In this modern age, people are on the internet for information. People rely upon the internet to get information about almost anything under the sun. If you’re into the business world, you need to have a website that contains information about your products or services otherwise, it’s almost as if your business does not exist. In this article, we will lay down the tools, cost, cons, pros, to build your website using a website builder.
As a bonus, we will also share with you information on where to buy a domain name, image editing tools to use, image editor tutorials, a guide to fonts, a guide to content writing, and a guide to writing copy for a website to help you with your first website building journey a walk in the park.
The basic tools required to build a website
Website building on the surface may seem complex but it isn’t in actuality. In fact, even if you are not technically inclined person you can build any website however you like, thanks to different tools available on the internet. No matter what type of website you want to build, it’s important to know the tools you’ll need to get started in website building.
- Domain name (e.g. Google.com.au, 1WW.com.au)
- Website builder (e.g. WordPress, Wix, Weebly)
- Web hosting (depending on your website builder)
Domain name
A domain name is simply your website’s name on the internet, such as www.Google.com.au or www.1WW.com.au. Think of a domain name as an address where users on the internet access to open your website. It is purchased and registered in order to get the license to use that name for your website for a year or up to 10 years maximum. By renewing your domain from the same domain name registrar, you can keep the same name for your website as long as you want to.
Your domain name will have an important impact on the potential and success of your website. Put some thoughtful consideration into choosing yours – consider these few tips to help you choose the best domain.
- Use your own name. Simply owning the domain of your name build trust factor. If your name is common or the domain is already taken, consider using a nickname or even a combination of your first name, last name, and middle name.
- KISS it. Keep It Short and Simple or maybe Silly. A simple yet catchy domain name can be remembered effortlessly, easy to type, and should roll off the tip of the tongue rather smoothly.
- Availability on Social Media Sites and Trademarks. At all costs avoid legal issues; stay away from names that already have trademarks. It’s ideal to have the same name across your domain and social networks to build your brand.
- Use the right domain extension. Domain extensions or TLDs are the letters that appear after the dot of your domain name such as .ca, .edu, .org, .net. Consider SEO and targeting a specific geographical area that you’re in for instance, .au for Australia, .co.uk for the United Kingdom, and .ca for Canada.
Website Builder
A website builder is an online website building platform that helps you build a website. Online website builders are intended to be easy and simple to use, empowering anyone to build a website effortlessly using drag-and-drop functionality, no coding knowledge or experience is required. Zero drama.
In website building, it’s best to choose a hosted website like Wix, Weebly, and WordPress as your website builder, these are the worlds’ most popular website builder platform. We will discuss and list the important features of these website builders, cost, pros, and cons in this article, just for you.
WEB HOSTING
Web hosting is an online service that allows you to publish your website on the internet. When you sign up for a hosting service, you essentially rent remarkable space on a server on which you can save all the files and data essential for your website to work properly.
A server is a physical computer that operates without any interruption so that your website is accessible all the time for anyone who wants to see it. Your web host is accountable for maintaining the server up and running, protecting it from malicious attacks, and carrying your content (text, images, files) from the server to your visitors’ browsers.
Choosing Among Wix, Weebly, and WordPress
Creating a website no longer suggests that you require to hire a website coder to build a website. Ease of use comes with restrictions and the type of controls depends on the website builder platform. The most popular website building platforms are Weebly, Wix, and WordPress. The ease of use and boundaries vary among these platforms. As we break down the features, cost, pros, and cons of each platform understand what you want right now for yourself, business, and brand. Also, be conscious of what you might necessitate in six months or a year from now. We will compare all these website builder platforms and we’ll recommend tools and share resource lists to get you started in website building.
Wix
WIX.com is a free, user-friendly, website building platform that offers drag-and-drop functionality. There are over hundreds of designer-made templates to choose from. Your website automatically converts astoundingly on any device because of its mobile optimization feature. You can even draw up a customized SEO to get your website found on Google. They also provide free and secure web hosting, 500 MB storage and 1GB bandwidth, free Wix domain, and 24/7 support in their Help Center.
If you want to get more storage and bandwidth, remove Wix ads, and connect your website to your own domain name, and so much more you can switch to their Premium plans at any time.
