Sooner or later, but many modern entrepreneurs are thinking about creating their own Internet platform. How to create a free website what should it be, how much will development cost and can it be done for free?
Why do you need a website?
We often take action without thinking straight. Decide what you want from the site. This type of platform has many advantages over alternative platforms. The website may be used for educational, commercial, advertising and service purposes. There, you can quickly post short news or long reads, share comments or conduct research.
In addition, the site is easy to place photos, galleries, videos, audios and documents. Make an online calculator on your website, connect an online advisor and an email newsletter. The main advantage of websites is cross-media, which allows to attract and retain the user.
However, many tasks can be completed by creating a social media page. Website development will be more expensive and more difficult, so you have to figure out what kind of final image you want to get. Before proceeding, study the types of sites:
1. Website business card up to 10 pages. Advertises the services of a specialist: for example, designer, photographer, psychologist, mechanic, etc. This site is suitable for a small business and an online course. Of the advantages: low cost and speed of creation. Cons: Low amount of search traffic.
2. Personal blog with articles by one or more authors. It differs from a business card in a large number of pages and articles. The blog theme can be anything. A visited website of this type can generate income.
3. Landing, ie a one page website, is used to sell a product or service. They have few items but a beautiful design. Even a beginner can create such a website.
4. The company's corporate website to present the brand and products: they are of high quality.
5. Online store for selling goods online. There is usually a shopping cart, sometimes a blog. The best part of the traffic comes from the search engines.
6. Forum for users to communicate. With the advent of social networks, they lost their relevance. It's easy to create, there are ready-made templates.
7. News site to cover current events. Periodically, these sites are featured in the news sections of Yandex and Google.
8. Information site on any specific topic.
9. Website Service: Provides network services: file conversion, photo processing, music listening, etc. Such a site can only be created by someone who knows a programming language.
How to create your own website for free: instructions
To begin with, let's deal with the basic concepts that we will need in our work.
Let's start with the basic term: let's tell you what CMS is in simple words. Translated from English, this is “content management system. In fact, CMS is a special program that allows you to simplify the management of website content. Any CMS gives the user the opportunity to work through the control panel and not write code.
The second concept needed to get started is a domain name. This is the website address that appears in the address bar. For example, extrarentportal is a domain. Also, you will need hosting – this is a service to host a website or on a server.
Got the basics. Now let's start creating a website using the CMS.
Creating a website using CMS: instructions
There are different types of free CMS:
- WordPress is the most famous and most importantly free “engine” for the website.
- Joomla is also a free system, some consider it safer than its equivalents, but also more difficult to work with;
- OpenCart – suitable for online stores and a little more difficult to use than analogues;
- Drupal and others.
After deciding on the CMS, we select the domain. It may be located in a certain area. For example, if it ends with .ru, this is a Russian site. Also, .ua is a Ukrainian site, .edu is an education-related site, etc. It is better to choose .ru or .com format, it is advisable to avoid Cyrillic domains. The zone is the main thing you need to pay attention to if you are thinking about which domain to choose.
choosing hosting
Choosing a hosting is one of the most important steps. Hosting is both paid and free: the latter are not suitable for us, because. they do not support databases and suffer outages. Also, the prices are quite low: now the minimum tariff will cost around 1000 per year. In REG.RU hosting, when registering a domain, hosting is given as a gift for several months, after which access must be renewed.
Important: It is better to register hosting and domain with the same provider. When choosing a hosting, pay attention to reliability and uninterrupted operation, as well as:
- convenience, clear interface;
- operational support service in Russian;
- Price: The value must be in the market.
The next step is to connect the CMS. To do this, you need to login to your personal hosting account and follow the instructions. After connecting the CMS to wordpress itself, you can select and install a template: there are paid and free versions. The next step is to install plugins.
Which plugins to install
In order for the site to work and perform its tasks, you need to install plugins. In the WordPress dashboard they can be found in the “Plugins” section – there we click on “Add New”. Every website needs plugins that perform the following functions:
- Cache to increase page load speed (W3 Total Cache, WP Super Cache)
- Protection against spam and obscene comments (Akismet)
- Collection of statistics and analysis (Google Analytics)
- Creating contact forms for visitors (Contact Form 7)
- broken link checker
- Create beautiful and responsive galleries (Photo Gallery)
- Search Engine Optimization (Yoast Seo)
- Lossless Image Compression (TinyPNG)
- Create polls, quizzes and similar engaging stories (Forminator)
- Security Threat Detection (iThemes Security)