This helps support this site and while this is the host we use, there are many others out there.
In addition, we created a website called websitesinten.com. Here we made videos of the entire process we used to create the websitesinten.com website. Additionally, this series of videos (each of approximately 10 minutes in length), shows the complete process we used from domain and hosting, to headers and footers, to home page content. Take a look at this site at https://websitesinten.com.