Building a website today is easy-peasy!

But while it’s easy, there are quite a few steps before we get there.

But don’t worry, we’ll walk through the entire process. Let’s get started!

The things we’ll need for a website:

1. Hosting

2. Domain Name

3. Type of website

4. Content

Wait, what are websites?

Well, every time you type something into the browser (Chrome/Firefox/IE/Edge) and enter (for example google.com) you’re entering a website.

You’re basically entering a website.

There are far more technical aspects of website building (CIDR blocks, VPCs etc) and all those fancy buzzwords, but none of them are required for what you want – which is a simple, basic website that you can use to sell things online, make money online, create a massive eCommerce website that will make you a multimillionaire….

Or you know, just post your thoughts on topics that you’re interested in 🙂

HOSTING

Taken from Wikipedia, Web Hosting is “type of Internet hosting service that allows individuals and organizations to make their website accessible via the World Wide Web. Web hosts are companies that provide space on a server owned or leased for use by clients, as well as providing Internet connectivity, typically in a data center.”

Basically, it is a service that lets your website be visible to the world (just like how you see webratconsulting.com is visible to the world)

The host that I use on this blog is FastComet, which is super reliable and fast (>99% uptime + 24/7 support). However, you’re also free to choose your own hosts as well, especially for those who already have blogs now.

Also, just so happens that now during the COVID-19 situation, they’re having a blowout sale to help those who want to start their own websites with a deep discount. Check them out!

DOMAIN

Domains are what you use to type into your browser (i.e. webratconsulting.com, google.com) that points you to your website. The names can be varied and as creative as you please, as long as it’s available.

I use a domain registrar known as GoDaddy.com, who are behemoths in the domain world for supplying domains to majority of the world.

The other large players are NameCheap.com and Domain.com (the url you type into the browser typically ignores any upper or lower cases)

TYPE OF WEBSITE

Okay, the type of websites can be tricky here. Simply put, websites can be built from a massive variety of frameworks (for the more technically inclined, frameworks like Vue.js or React.js come to mind)

However, those frameworks are for the ones who are already technically skilled, and/or those who want to build websites in those frameworks for portfolios or custom sites for large clients.

For us today in this beginner section, we’ll use the humble WordPress site 🙂

How to build a website with WordPress is way, waaaay simpler than using those websites – simply click a few buttons with FastComet, and boom, your WordPress site is up and ready to kick some ass in the world!

Simply fill in the details of your website name, subtext and its password and you’re good to go.

The most important of which is the password – make sure you use a strong one, or hackers can, and will break into the site. I learnt that the hard way.

Thankfully, FastComet is also able to restore a website to the point before it got hacked thanks to the backups that WordPress has. So it’s a double win 🙂

Once that’s done, you’ll be able to access your website installed with fastcomet via http://your-website-name.com/wp-admin.

Then, enter your login and password and voila, you’re in!

This is how you build a website with WordPress.

BUT wait, we’re not done! (just a bit more, I promise)

Now comes the more important section of your blog – how to design and create the website of your dreams by using themes and styles.

Now, for the seasoned builders here, you can most definitely go wild and build your own themes and/or use the themes you’ve already bought – that’s completely cool. you’ll be set from here.

The next section however is for the newcomers to the online blogging world, and are looking to how to build a blog with WordPress, complete from top to bottom.

So if you’re a newbie, keep going – we were all newbies once, and i’m only glad to share all i know with you.

Next section involves themes. Personally, I use Thrive Themes because their products are focused on sales and conversions, which is what I aim for most of my blogs (more on that in the next article)

Go ahead and login to your thrive themes account. And then:

1. Install down the product manager to your machine
   
2. Upload it to your WordPress blog
   
3. Login to thrive from the dashboard
   
4. Install the stuff that you want (for starters, just install Thrive Architect)
   
5. Almost done, all you gotta do is simply create a new page. Do that by hovering the “Pages” button on the left and click “Add New”
6. From there, you’ll see “Launch Thrive Architect”. Before you click that, make sure you create the page title and publish it first!
   
7. once in the Thrive editor, you’ll be able to browse around the builder. In the example (which I will leave up for you) it’s as simple as using their in-built templates and creating your landing page!

   note: this step may be a little harder, so i uploaded a video to see instead.

Of course, you can definitely create your own as well. Or, you can also use mine, which you can download for free here.