1. Buy a domain name and hosting
To have your own website with your own domain name (i.e. yourname.com), you need to buy the domain name and then also host your website. To do this, the easiest way is to purchase the domain name and the hosting together.
There are a number of cheap providers that you can get yourself a domain name and a website for a budget price.
For this site I have used www.justhost.com.au. Choosing a domain name was easy and hosting is also very cheap. Perfect for your first website. They also provide a number of tools that make building your website very easy.
2. Install WordPress
A lot of hosting providers offer site building tools that help you build your site very easily. WordPress is my tool of choice due to the large user base and the features that you are able to incorporate into your site usually with no extra cost.
Once you have access to the Control Panel of your hosting, install WordPress. Again, if you use www.justhost.com.au, you will see a button to a simple installation script for WordPress. Click on this button and follow the instructions to install. Once installation is complete, you will be provided with a login to your website’s WordPress admin site.
3. Customise WordPress
Once WordPress is installed, your website will be displayed using the default WordPress theme. If you are happy with this theme (i.e. the look and feel of the website), then you can skip this step.
There are 1000′s of free WordPress themes that you can use for your website. Once you have logged into the admin site, click on ‘Appearance’ then ‘Themes’. Click on the ‘Install Themes’ tab. You can search and filter themes until you find the theme that suits your needs. To install a theme, click ‘Install Now’. This will copy all the files required by the theme to your website. Click the ‘Activate’ link and this will make the theme the active theme. Once you have installed themes on your website, they are available for you to ‘Activate’ at any time.
There is a lot more customisation that can be done with WordPress and this will depend mostly on how you want to use your website. As you build you website with content, you will make more customisations however finding a theme is a good place to start.
4. Start writing content
Now you need to start getting some content into your website. WordPress allows you to do this as a ‘Page’ or a ‘Post’. If you are building a blogging website, then the majority of content you will create will be posts. If you have more of a static website, then you will use pages. You can also use a combination of both.