Websites for Beginners

There is a lot to learn when it comes to websites for beginners, but don't let overwhelm you. Just take it a step at a time and don't expect to have a website up and running in a day. One of my favourite tools on this site is my website completion checklist. It'll tell you exactly what you need to do, how to do it, and how long it should take you so you can set realistic goals as to when you'll be finished your website.

When talking about websites for beginners, I can't stress enough that content is king. The most difficult thing in website making isn't the design, and it isn't about finding the right hosting provider, it's about getting people to come to your site. It's about making your site important enough so that people want to come to it. If that's not important to you, you're lucky because making a website just got a whole lot easier - ignore my recommendations for content and style, etc. - but if it is important to you, read on with care.

How do people find websites? Most of them use a search engine. Search engines have a massive database of websites, and I mean massive, but whenever you type something in to google or msn, you usually find what you're looking for on the very first page of results. 

When I talk about websites for beginners, I always stress this point first because it's of the utmost importance - getting people to find your website is the endgame, and that's the hardest thing to get through to people.

Can Beginners Make Money with a Website?

Absolutely. Can you earn a living after a month of work? Probably not. If you already have a product or service you want to sell online, that's great - this site shows you how to implement software called Joomla into your website so that your customers can use an online shopping cart to buy your products.

Even if you're not selling a product or service, you can still make some extra cash. Notice the ads from google at the top, bottom and sides of this page? Well, if something there caught your eye and you happened to click on an ad, I would earn a very small commission. Should I be lucky enough to have 10000 visitors per day reading this - and even a modest 5% click rate, I could be earning over $100 per day, without selling any product. No overhead, no warehouse, no stock or customers or order tracking. Perhaps you didn't realize that reading up on websites for beginners could be very profitable, but it is, and with enough time and effort - any website covering any topic can make money.

Websites for Beginners = Hard Work and Dedication

The pros know how to get listed on the front pages of google, and with that, you need to know how to compete. There's some tough work ahead of you if you want to be listed on the front page of google when someone types in 'funny hats' or 'xbox 360 game reviews'. So how does google figure out what pages to list on their front page when a specific search term is entered? Well it's a complicated algorithm, but it has two main parts, and the first is relevance: How relevant is the information on the website compared to the search term someone entered? The second is trust: Are there other, reputable websites linking to this page with the search terms listed? (example, lots of trusted, reputable websites will link to hotmail.com with the term "free email" and so, it shows up on the first page) Hotmail.com also has the fact that the website has been around quite awhile, that helps it's trust level as well. So, how do you make sure your website isn't lost in the obscurity of search result #91000? Well, if you don't have at least ten, 500+ word articles, your site isn't going to matter to anyone but you. In fact, many website directories and search engines won't list websites that don't meet these basic content requirements. And of course, those articles should be search engine optimized - but we're getting ahead of ourselves.

***Note now that If you're someone who doesn't want to be listed in search engines or just wants a site for friends and family, jump to my Free Basic Website page, which will show you how to get all you need for free.

Content is King in Websites for Beginners

When I help make websites for beginners, I try to break everything down as follows. Pick 10 key words or key phrases that relate to your website how to pick keywords
Take a week or two writing 10 articles, 500 or so words apiece. For some good tips on doing this, check out the article writing section of my site.

Now if you can do those things, congratulations you've gotten further along in the process than most people ever do, and you're ready to move on to the fun stuff.

Websites for Beginners: Hosting Choices

My best advice: Plan for the future. Even when dealing with websites for beginners, its wise to think big. What I mean by that is its a lot easier to design a website from the start that's capable of having a user-powered forum, or a photo uploading section, etc., than to decide a year from now you need the PHP and MySql support that allows you to do those kinds of things, and then move all of your content on to a new server, or to a new host. I've been there, it's not fun. There was a lot of downtime, lost revenue, and even lost information!

There are basically 2 groups of features available to any website, we'll categorize them as basic and standard. Pick the list of features below that fits what you want, or what you might want down the line (again think big).

Basic:

• Pictures
• Articles
• Videos
• Advertisements

Standard:

• In addition to basic,
• Comments
• Blogs
• Forums
• Shopping carts
• User created content (allow a user to uplaod a picture or story to your site)
• More than 20 pages
• Lots of content changes
• Running a true online store
• Offering large file downloads
• Having 500 plus visitors per day

Again, if you don't need ANY of the 'Standard' features - go to my Free Basic Website page.

Personally, I use hostgator.com for my hosting. They're inexpensive, have amazing customer support, and give me all the features I need to make my websites look great.

While the 'basic' version of things is tempting (especially since it can be free to host) it comes with some major drawbacks, not the least of which is slower customer support response times. When I talk about websites for beginners, people don't believe me when I say you'll probably be contacting support at least 5 or 6 times as you're setting up your website, and maybe once a month after everything is up and running. I've been in the business for years and I still rely on the support lines of my webhost on a weekly basis. I tell everyone I help with websites for beginners that as it stands, web hosting is an industry where you get what you pay for. 5 bucks a month extra can save you a huge headache, I know.

So, pick the pony now that you think will be with you for the long run. If you do pick the standard features, you'll make your life easier too because of something called fantastico deluxe. Websites for beginners gets simple when using this. It's only available in standard-style hosting packages, and the extra 5 bucks a month or so is worth it just to get this. If you have your content already, this program could have you online and ready to go within a couple hours. It installs feature-rich website software for you like forums, content management systems, shopping carts, blogs, even online stores. No programming knowledge at all is needed to do this. All you do is customize.

Fantastico Deluxe Sample Video

Joomla is the free solution for websites for beginners. I used it to build this site. I'm not a programmer, nor a design specialist. I downloaded a free template that has this green look to it, popped in my articles, customized what I wanted my menus to say, and voila. I added in the ability to comment and the blog after that. Both were easy to do. Joomla makes websites for beginners easy.

Joomla for Beginners Video

So there you have it. You know enough about websites for beginners to get a running start. Remember, content is king, plan for the future and think big, and make your life easy with fantastico deluxe and joomla.