Wix Premium Account
Wix Premium Plan can connect your own domain, remove Wix ads from your site, and more. It includes a 1-year free domain voucher. For best value, Yearly or Multi-Year Plans is highly recommended.
Other Features included:
- Free Hosting
- Enjoy fast and reliable web hosting for free.
- Connect a Custom Domain
- Get your business found with a custom domain.
- Increased Storage
- More storage means more space to upload content-rich media.
- Google Analytics
- Track, analyze and optimize your website’s traffic.
- Premium Support
- Receive priority support for all of your questions.
- Customized Favicon
- Brand your website with a unique icon for your browser tab.
Money-Back Guarantee
Wix also offers a free trial for 14 days, 100% money-back guaranteed. You can cancel at any time within 14 days and receive a full refund—no questions asked. This applies to the initial upgrade to a Premium Plan.
PROs of their FREE plan:
- Highest rated paid website builder
- Drag-drop editor
- Stunning designer templates
- Mobile optimization
CONs of their FREE plan:
- Intrusive ads that scroll alongside free websites
- Free URL is: yourusername.wixsite.com/yoursite
- Favicon is not included
- 500 MB bandwidth limit
Summary: Wix is a fully hosted platform, so you will not have to spend on hosting. Its hundreds of great templates and editor tool provides full creative control, it is beginner-friendly and scalable. It also comes with dozens of free and paid apps that you can install on your website. These apps allow you to add new features and functionality to your website. Its free plan, however, has inadequate bandwidth and storage. Nonetheless, you can practice this plan to test drive their drag and drop website builder. It does not include a domain name, so if you choose to run your website, then you may want to upgrade to a premium plan. You also get a complimentary SSL with all Wix plans and get the upgraded plan to remove Wix ads.
Weebly
Weebly is a free website builder that empowers anybody to create websites instantly and with efficiency. It is a hugely successful platform allowing you to build beautiful websites in a remarkably short period of time through its intuitive drag-and-drop platform – even if you do not have any website building background. There are hundreds of Weebly templates that could be integrated with your free or paid Weebly account in a matter of seconds. It has wholly proficient tools that make it easy to build a professional, mobile-optimized site, integrated marketing, and advanced analytics website. Need a hand on website building? Their customer service support can be reached via support ticket, phone, email, and chat avenues.
If you want more advanced options, consider upgrading to Weebly Premium plans to get access to superior features.
Weebly Premium Plan
Weebly Premium automatically eliminates the Weebly ad and includes a free domain name for the first year and they renew at $19.95 annually.
Other Features included:
- SSL
- Email accounts
- Ad Free
- All Templates, Video, Background
- Video and Audio players
- Site Search
- Password Protection
- Membership areas
- Unlimited storage
- Support via phone, email, chat, and forum
PROs of their FREE plan:
- App Center
- Drag-drop editor
- Mobile-optimization
- Free Publishing
CONs of their FREE plan:
- Limited design flexibility
- Displays a Weebly ad in the footer
- Doesn’t come with a proper domain name
- 500 MB space
Summary: Weebly is a substantial choice for an all-inclusive website builder. They are a well-established, reputable, reliable website builder that provides safe, secure, genuine websites. They have excellent pricing, dependable functionality, and great user experience. It does have a 100% free plan until you decide to upgrade. However, the free plan includes a rather limited feature set and non-removable Weebly branding on your website. To gain the most beneficial out of Weebly, we suggest that you begin with a free website to understand the editing interface and conclude for yourself how simple and complex its many features are.
WordPress.com
WordPress is distinct from the other website builder platform because it is free to use, just pay for hosting, and this tends to be a lot less steep than other website builders. You can build powerful, elegant websites without acquiring a lot of coding. It has tons of tools, Jetpack essential features built-in, including site statistics, basic SEO, and social media sharing. Its editor is speedy, instinctive, and includes HTML and Markdown support. Your work is automatically saved every few seconds, so you’ll never blow a word. You get complete access to WordPress codes so you can customize any pre-made themes and designs, and with so many plugins and theme options, you can add any features or functionalities to your website whenever you want. The sky’s the limit!
