How to Install and Design a Website in 5 Easy Steps

Installing and designing a website can prove to be very complicated and costly if you don’t have any experience in website design.

Many have purchased expensive software such as Microsoft Expression (formerly Frontpage), Adobe Dreamweaver and Flash programs in hopes of obtaining a website that looks and functions well. In addition to the cost, learning a new program and installing a new website can be very time consuming.

Others use website services that charge monthly fees for instant websites that look good and are easy to get up and running in no time. I’ve outlined a few of the better website services that are available for free in one of my articles entitled Free and Low Cost Web Pages, Blogs, FTP’s and Html Editors.

These programs are fine but I’ve found that more an more people would like to have a sense of ownership with their websites. They don’t want to be tied into a program that they can’t mange exclusively. What’s more, some website services can be very costly.

The ability to install, design, and customize your very own website is a much sought after talent. It’s very rewarding when someone asks you who designed your website and you tell them, “I installed and designed my website”.

I’ve been installing and designing website for a while now and I‘ve found that the very best way to design a web page is with a wordpress blog. Blogs used to be thought of as a personal diary, however with the new blog themes that are available now, you can design and customize your web page so that no one can tell the difference between a blog and a traditional html or css website.

You can now have the ability to customize your own website the way that you want it to look.

And what if I told you that you can have a website up and running in just a few hours time?

Are you ready to install and design your own website with very little time, money or knowledge invested?

Good.

Here’s how to install your very own website, complete with web design and customization in 5 easy steps.

Step 1: Purchase a Domain Name

If you would like to have complete ownership of your website the purchase of a domain name  is the way to go.

A domain name is of vital importance and can give you a uniqueness and professional website presence.

It’s entirely possible to have a place that you call your own by using another service such as myspace, wordpress.com, or  blogger,  or yahoo or even windows live pages.

But tell me which of these two website addresses is more more professional and more appealing to you:

• www.myspace.com/yourname

• www.yourname.com

I prefer my own domain name without the prefix, especially since I can purchase one for $8.00 or less at a website such as Real Domain Success.com (See my article called Save Money on Domain Names)

Even though the domain name service above is my reseller account I recommend another way to get started by combining both your domain name and a web hosting service in one as you’ll read about below:

Step 2: Get Your Website Hosting Service

This is the place that you call home. A web hosting service puts you in the control seat.

There are a variety of web hosting services available today but I like the KISS principle- “Keep It Super Simple” or “Keep it Simple Stupid” if you are like me.

A web hosting service such as BlueHost which is the easiest web hosting service to use that I know of and will allow you to purchase web hosting for as little as $6.95 a month . They will also give you a free domain name when you purchase their web hosting plan for two years. Your total cost is  $166, but when you consider that this is the price that you pay for freedom and ownership it is well worth it.

Here are my 3 favorites Web Hosting Services:

BlueHost (mentioned above)

2 years- $6.95 monthly or $166  total (domain name included)

1 year- $7.95 monthly or $95  total (domain name costs extra)

Real Domain Success

$6.95 a month and $1.99 for the domain name for a total yearly cost of $86.07

HostGator

$7.95 a month for a total yearly cost of $95 (Domain name extra)

Get your first month for a penny

Step 3: Install WordPress

WordPress is very easy to install.

While you can manually install wordpress using the instructions given at WordPress.org even WordPress recommends using  your hosting service to install wordpress.

Here are the steps to installing wordpress from within your new web host

BlueHost and HostGator both have a 1 click install method. However for this illistration, I’l ll use BlueHost to walk you through the installation process of WordPress using Fantastico:

1. Log into your BlueHost control panel
2. Select ‘Fantastico (Auto-Installs)’ from the ‘Software / Services section
3. Find the section in Fantastico called ‘Blogs’ and select ‘WordPress’ — a WordPress information screen will load
4. Place your mouse over the bold text ‘New Installation’ and click the link
5. Follow the prompts given by Fantastico, then complete the installation

Fantastico will populate the default files and databases for a brand new installation of WordPress in whatever location on any domain attached to your account which you specify.

