If you have right now that “it’s all Greek to me” feeling when it comes to website design, that’s normal. In this overview, we’ll take a brief look at what it takes to get your own website live on the internet.

1. You Need To Create A Website

You can either make your own website (e.g. by following the tutorial on this blog), or pay a professional web designer to create one for you.

Websites are coded in simple static web programming languages like HTML, or modern dynamic languages such as PHP. Today, almost everybody without any programming knowledge can make a pretty professional looking website by using one of the many ready-made templates.

However, before you head off now and download the next best template, be warned that many templates turn out to be much more difficult to set up than described. Also, many home-made websites built by ‘web design newbies’ tend to look not as pretty as the  original template that was styled for the ‘template gallery’ by a seasoned professional! We have in fact many customers who end up calling us, frustrated after hours of trial and error playing around with such a pre-made template.

The real challenge on how to find a web design template that is easy to work with lays in the ‘back office’ part and it’s search engine optimization capabilities. WordPress is a very easy to use DIY web design solution that we highly recommend if you want to get a great looking search engine optimized website in a matter or hours.

You can learn how to create your own WordPress website here on our blog.

2. Your Website Needs A Domain Name

In addition to creating the files your website consists of, it will need a unique identifier in the world wide web, called ‘domain name’, such as http://www.yourwebsite.com. This domain name needs to be registered with ICANN (Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers) by a licensed Domain Registrant, and you will have to pay an annual fee for the registration. This fee is usually around $10 a year for available dot.com domains. Many domain names these days are already registered, so it might be a tough choice to find a good one which is still available. If you want to check whether a name you would like is still available, you can do so by visiting Godaddy

3. Your Website Files Need To Be Stored On Your Web Host’s Server

In order to make the files you will create for your website available in the internet, they need to be stored on a web server that is running specific web hosting software to ensure the accessibility, functionality and safety of your website. ‘Web Hosting Companies’ offer this service, and you will need to select a reliable company with secure servers to ‘host’ your website files. The web hosting fee for a regular website is usually between $5 and $10 per month, with extra-charge for advanced add-ons (e.g. for secure shopping cart payment sites). We can’t stress enough how important it is to select a web hosting company with reliable and secure equipment. We have so many customers lately that call us to ‘clean’ their hacked websites they store on ‘cheap’ hosting companies.

Hostgator is the best company we found in over 8 years of web design for our customers in San Diego. We like their very reasonable rates, the excellent features of their plans, and their outstanding and very knowledgeable 24/7 customer service, based in Texas. We use them for years and recommend them enthusiastically to all of our customers.

This is all you need to get your own website, and if you start today to design your website, you can be ‘online’ within a few weeks!