A website is like your work area without which you couldn’t do your work as good as you would have wanted to.

Before building a website you need to decide what platform to use because it is on this platform that you will build your work area (website).

There are many website building platforms but the most popular and easy to use for beginners and experts alike is WordPress.

 

Why build your website with WordPress?

 

It is very easy to use. Most sites can be built in less than a minute.

There are so many themes to choose from that you will never run out of uniqueness.

Many themes are free but others are premium and available on purchase

There are so many plugins that will help make managing your site a breeze

Most themes are mobile friendly so you do not have to spend extra time tweaking it.

 

WordPress is one of the most secured open source content management system there is today. 

You can get all of the above and more by using Wealth affiliates for a price of $0. Wealthy affiliates takes care of downloading and installing WordPress for you.

 

 

Before we proceed to building a website, you need to purchase a domain name.

It is very easy with wealthy affiliates but first you need to register into wealthy affiliate. There are two levels of membership, a starter membership which is free and a premium membership that cost $49 a month.

Below is a chart showing the benefits of the starter membership vs the premium membership.

For the starter membership ($0 price tag), you can build 2 websites. Once you have registered, you can follow the lessons provided to starter members for a detailed guide on how to set up your business.

 

Purchasing a domain name

 

A domain name is a name like your websitename.com that serve to identify your site.  When you own a domain name, your site looks more professional and you have more control over your site than when you have a free domain that say something like mysitename.freedomain.com.

Many domain names end with .com, .org, .net, .gov, .edu, .org and .int. It is advisable to go with the domain names that end with .com, .net and .org because people trust these more and will probably click on it more.

 

More so, it is advisable for your domain name to match with the name of your site; for example, if your site’s name is gigi exotic couture then your domain name should be gigiexoticcouture.com or as close to it as possible.

When choosing a domain name, choose a name that is catchy, brand-able and easy to remember.

 

There are many domain name registrars accredited by Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) to sell domain names. The most popular and cheapest among these registrars are Go Daddy, Name cheap and lately wealthy affiliate has joined the ranks.

The difference however between wealthy affiliates and the others is that wealthy affiliate does not only register your site for you, they host it and make sure it is secured 24/7. They also offer you tools like site health that tells you how well or badly your site is doing. 

 

It may be difficult to find a domain name that is related to your business because there are millions of registered domain names in existence.  Try your best to pick a name that relate to your product by trying different combination of words.

For example, if your site is about hiking gears, then you could try top hiking gear for a name. Below is an image of how the domain registration page at wealthy affiliates woks.

You put in a name and it gives you a variety to chose from.

 

Once you have found a satisfactory name, you put it in your cart and check out.

Now that you have a domain name, lets move forward to building your site.

 

Build your website

 

Building your site with wealthy affiliates is easy. First you go to Site Rubix  and click on the site builder link.

Then you fill out the page in the image below, click on the button I’m ready, build my site and in just seconds your site is built.

As you can see on the image, there are two kinds of website, one built using a free domain name and another built using a domain name you have bought.

You can decide to go with a free website for the time being and as you gain confidence in what you are doing, you can buy a domain and transfer you free site to the new name you own.

Congratulations! You’ve come so far. Now that you have a site, you need to set it up for traffic.

 

Customize a WordPress site

 

The appearance of your site says a lot to visitors. A professional and unique looking site with a good balance of colors and great content will draw more people.

Customizing a site can be lots of fun. Now you get to play with all the options provided by WordPress to make your site unique.

You do not have to write any code, all you do is click click click and tada! a beautiful site comes to life.

 

You can change your theme till you find one that you love. Once you find a suitable theme you can change color schemes till you find a suitable color for your background and header.

On the WordPress platform you can do all of this under appearance as shown by the page below;

 

You can also use plugins to protect your site and make sharing content easy. There is an endless combination of themes, color schemes and placement of widgets.

We will get to the details of this on another post. Congratulations on your new site !

Cheers Denise.

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