I guess the internet can be a magical place for new users who don’t know what’s what, but a confusing place too. If you want to create a web site you have to search around and find out how to do it yourself, there isn’t much explaining going on.

So, i’ve create this guide. It’s designed to help people get on with their own website, using companies that I use and find great to be a customer of. It’s also a guide to direct people who ask me how to make a website to, as i’m planning to explain everything from domains to a simple guide of setting up something like Drupal with cPanel, something that is offered as standard with my current host A Small Orange.

Domains - Your Website’s Address

The domain is the address that you type into your browser to get to specific pages on the internet, for example, www.google.com, or even www.alanedwardes.com. Generally you want something that is related to the contents of your site. So, if your name is Joseph Hungary, you might want to buy www.joesphhungary.com.

To buy a domain, you’ll need a domain registrar. Domain registrars allow you to buy your own domain, and manage it so that you can point it at your pages on t’internet. My registrar is 1&1 Internet, who I have bought all of my domains from, as I find them really easy and quick to use.

The cost of a domain all depends on the TLD, or top level domain. The top level domain is the .com part of alanedwardes.com, or .fr part of google.fr, normally it will be the abbreviated version of a country name, so FR is france and UK is united kingdom. If you want a .co.uk domain, it will generally cost you about £7 for two years depending on the registrar you choose. If you buy a .com or .net domain, it will probably cost around £11 for one year. Usually companies show the domain price without VAT, so you will have to be careful when ordering to observe the added tax on the domain.

Hosting - Making Your Site Work

Every single website on the internet runs on a server. A server is a computer that is on all of the time, and it usually doesn’t have peripherals such as a monitor or keyboard because it is managed from another computer. Servers are very expensive to run and buy yourself, that’s why many people use a website hosting company to host their website, because it is often cheaper and much more reliable than using their own server.

Hosts come in many shapes and sizes, and are rarely free. There are many different types of host, but the most popular choice for website owners is a shared hosting plan. This means that other websites like yours are hosted on the same server, exactly like this website. It normally doesn’t make any difference to the way your website is run, and speed wise there isn’t much of a difference. I won’t go into other plans because the chances are if you’re reading this you won’t really need to know about them, as they offer much more than is needed for a simple website.

Hosting can be extremely cheap, and it seems to be getting cheaper. You can get great service from hosting companies for very little money at all, a great example of this is A Small Orange Software. Their prices for hosting packages are ridiculously cheap, and are highly affordable for personal users. A price list is here: http://www.asmallorange.com/services/hosting/. The Tiny and Small packages are great for small websites, and offer you pretty much enough flexibility to do what you want on your website.

Site Software - Creating Your Site

If you want a blog, it’s really easy. You can just use WordPress.com. But, the chances are you want to use something more powerful, and with the A Small Orange hosting accounts it’s really easy to install and use software that can power your website. So, if you’ve signed up to A Small Orange you will have been given the address you can access your cPanel installation from. I’ve made a quick demo video showing how to setup Drupal easily, which is an example of the awesome software you have at your fingertips with cPanel.

That’s pretty much it — how to get a working domain and website up on teh internetz.