How to make a Website -Absolute Beginner

Whether you are a kid who loves computers or a college student who needs to make a website as a project, it may be a little confusing at the beginning about how and where to begin with. In this article I will guide you through the process of making a simple website step by step.



So let’s begin.


A website making consists of following steps:

   1. Planning & designing of website.
   2. Making the website.
   3. Making your website available to public on Internet.

1.   Planning & designing of website

At the very first step, you have to decide the Topic for the website. i.e., do you want a website to showcase all your art-work? or articles about how to save the environment? or some hobby site?
Or if you just want to experiment and learn how to make a website, you can skip this step.

Have the content prepared well before making a website. However it is not necessary, it does give a better idea while designing the website.

Once you have the content ready. You should plan on how your website will look. Is it gonna be Dark and black, or plain white? How the contents would be displayed. For eg. for a website displaying top 10 photos of cutest pets, you could either show all the images on the single page, or you could display it on 10 different pages which can be viewed by clicking next button at the bottom of each image.

2.   Making the actual website

   To make a website you have two options-

   A)   Using a drag-and-drop website builder,
   B)   Write the code to make a website.


A)   Using a drag-and-drop website builder

If you want to make a website without learning/doing any bit of coding, there are many websites like Wix and Webs which provide a drag and drop website builder to make a professional looking website in no time without any bit of coding knowledge. And in addition to that they also make it available on internet for public. They also provide a web address like myname.webs.com or myname.wix.com, which anyone can use to access your website. All this for completely FREE.

For step by step guide on how to use drag-and-drop website builder to make your website, Go to How to make a drag-and-drop website.
To see the list of websites where you can make a drag-and-drop website, Go to List of websites where you can make a drag-and-drop website.



B)   Write the code to make a website

If you want to make a website by coding it on your own, you need to learn atleast these two things first-

• HTML, and
  
• CSS.
  

HTML and CSS are sufficient to display fixed information like in books. However if you want your website to be a smart website e.g., which can take some number as input from user and show its sum, periodically updates information like cricket/football live scores, you would also need to learn JavaScript (not to be confused with Java). But that’s a distant thing. First learn HTML and CSS, then go for JavaScript.

For step by step guide on how to code your own website, Go to HTML and CSS tutorial.

3.   Making your website available to public on Internet.

If you are using a drag-and-drop website like Wix and Webs, then this step is not required. Your website automatically gets available at username.wix.com or username.webs.com.
But if you are coding your website on your own, then you need to upload your (.html) files to a web host.

A web host is a company which owns a lot of web servers running 24X7 with very high speed and reliable internet connection. And you can upload your website there and then your website can be accessed from anywhere in the world with high reliability for a small fee (generally at less than $5 or ₹300 per month).

There are many free web hosts also available. But they are often very unreliable and provide poor support and service.

To see the list of web hosts which provide web hosting for free, Go to List of free web hosts.

To see the list of best web hosts, Go to List of best web hosts.

You can however also use your own pc or laptop as a web-server but it requires some technical skills and very reliable internet connection. I highly recommend using a web host to serve your website with reliability and without any interruption. To learn how to make your PC or laptop a web server, Go to How to use or PC or laptop as web-server.

To learn how to upload your website to a web host, Go to How to upload a website to a web host.