For some reasons you decide to create a web site but you don’t know where to start. Here you can find our tutorial for beginners. We are trying to keep our tutorials as much as understandable as we can. Don’t hesitate to leave a comment below the article.
So let’s begin.
You can reach to plenty of paid or free themes, softwares, addons, scripts, whether you want to create a personal or commercial website on the internet.
My recommended free softwares for a very quick start are will be like;
For personal, business, blog, portfolio or like general purposes: WordPress – Free with wide range of themes and plugins. (Will be installed by this article)
For community pages like forums: PhpBB – Free, open source bulletin board software. (Can be installed after 1. 2. Step below)
For commercial purposes like shopping or selling products on the internet: OpenCart – Free and open-source eCommerce platform. (Can be installed after 1. 2. Step below)
In this article we are following the WordPress way, but you can follow other software options after you get your domain and hosting service as we are going to mention (1. and 2. Step).
Let’s start by following those steps:
Getting Started
It is useful to know some information about how web sites works. For a proper web site we will need a domain name like “www.yourwebsite.com” (other domain extensions like .net .org .info and more currently available) and a web hosting service which is basically a web server that we are going to upload or edit our web site files.
So, we need a domain name and a web hosting service. Firstly, register your domain name (Your web site’s address). You can find plenty of domain name registry companies on the internet as well as web hosting service providers.
1. Domain Registration
For domain registration, you can search on the net by keywords like “register domain name”. We recommend you to choose known and trusted companies for both domain registry and hosting service providers.
By this way, you can get wide and easy support about changing your service plans like upgrading/downgrading or problems may occure.
While you registering your domain name, you will be a customer of that company and you will have a domain name management panel credentials.
The registered domain names becames fully active in a couple of hours or sometimes up to 48 hours. Be aware of that when you register your domain name.
For more information about domain names click here
After the domain registration, you can find on your domain management panel and be familiar to Name Server Settings (NS Settings, NS Forwarding) section.
Because, we will associate (or forward to) our domain name with our hosting service (that is we are going to rent or buy) by specifying Name Server address.
Let’s keep continue if your domain is registered and ready.
2. Obtaining a Web Hosting Service
Deciding to a web hosting can be confusing because of the criterias like CPU, Ram, Disk Space, Bandwidth usage or shared/dedicated hosting options and more but don’t worry. Basic hosting plans are available that you can upgrade in time when neccesary in most companies.
If a web hosting company doesn’t allow for upgrading, web site migration to another hosting company is an option too while you can access to your web site files.
Let’s assume that you bought a Linux / cPanel supported web hosting service which is very popular.
For more information about web hosting, click here
You will be a customer of that company when you buying your hosting service and will get hosting management panel credentials like domain name registration.
You can find the web hosting provider’s Name Server Addresses on their web site or support page and note that addresses.
For associate (or forwarding to) your domain name with your hosting service, Go to domain management panel (the company’s customer panel that you registered your domain name) enter that Name Server Addresses to domain’s name server settings section.
Don’t forget saving the new settings of course.
Some of the web hosting providers are offering domain registration too when you buying a hosting plan. You can follow that way as well as that.
But those steps we mentioned are important for understanding the relation between domain name and web hosting.
Very simply describing chart the mechanism of web site browsing:
After those steps above, you registered your domain name (web site address), obtained a web hosting service, associated your domain name with your hosting service.
3. And you ready to build your website
As we assumed that you bought a Linux / cPanel supported web hosting service, search for cPanel Application at your hosting management panel. You can get support from your hosting provider if you couldn’t find how to reach cPanel Application.
That is all. I hope I could help.
Do you want to use WordPress?
If you decided to install WordPress to your web site, you are in the right place. Just keep continue reading to our detailed tutorial about how to download and install WordPress, step by step.
Bonus Content
How to install WordPress – Tutorial for beginners
Photo by Austin Distel on Unsplash
