How to Build a Personal Website for Cheap

Building a personalized website on a budget allows you to share the events in your life with friends and family.

Building a personal website will help you communicate major life events with family and loved ones. A personal site can be built inexpensively using a personalized URL, purchasing monthly hosting and installing a blogging platform onto your hosted server. Combining these elements provides the greatest latitude when building your site and will give you dynamic options for growth throughout the duration of your site's life on the Internet.

Things You'll Need

• Personalized URL registered
• Monthly web hosting service account

Instructions

1. Determine the goals of your website and make a list of the intended outcomes of your website. The list will serve as a guideline during your design processes. Will your site be used for communicating with family and friends while traveling or will your site announce the birth of your newest member in your family?

2. Purchase your unique URL address and have the title reflect your site's mission. Registration fees for your URL are between $5 and $10 per year and will need to be renewed for the duration of your site's lifespan on the Internet.

3. Select a hosting service that offers affordable monthly fees or an annual rate to host your site. A hosting service is necessary to place your URL on a remote server where your web site files will be accessed from when someone visits your site. The average monthly hosting fees are between $5 and $10 per month and should include multiple email addresses, ample server space and adequate bandwidth for your site. Bandwidth allows a volume of users to access your site at once and if you anticipate that your personal site may evolve into something larger, be sure your hosting company has add-on features to allow your site to add bandwidth if necessary. Bandwidth will be relevant if you plan to add videos to your site.

4. Choose a blogging platform that offers ample theme selections that reflect your site's missions and has a large community of users, preferably from an open-source community. Open-source indicates that the programming languages used to build the themes of the blogging platform and the functionality of the site are open to the public to be customized and manipulated. A large community of programmers with access to the codes indicates that many users have advice on how to use the blogging platform and are open to helping out fellow users. Wordpress is known for its open-source background and accessibility and TypePad and Blogger both have various elements of their blogs which are open source. All three platforms have large user communities and forums for building your site and troubleshooting.

5. Install a blogging platform onto your server using a one-touch install through your administration panel of your hosting account. If your hosting service does not offer one-touch installs, access its user forums for specific instructions on installing your specific platform, as each one operates in a slightly different manner.

6. Access the administration panel on your blogging platform and log in to begin building your site. Go to the general settings section and begin entering your main information, user names, contact information and adjust the time and date settings.

7. Choose the theme section in your blogging administration panel and begin searching for the appropriate theme to reflect your site's missions and goals from the list created in step one. Your theme, also referred to as a "skin," should be a reflection of your personality and the purpose of building your site. If you do not find a theme to fit your goals, visit an online forum for your platform and search for free themes to download. Once you have discovered the appropriate theme, activate the theme and test the site to see that your selection reflects your vision.

8. Begin uploading your content into the blog theme using the "New Post" options and upload your images or videos to the media library. These options will vary with your chosen platform but each will operate in a similar manner. Be sure to research the architectural structures of your platform, mainly the Categories and Pages sections, as most sites place content in specific locations using category identification numbers and place pages in specific locations in the navigational structures. The navigation is the main element a user will use to click through your site, so understanding how this function operates is essential to building a functional site.

9. Test your site on multiple browsers and be sure that all the content renders properly on the major browsers. Ask a handful of friends to review your site and make any necessary adjustments according to their feedback.

Tips & Warnings

• If the monthly hosting costs are outside of your budget, use the free user accounts with the blogging platform of your choice to build your site. This method is limited in customization, theme and bandwidth options and will contain the blogging platform's name in your URL.

References

• Entrepreneur Magazine