Similar processes can be used to install all Fantastico Content Management Solutions (CMSs) onto your account.

UPDATE: BlueHost Now Uses Simple Scripts for blog installations. It’s super simple.

If you are using Real Domain Success here’s the auto install method:

• After setting up your hosting account, click the Your Applications button from the Hosting Control Center.
• Select WordPress (latest version available now; new versions available upon release), or any one of 50+ apps, and click Install Now

Just a quick tip on WordPress Customization:

After selecting your domain name from the drop down box you will be asked which directory you would like to install under. This can be confusing to some. I recommend that you leave it blank. Some people  fill it in with “blog” but only because they want to add a blog on to their traditional html or css website.In other words, if you leave it blank your website will be located at “www.yourname com” If you fill it in with “blog” or some other name your new website will be located at “www.yourname.com/blog”

Once you finish the simple 3 step process you should be able to see your new website with the Name and description that you filled in.

Step 4: Choose and Install your Theme

WordPress allows you to customize the look of your blog with themes. This is how you will change the look of blog to make it look like a traditional website or any other style of website that you may choose.

There are numerous wordpress themes available for free at http://www.reallifepurpose.com/wordpressextend/themes/. You can choose your favorite theme using the search feature located on the themes page.

There is also the option of purchasing a premium wordpress theme.

Here are my 3 favorite Premium WordPress Themes:

Thesis by DIY Themes

I am using the Thesis theme on this website because it has all the bells and whistles and has excellent Search engine optimazation capabilities.

The Flex Theme by IThemes

All of  the ithemes themes are easy to use. I am using the flex theme on my missions with purpose website because it is so flexible and easy to customize.

Studio Press Themes

Revolution provides a little bit more advance theme that has a lot of customization feature for your front page. Previously most of the styles were magazine styles but with the dawn of Revolution Two theme club there are countless options for very professional websites using these themes. I’m using Revolution Sports on my Fat Loss website

How to install your wordpress theme

There are two ways to upload your new wordpress theme.

I use Filezilla – Besides bing easy to use, FileZilla features include the ability to run on Windows, Linux, or Mac.  If you are using firefox as your internet browser you may also want to try Fireftp.

More information on FTP’scan be found on my previously mentioned article entitled Free and Low Cost Web Pages, Blogs, FTP’s and Html

To Upload using an FTP:

1.  Download the theme archive and extract the files it contains. You may need to preserve the directory structure in the archive when extracting these files. Follow the guidelines provided by your theme author.

2. Using an FTP client to access your host web server, create a directory to contain your theme in the wp-content/themes directory provided by WordPress. For example, a theme named Test should be in wp-content/themes/test. Your theme may provide this directory as part of the archive.

3. Upload the theme files to the new directory on your host server.

The other method for installing your theme is through the wordpress dashboard.  This is a really easy process and I cover it in my free video series below:

Click here to get complete video instructions on how to set up WordPress

Step 5: Customize by Installing plugins and editing widgets

Plugins are cool bits of programming scripts that add additional functionality to your blog. They are installed in the same way as themes, only you will upload them to the plugins folder.

There are too a lot of plugins available and they are all free at http://www.reallifepurpose.com/wordpressextend/plugins/

I’ve also written an article on the 15 best SEO wordpress plugins that should be very helpful to you.

Widgets

Finally to top off your customization efforts, you should navigate o the widgets panel while administrating your wordpress blog.

There are a lot of free widgets already installed in wordpress and you can also customize by adding a blank text widget and filling it in with an html code from websites or sources that are of interest to you.

Do You Need More Help?

Installing and designing your own website is  definitely the way to go. To me it seems very easy however you still may feel as if you could use some more assistance.

If you would like a step by step video system walking you through every process of installing, designing, and getting traffic to your wordpress blog then head on over to Blog Purpose.com where my coach, Terry Dean has just finished a brand new series on blogging for fun and profit.

You’ll be amazed at how quickly you can Master blogging using this very up-to date and detailed instruction guide in a video format that is actually delivered to your doorstep.

Go to BlogPurpose.com Now

To your blogging success,

Greg Nemer

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