Things You'll Need:
- Domain name
- Web host
- What You See Is What You Get (WYSIWYG) Editor
- FTP program
- HTML knowledge
- Website template
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Step 1
Purchase a relevant domain name. For instance, if running a guitar website, purchase a domain like allthingsguitar.com.
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Step 2
Purchase web hosting. This must be linked up with the domain name so that when a person types in your URL for your website, he will be taken to the correct place. Again, there are many options, so be sure to do a bit of research.
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Step 3
Direct the domain name to the web hosting by use of DNS. Your web host and website registrar will tell you how to do this, and may even do it for free.
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Step 4
Download and install a free WYSIWYG editor. This is the tool you'll be using to create the web site. There's a lot of these available, so choose the one that is applicable to your computer (you'll want to grab a simple one if you're not the most knowledgeable PC user).
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Step 5
Download and install a free FTP program such as SmartFTP or FileZilla. There's actually a lot of different FTP programs that are free, so you have a lot of options here besides these two programs.
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Step 6
Look at a free web site template site and download a template that has a design that will fit your web site. Check the Resources box below for some suggestions of free template sites.
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Step 7
Open up the template's index.html (or index.php) file in your WYSIWYG editor and begin editing it. You can change the color of the template, the text and even the logo, in order to make it fit with what you've got in mind for your site. Depending on how you want the site to look, this may take a couple hours.
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Step 8
Open up your FTP program and log onto your web host server using the login information provided by the web host. Once successfully connected, you should see a folder titled public_html. Double click to move to your website.
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Step 9
Drag and drop all the template files including index.html from your computer to the server using the FTP program. Once it is done, you should see the same files on both the left side and the right side of the screen.
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Step 10
Type in your website's address and wait for the site to load. If the site appears as it did when you edited it in the WYSIWYG editor, then you've just built an FTP website at home. If not, just go through the steps again and make sure every single file is uploaded.
