Web Marketing Lesson 4: Building A Site After Domain Name Registration.

This page contains an easy to use, step-by-step guide to help you build your website in the best, easiest, fastest way possible.

how to setup your website graphic by yasha harari

So, you want to set up your own website? And you don’t know exactly what to do, step-by-step?

Well, put aside your fears. This page explains what you can do to setup your site in 30 minutes or less. And you can use practically any decent web host to get it done.

OK, so let’s review really quickly what you should have done by now.

Step 1) Get your domain.

As explained in this web marketing tutorial’s first lesson, you should have registered a domain, using any of the registrars you prefer, that can register your chosen domain name(s).

Remember that while most registrars can register .com, .net, and .org domains, practically all other Top Level Domains, or TLDs, like .ca, .co.uk, .com.au, .tv, .mobi, or .info all have a much smaller list of registrars to choose from. So make sure you look around and choose your registrar carefully, and remember that cheaper prices do not always mean a better deal.

Keep in mind that while a domain is a virtual piece of property, it’s still a form of electronic real estate. And just as with real estate in the real world, sometimes it’s worth paying a few extra bucks for a bunch of additional features and services, a big one of which is location location location — just like in the real world.

Domain Name Registration Recap:

Step 1 & 2: How To Get a Domain Name and Setup Your Web Hosting Account

Before you can start your your blog or other website, you first need to set up a domain name and find a website hosting service.

I prefer GoDaddy and JustHost because each of them is a well-known company with reliable uptime.

GoDaddy offers extremely affordable web hosting, email, and other services you may want.

JustHost offers a domain at no extra cost when you buy one of their web hosting packages.

In both cases, registration and web hosting account setup is easy and inexpensive.

Recommended Registrars:

GoDaddy

JustHost

Here’s what to do on JustHost:

Go to the JustHost.com home page and click the red button that says sign up now. It will ask you to enter a domain name. You may do so and then click ‘Next’.

Their system will then ask you for a bit more information. You should fill out the details properly. Then you will get to pick a internet hosting plan for your account. At first, a one year plan is okay.

Of course, if you have the beans to put into it, and if you see your new site as a long-term, multi-year effort, then bear in mind that the longer your register your domain for, ie: 3, 5, or 10 years, the stronger its initial presence will be in Google, Yahoo, Yandex, Bing, etc. The reason for this is that the search engines look at how long you have registered your domain for, as a sign of how serious you are about making it a real, long-lasting business.

Okay, so now you’ve chosen your domain name and your hosting package. So make sure you pick a good, strong password and keep it safe.

Here’s what to do on GoDaddy:

The procedure is very similar at GoDaddy. You just go to their site, search for the domain name you want, and after you’ve selected the one(s) you want, you add the internet hosting packages that you want to buy, to your shopping cart, and you can pay online using your credit card or paypal account.

It is worth noting that these days, you can do this procedure of domain name registration and web hosting setup at just about any of the best registrars and web hosts. So look around to find the registrar and host that best matches your needs. This should not take you a long time. You can do it in as little as 3 minutes. At the extreme end, you should not spend more than 60 minutes on this task. If it takes longer than that, it probably has to do with the TLD you have chosen. If not, and if it’s just a lame registrar and web host, then go get served somewhere else, by someone who actually wants your business and respects your time.

Finally, please note that if you want your website to be a WordPress site, then make sure that the web host your choose offers WordPress hosting. The best large commercial webhosts all offer WordPress, and they let you install it yourself, or you can also choose to install it automatically using their own backend account control panel. So you can choose to use the host’s customized installation version, or install a clean, default version yourself. Either way, this page lets you know what to do.

All right, now you’ve got your domain name and web hosting package selected.

Guess what? Now it’s time to setup your website or blog!

In the next step, we will review exactly how to setup a WordPress site. Even though there are an enormous variety of ways to build your website, we choose to use WordPress as our example. This is because it is easy to use, flexible, and incredibly powerful. Also, nearly one-fifth of all websites today are built with WordPress, and that number keeps growing, so it makes a lot of sense to familiarize yourself with one of the most popular ways to build a website. WordPress is a great solution for someone who does not know how to write code by hand, and for people who just want to be able to install a site simply and quickly, and have it ready to do whatever they need, very well.

WordPress is a marketer’s dream, increasing scalability and reducing cost and time to market, with just a few clicks. And there are so many ways to customize WordPress sites, that your creative juices won’t be very limited. This means that in most cases, you don’t have to worry about whether or not your desired outcome is possible, and you can remain focused on delivering your amazing content, products and services to your best business asset: The people who are your audience and your customers.

Step 3: Installing WordPress

Once your web hosting account is setup, you just log in to your account and go to your account’s Control Panel.

From inside of your control panel, you will typically see a graphical user interface, or GUI, where you can choose various Applications or Apps to install. One of those apps is WordPress. Most web hosts have a very easy installation wizard to install WordPress onto your hosting space. In the case of GoDaddy, it’s literally a few clicks, a few details it asks you to fill in, which you should write down in a safe file, and then your site is installed and ready to customize and fill up with your content.

If you’re on GoDaddy, for example, they add a little plugin that helps set up key details about the site. It’s helpful the first time you setup a site, but after that, you can pretty much remove it, unless you think it has some greater value. I like keeping my sites lighter, so I remove it. Besides, it does not do anything that you can not do without it. It just takes you on a kind of tour of important elements of your WordPress site’s Admin area, and familiarizes you with what is vital to customize, and what you can leave as-is for the time being.

