How to Start a Review Website

Share your thoughts for others to see. Your expertise on movie analysis could save people from a boring night at the movies or your rave review could be just what a small, local restaurant needs to get the attention it deserves. Whether the website is for your reviews alone, or for anyone to comment, a review website can help inform people about the topics being reviewed. With some initial planning, starting a review site takes only a little time.

Things You'll Need

• Plain text editor
• Web host

Instructions

Planning the website

1. Decide on a topic to review. Choose a topic that you are interested in or have expertise in to help with writing reviews.

2. Decide how the website will be hosted. A host is the location that your website will be stored. There are free hosting options offered by some websites with a variety of available options. For a more permanent option, consider purchasing a domain name and web hosting for a monthly fee.

3. Decide how you will build the website. If you have web development experience and wish to create the website by hand, search for helpful tutorials in HTML coding and CSS styling to aid you in development. If you are new to creating web content, consider using a website with tutorials for creating free websites.

4. Plan the features your website will provide. Some features a review website may have could include forums for users to discuss reviews or, for a movie review example, discuss other movies and post requests for other reviews. A review site could have video clips and an image gallery related to the review topic.

Getting started

1. Sign up for an account if you are using a hosting site for building your website. Follow the website's instructions for setting up pages, designs, templates and other information pertinent to getting started.

2. Gather any other extras you will be using on the website, such as forum software if you are providing a forum. Check that the website provides support for allowing you to add forum features if that is something you are looking to add.

3. Create the website's pages if you are creating the website by hand. Organize the web pages, video, images, and everything else in folders to keep organized throughout the project.

4. Download and install any additional software used in the creation or running of the website. Follow any included instructions for installing forum software or gallery scripts to your website's host space.

References

• Google Sites
• LimeDomains

Resources

• Web Tutorials by W3Schools
• Go Daddy Domains and Hosting
• PHPBB free forum software