WordPress Premium Plan
WordPress also has the option of WordPress Premium, which is an upgraded version of a WordPress website with access to advanced themes, features, custom domain names, constant live support and more.
Other Features includes:
- Custom domain name
- WordPress.com and Ad-free
- Email & Live Chat support
- Free domain for One Year
- Jetpack Essentials Features
- Dozens to Unlimited Premium Themes
- Basic to Advanced Design Customization
- 6GB Storage space up to 200 GB
- Remove WordPress.com Ads
PROs of their FREE plan:
- Mobile Responsiveness
- SEO Ready
- RSS Feed Feature
- Social Media Integration
CONs of their FREE plan:
- Cannot upload custom themes
- Ads on all free websites
- Cannot upload plugins
- Minimal maintenance support
WordPress Self Hosted
WordPress Self Hosted includes software files, a selection of templates in the PHP programming communication that can be altered by any user. It has a broad array of customizable templates, plugins for combined functionality, and a visual text editor, and it can be worked directly with its files and stylesheet for explicit customization. This self-host WordPress also has the option of WordPress Premium, which is an upgraded version of a WordPress website with access to advanced themes, features, custom domain names, constant live support and more.
Summary: WordPress makes what you design and you can code it to create almost anything. Whatever a business’s specifications are, it has the packages plus a variety of basic and premium plugins fit for your site. Gratitude to its numerous themes and simple access to its source files. The biggest drawback is being overwhelmed and not knowing what you need to get started. Establishing a website using WordPress can take time depending on the theme and plugins you add. But, once the platform is set up and you grasp your way around, it is honestly uncomplicated. It demands time to familiarize it but the access you have surpasses the time to understand it.
The costs of building a regular website
Building a basic website can cost anywhere between $100 and $500 and it can go as high as $30,000 or more if you prefer custom-design and sufficient features. A small website typically requires a budget for the domain name and web hosting. Using a website builder costs anywhere from $4 – $25 per month, depending on which website builder you use, and which plan you sign up to.
Most of these website builders have a free plan so you can experiment for free before investing. There are no time boundaries to their free plans, so you can keep using the free plan for as long as you want to. In fact, you can practically establish an entire website with a free plan without spending a dime. Website builders will give you various tools you need to build a functional website, including hosting services (so your site can be published online), content creation tools (ability to insert titles, text, graphics, slideshows, etc), and design templates.
Using WordPress implies managing your hosting. Most new website owners don’t apprehend the complexity of handling your hosting, from setup to security. Below are our favorite WordPress plugins and resource lists to help you get started in website creation.
WordPress Plugins
Astra Premium Sites – is a simple plugin that gives Astra users access to a number of beautiful websites that they can import with just a click.
Beaver Builder Plugin (Pro Version) – is a drag and drop WP Page Builder. You can position images and text with precision, and build column based layouts in minutes.
Ultimate Addons for Beaver Builder – transforms your productivity with custom Beaver Builder modules and templates. Ready-to-use Full Demo Websites. Access our growing library of 40+ gorgeous full website demos.
Convert Pro Addon – This addon allows you to integrate Convert Pro with external third-party email marketing service providers and autoresponders that can be used to store and manage leads.
Gravity Forms – is the Easiest, Most Trusted Tool to Create Advanced Forms for Your WordPress-Powered Website.
Read Meter – Reading Time & Progress Bar for WordPress – is a plugin that displays the estimated reading time for blog posts along with a progress bar. It works great to give visitors a quick idea about the time needed to read a post and encourages them to go on till the end.
UpdraftPlus – Backup/Restore – is the World’s leading backup, restore and migration WordPress plugin. Used by over a million WordPress sites, you can backup with confidence.
WP Portfolio – is a WordPress plugin to showcase images, videos, websites and custom posts as Portfolio.
WP Rocket – is a speed optimization plugin for WordPress helping you implement a variety of speed-boosting features to your WordPress site.
Where to Buy Domain Name?
What Image Editor Tools to Use?
Image Editor Tutorials
In this Youtube tutorial, you’ll learn how to manipulate photos and images inside of GIMP (the best free Photoshop alternative). We cover many common tools that you will use often in the app.
