How To Make Your Own Website

Hello! Welcome to How To Make Your Own Website.

Why is this different than all of the other make a website sites?

• Because I’m not selling software. No magic instant websites. Those don’t work very well anyhow.
• Because you want more details. Details on domain names, hosting, wordpress setup, uploading files. This first section will show you exactly how to get Wordpress running on a 1and1.com hosting solution.
• Because you want to choose from more than one solution. Future sections will show you exactly how to build HTML based websites, host your own Blogger site, insert Amazon ads and Google Adsense, and whatever else people want to learn.

This step can be fun.  Take your time and find that perfect name for your site.  First some information to bring everyone to the same spot.

The domain name is part of the address of your site.

www.DomainName.com

It’s between the www at the beginning and the .com at the end. When you buy a domain name, you can choose between .com or .net or .info or many others for that ending part of your overall URL.

The inspiration is up to you and the purpose of your site. I’ve named my sites based on what I plan to put on them. Some people pick a name that is more of a unique name. Think of one now to try out the next step.

Some of my favorite domain names are slashdot and del.icio.us.   The story behind Slashdot is that the owner wanted it to sound funny when you said the URL out loud.  Try it.  Say “http://slashdot.org”.

Del.icio.us was one of the first sites that created a word out of all of the parts.  Very creative.

Assuming that you’ve thought of a domain name, click on 1and1.com to see if it’s available. (I use 1and1.com for my own sites and will use it to demonstrate the rest of the instructions.)

You should see a page similar to this:

There’s a big section on the right for Domains and a field for Find your domain name today!. Notice that they fill in the www and the .com part for you to avoid confusion. Type in your domain name and click “Check” to see if it’s available.

If your first choice is already taken, try some variations or other ideas. I’ve added some dashes to create a unique name. Don’t worry about how difficult it may be to type your site’s URL in because most people will be clicking on a URL from a search engine or other website.

Soon you will find that perfect domain name.

This is really the hardest step because this one will require some spending. The rest of the process is pretty easy and uses open source tools that only require a download.

A short blurb on 1and1.com. I’ve used them since May, 2004 and have had great service the entire time. Since then, they’ve been growing and improving their products and services. I will occasionally see them listed in comparisons with other hosting providers and they usually score very well. Pricing is competitive, and they usually are offering some type of deal or special. They are worth checking out.

Purchasing your domain name and hosting from 1and1 is pretty straight forward. If you just finished picking your domain name, you should be able to click on the box next to the name you’ve chosen and click continue.

You should see a page like this:

<page…>

At this point, you just need to pick your package and work through a checkout process. I can’t really show pictures of this because I already have my account.

A simple tip:

Create a text document to hold some details in a common spot for your site. You will want to paste into this document URL’s, ID’s and Passwords, notes from various steps and tasks.

Nothing complex is needed for this. Just a simple text file in a place that you can easily find.

Make sure you save your customer number, your domain and any links and passwords that 1and1 gives you. These will be used later.

Go to wordpress.org and follow the download links to get the latest version.  Create a directory just for wordpress and unzip the files to that directory.

This sounds harder than it is.  On 1and1.com, you will have a control panel that allows you to access many tools.

1. Under the Administration Tab, select the Web Space & Access heading in the left menu
2. Select MySQL Administration.
3. Add New Database, Provide a description and select MySQL 5.0 as the version.
4. Cut and paste into your notes file the Database Details that are presented next.  There are a few key items from this page that are used to configure Wordpress to connect to your new database.