How to Start Your Own Website
I just went through the process of setting up this website, and wanted to share the steps I took and tools I used along the way with you. If you’re thinking of making your own site – it’s easier than you think. Just get started!
Inspiration
As some of you may know, I had my own blog on blogger.com for about a year and it was great. It was free and easy to use, and fit my needs perfectly! However, I decided recently that I wanted to do something that I had more control over – add a level of sophistication to my site. And I wanted to own it myself. So here we are!
Overall putting the site together took me a few days (in between working and kids and such) and then it took me another week to port over my blog contents properly. I’ve detailed my step by step instructions below.
If you’re even THINKING of starting up a site of any kind, I highly recommend just doing it! Just go do it now! If you don’t want to make an investment up front then use a free site like blogger.com to get started and see how that goes.
Step by Step Instructions
Here are the steps I took:
1. Sign up for a Web Hosting account
I used BlueHost.com, which I had heard from several other bloggers via podcasts and social media posts that they preferred, and the price was really good! I’m using the basic hosting plan, which included my domain name, hosting services and 5 email addresses. More than enough for my needs for now! Click below to find out more.
2. Install WordPress
Once the domain was registered, I installed WordPress through BlueHost and then was ready to set up my website! WordPress lets you easily set up your website without knowing any HTML coding at all. I do know some HTML but this is much easier to manage!
3. Pick a Template
This one took me a little bit of time. I had to picture what I wanted my site to look like and then browse through the templates available on the MOJO Marketplace (through BlueHost). I ended up paying for a theme (mine is called Carbis) because I found them much more in line with my overall idea/image than the free templates. But you can make your site very personal regardless of whether or not you pay for a theme!
Once you get the template it’s really easy to install, and some free ones are pre-installed in WordPress so it’s simple to get started. It’s best to do this before you start adding content.
4. Set up the Style of the Site
In WordPress, I went to the Appearance section and my template had all sorts of decisions and customizations available, so I took an hour or two and picked fonts, colours, decided on which features to enable/disable (such as the social media links at the top of the page and my content boxes for my blog categories on the home page).
5. Source Images and Logo for the Site
I used IStock to find and buy some images for my site to get it going more quickly. Now, if you’re a great photographer you can skip this step, but I don’t have the skills or patience to create my own images! Not all sites need images, but it matches the idea I was going for. So I sourced the photos and tried them out with the watermarking on my site. I didn’t buy them until I was SURE of how I wanted it all to look in case I changed my mind!
For a logo, I suggest getting something made or making it yourself. If you go through a graphic designer it will probably cost you $200-$300 for a logo and banners and such (I priced this out but I decided to hold off on that for now) which would be a great investment for your brand. I took a different route – I created my logo in MS Paint and then converted it into an svg file online. It took a lot of fiddling to make it into a Vector (so it’s crisp and resizes nicely) but I’m happy with that. If the site grows into something bigger, I will likely get a logo done professionally. I’d highly recommend it if you don’t have a clear idea of what you want it to look like!
6. Add Content
For me, I had a year’s worth of blog posts to move over from my old blog. I was able to export the blog contents to an xml file and then load that in and VOILA all my posts appears on here! It was really simple and included all the comments and timestamps from the old site. However then I needed to re-add all the images and ensure the posts were formatted how I wanted, which took a while to finalize.
7. Sign up for Email Marketing
If you want to have an email list like I have on my sidebar, it’s easiest to sign up for an Email Marketing tool, such as MailChimp or AWebber. I used MailChimp. This allows people to sign up and automatically be added to my email list and then I can generate emails and blast them out if I want to, to let my community know about new blog posts, events or anything else that’s going on! Then I installed the MailChimp plug-in to WordPress to get the widget on my page for people to sign up. It may sound intimidating but it’s really not, just give yourself some time to fiddle with it and use Google if you have any questions!
8. Launch the site!
Once you’ve finalized the content and are happy with the overall look of the site, go ahead and launch it! Make it active and let everyone know through social media that you’ve done it! Don’t wait until it’s full of content or perfect, just go ahead and launch it and start sharing with the world.
I highly recommend you go for it and just make it happen! I’m happy to try to answer questions if you have any… I’m not an expert but I have been through it so hopefully I can help out!