In this GIMP 2.10 tutorial, I provide an in-depth and up-to-date look at the latest version of GIMP as an introduction to the program for beginners. I cover how to download and open GIMP, how to edit your preferences for the best performance on your computer and the best settings for new compositions, and a comprehensive overview of the tools found in GIMP. This is the perfect starting point for new-comers who have just started using this amazing, free photo-editing and graphic design software.
Though this tutorial is for beginners, I think experienced users of GIMP will also find the tutorial helpful as this is our most comprehensive general GIMP overview. This is the perfect beginner’s starter kit!
Unleash your creativity! In this video, you’ll learn the basic steps behind creating a design in Canva without a template, like adding photos and text. Try it yourself at canva.com.
How To Use Canva – a tutorial! Create beautiful graphic designs easily, and for FREE! Canva.com is a FREE program you can use to make images quickly and easily. Use the templates they offer or choose custom dimensions to create anything and everything you need! I walk you through the basics to show you how easy it is to use Canva. Comment below if you have any questions or a request for future tip videos!
Tutorial for Canva 2.0. Canva is easy to use an online program that allows you to use templates and gives you the dom to create. In this video, I walk you through the basics of creating an image and how to use the new functionalities of Canva 2.0.
GUIDE TO FONTS (WHAT FONTS GO WELL TOGETHER)
- Typewolf – helps designers choose the perfect font combination for their next design project—features web fonts in the wild, font recommendations, and learning.
- Fontpair – helps designers pair Google Fonts together. Beautiful Google Font combinations and pairs.
- Typ.io – gives a quick peek at the web fonts used on any page. Easily peek under the hood of any site you’re on to see what web fonts they’re using.
- Fontjoy – helps designers choose the best font combinations. Mix and match different fonts for the perfect pairing.
- Canva – has taken the pain out of font pairing by putting together great font combos for your designs. Find the best matches on your favorite typeface.
GUIDE TO CONTENT WRITING
List of Pages NeedED for A Typical Website
- Homepage – A home page is the most significant landing page for both new and returning visitors. Essentially, this single page creates an overall impression of your company in a matter of seconds. Make an effort to capture the attention of the visitor, learn The 3 Key Purposes for the Home Page of your Small Business Website today.
- About page – An About page is a special web page on a site where your readers/visitors learn more about you and what you do. So, the question is How to Create the Perfect About Page? Writing this page isn’t the easiest thing to master, but it’s possible once you understand the essential elements that must be included.
- Products or Services page – Your services page is one of the most critical pages on your website whose purpose is to not only reveal what you offer but how your company stands out from the rest. Find out The 11 Best B2B Website Design Service Examples in 2019 to Inspire You.
- Blog page – A blog (shortening of “weblog”) is an online journal or informational website displaying information in the reverse chronological order, with the latest posts appearing first. Are you excited to uncover the truth about the blog, blog structure, blogging, and blogger? It is a platform where a writer or even a group of writers share their views on an individual subject.
- Contact page – A contact page when done right allows you to capture interested prospects directly from your portfolio, while also streamlining your process for vetting and prioritizing those prospects. Why Your Contact Page is the Most Important Part of Your Portfolio Website? Understand the importance and start optimizing your contact page today.
Guide on How to Write Copy for a Website
Web copy has the power to make or break your online presence. For step by step guide on how to write web copy, click HERE.
Writing copy for a website is different. Interested in what makes a good website copy? Learn How to write website copy that sells? In addition to good writing, it needs several other elements to come together and support the copy to make it engaging, compelling and motivate readers to take the desired action.
People don’t read website copy on a screen the same way they read a book or magazine. Your readers’ eyes skip about a web page like a child skipping on hot sand, according to eye-tracking data. At most, they’ll read about a quarter of the words on the page. Worse, they’ll only spend between ten and 20 seconds on your website. They’re one click away from leaving and going elsewhere. Better website copy starts HERE. Start writing compelling website copy today.
Need a hand in building your website?
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Conclusion:
We trust y’all appreciated the aforementioned guide to building a website. Recognize that nothing you make in website building is unchanging. Countless websites develop as period passes by. The solution is to perform the best that you can at the outset and to continuously look for possibilities to enhance it because there is continually infinite stuff to discover to improve your website building skills.
