For those that have been lingering on the idea to start a website or not, what are you waiting for?
Are you waiting for the perfect idea?
Maybe you are waiting for inspiration or just some free time to get started.
In my experience, the best time to start is now! You see, there is always more to learn about websites and always additional ways to update a site or improve it. That means, you will never have enough “free time” to build the perfect site.
Plus your tastes will change and one day you might like something that you did not before and vice versa. What is important is that you do not stop growing or learning! Especially in your journey to create websites and improve your knowledge of them.
Because of all that, I say do not wait! Lets get started today.
Building Your First Website
For those that really have no clue what to build I have a solution for you. Build a blog!
A blog is the perfect site to get you started. You know why? Because you can absolutely not mess up a blog. In addition, you can write about whatever you want. You can play around with different themes, change up the styling, or even just leave it under construction while you learn.
The most important thing is to just start somewhere.
The point of starting is to get your feet wet. Get some experience under your belt to gain confidence. No one knows everything when they start, and neither will you. Just get started.
Therefore, if I was getting started blogging again – here is where I would start. I would purchase my first domain.
Buying a Domain
You have to start somewhere, and that place to start is by purchasing a domain name. Since you are new, buy a cheap one that has a unique name.
It can represent anything you want to write about or sell on your site, or it can be completely fictional! It is entirely up to you. For new website builders, I would say purchase one that is unique to build an identity for yourself.
Where to Buy Domains
Once you have your name in your head, go over to Godaddy.com. This is the best domain purchasing service currently. I use it for all of my domain purchasing needs, and the customer service is honestly great! I can not tell you how many times I needed help with something or had an issue and they solved it over the phone at any hour and extremely quickly.
It is the best service for domains by far. In addition, you can search millions of domain names if you would like and price them out to see what fits.
Once you find your domain name on their search tool, go ahead and purchase that thing and secure your first domain name!
Usually, you will purchase a two year registration for the domain, but you really do not need any of the privacy features or extra things they try to sell you. Just buy your domain for the two years recommended and checkout!
Using Your Domain
Once you have checked out – congrats! You have just taken the first step to building your first website!
Exciting I know, but lets not get ahead of ourselves. A little known fact is that even if you purchase your domain, there could be a delay before you can use it. In order to check on that, we are going to need to head into your Godaddy account and check on that new domain!
To do this, login to your GoDaddy account. Then navigate through their menus to “manage domains”.
Once you are there, you should be able to view the domains you own on that account. Given that this is your first domain you have purchased, you should see that single domain listed there. If it is not, Don’t worry!
Your domain could be moving. This has happened to me before, and I do not know EXACTLY how it works. Sometimes there is a process to putting the domain into your account and it could take a few days. I would say about 99% of the time this is not the case, but if it happens to you, just shoot them an email and request to know when the domain will be moved to your account.
Manage Domains
Back to the dashboard – If you see your domain, you should see a few things listed. The dashboard should show your:
- Domain name
- Status
- Expiration date
- Auto – Renew selection
What matters here is your status and auto – renew selection. You want your status of your domain to say “Active”. This means you can use the domain and host a website on it. If it says anything other than active, you might need to reach out to Godaddy for an explanation or timeline until it can become active.
Afterward, it is very important to make sure your domain’s “Auto – Renew” selection is turned on. What this does is prevents your domain from expiring and allowing other people to purchase it from you. You really never want this to happen especially if you are building a brand or website on top of that domain! It would suck to put in 2 years of work on a website and build up the domain authority on that domain, only to have someone come and buy it away from you!
Protect your purchase and enable the Auto – renew.
Next Steps to Build Your Website
With all that under the rug, you can now look toward the next steps to building your website. This will be covered in the next post!
In the next post, we will extensively dive into hosting on your domain! This is basically the service you need in order to make your website live. What you just purchased is the domain or address people will use to find your website. Now, you are going to need to purchase a service to “host” your website to the internet. We will get there, but remember there are many steps to building your first website!
Take them one at a time and try not to overload yourself with too much at once. Building websites takes weeks of work. Just do a little bit everyday!
Thanks for reading on how to get started building your website. Now that you have your domain name, you are one step closer to having the website of your dreams to tell all of your friends about!