If you’re on JustHost, you first need to login to your JustHost account (This you do with the domain and password you just created). After you access the administrator tools, click on websites.

Now do these next steps to complete installing WordPress:

1) Click on the Install WordPress option.

2) At the next step, leave Installation Preferences with the default settings, and also leave Advanced Options with the default settings.

3) Unselect the recommended plugins and themes box — We’ll cover those things afterward, when you actually should do them.

4) Click ‘Complete’ which you will see at the bottom of the page.

Congratulations! You have now installed your basic WordPress website.

And remember to be sure to write down and safely store your password and login.

All right. Nicely done. If you followed the instructions on this page step by step, you should have spend not more than 30 minutes registering your domain name, setting up your web hosting account, and installing WordPress.

Now it’s time to start contemplating the fun stuff, like customizing your website to make it as serious, sexy or silly as you like, and filling it with the best, hottest and richest content that you can put out there.

While you’re letting your imagination run wild, here are some fun, titilating banned GoDaddy TV commercials for you to enjoy.

In the next lesson, we will cover how to add critical Plugins, and how to make sure your new website is optimized for search platforms and different devices, right from the start.

And as always, if you read something you like here and want to help in our effort to test Google’s quality content claims, then I urge you to please share the link to this page on your social networks or any place where others might benefit from it.

Previous Lesson: Web Marketing Lesson 3: SEO Dos and Don’ts.
Next Lesson: Web Marketing Lesson 5: Adding and setting up important Plugins. The super easy walkthrough to secure, enhance and optimize your customers’ user experience on your website, served best for any device, from the get-go.

Build A Brand To Remember

Brands come in all shapes and sizes. Successful brands come in a much more limited set, restricted by guidelines, business values, and investor concerns, among other things.

I have spent more than 20 years working on branding issues. It has been part of my work in creating and developing brands and their strategies for businesses around the world. One primary lesson I learned about branding is, it’s important to always be open to learning from experts who have plenty of experience in branding, even if you have a pure, raw, natural talent for it.

And while that is obviously true for just about any subject, it is even more so in branding, because branding involves making a connection between people, … not just yourself … and the ideas and messages communicated by the brand. And here’s why this lesson is so incredibly important: If you don’t make the emotional or mental connection with whoever sees the brand, then you probably won’t form any further relationship with that person, so you’ve already lost them before you ever had a chance to get to know them.

Branding pre-requisites

Understanding what makes brands succeed or fail is a preliminary requirement before you go about trying to grapple the process on your own. Normally, it involves more than one person to get the job done right.

Without being too metaphorical, a brand is a lot like a tattoo. It’s kind of permanent, if it’s done well, but even the best made brand will experience subtle changes over time. If not maintained properly, it will eventuall fade and become less appealing. If maintained well, it will become more beautiful over time, and can even be refreshed from time to time by great creative visionaries and artists.

Given this idea, it is important to spend some time considering the Pros and Cons of various color palettes and combinations. Test with your instincts, your feelings, your thoughts, and yes, with blind test groups where possible. If you’re a one-person show, then test with a professional graphic artist or brand designer. If you can’t afford to do that, then test with a trusted friend, or better yet, multiple friends, if you can’t afford to do a proper multi-panel test. You’ll be surprised how others perceive the greatness you have conceived.

Don’t just sit there. Decide.

Eventually, you will need to pick a set of colors that you think will work best. Go ahead. Do it. Don’t be afraid. These colors can be changed .. even if only slowly .. later on.

As an example, here are the main colors I decided to go with for this site, when I got to this point in creating this lesson. They’re nice and richly saturated. They go together, complimenting each other with a strong enough contrast without blinding the eyes.

And here is the custom cartoon image I created and decided to use as my branded avatar for this website, once I arrived to this point in creating this lesson.

Then, I put down on paper my thoughts about what I communicate through the SEO and Marketing tutorials on this website. And I boiled it down, pretty quickly, to just three words. Marketing. Savvy. Shared.

Mixing those ideas with the colors and cartoon image of myself and my name, I came up with this branded header.

Total time: 20 minutes, including 15 minutes for the graphics and 5 minutes to write about it here.

Note: If you can’t design well or make cool graphics quickly, hire a pro. It’s worth it. Go to odesk or fiverr or freelancer sites anywhere online and you can get graphics done … affordably.

Useful Brand Builder Resource:

Need a cool graphic done on time and under budget?
Get what you need right now, at [button icon=heart]Freelancer[/button]

That site has been around many years, and has a network of over 10 Million users. I have used their services often, and I definitely recommend them.

By the way, here’s a great video about branding from a TEDx event, by a guy named Sasha, not to be confused with me, Yasha.

And here’s another clip, which you actually have to read, that explains pretty well (in 2011 terms) a big picture summary of the history of branding and how it has changed over the centuries.

And of course, if you enjoyed what you read in this article and want to help me in my effort to put Google to the test, then please share the link to this page on your social media profile or wherever else it could benefit others.

OK, that’s it for now. Good luck making your own kickass brand that’s memorable, and totally awesome, and stay tuned for the next lesson in building a top website.

Previous Lesson: 2014 Challenge 1 : Build a Top Website

Next Lesson: Web Marketing Lesson 2.6 : SEO Overview : A brief history of search engine optimization

Yasha Harari

SEO Help, Marketing Savvy and Arts

Tag Archives: build a website

Web Marketing Lesson 4: Building A Site After Domain Name Registration