Doofus guide to creating your own website
At the beginning of this year, I didn't blog, I didn't tweet, I didn't have a Facebook account (still don't) and certainly didn't have a website.
I was probably as close to a technological doofus as you could find.
 |
| Neither of these animals are keen social media users. |
As a freelance journalist I've certainly known that I should do at least some of those things, and the plan was always to start a website "when I had time". But the time of a freelancer, well a driven one anyway, is rarely "free", as there is always something to do.
So, when a quiet period of work did eventuate over summer, I decided to do a one-day social media course, run by the patient, "simple language" instructor Stephen Lewis, who runs an informative social media website called the Taleist Centre and an excellent blog. He has a whole heap of online courses too, and I've since done one of them as well, about self-publishing.
Stephen wasn't even fazed when I said that I loathed all social media.
He got me tweeting, and got me thinking about making my website and starting a blog. I guess I'm just pointing out that I have NO EXPERTISE in this area, and this blog is purely for first-timers who may want to start their own website.
Basically there are three simple steps.
1. Buy a domain name (that's the website address)
It is not necessary to do this first, but it might be good just to see if the domain name you want is actually available. In Australia, if you want a .com.au domain name (not all providers sell .au addresses) I suggest either Crazy Domains or Go Daddy. They often have specials.
To purchase the domain name www.kensbigbackyard.com.au cost me $50 for two years, by the time I paid for private registration and directory listing. Neither of these is essential, but when I read the blurbs they seemed to be good things to get.
I later also got www.kensbigbackyard.com (i.e, without the .au) for free (see below).
2. Work out who will host your site
Your new website has to "live" on a computer server somewhere, and unless you have built one yourself (unlikely if you are reading this blog), you will need to pay someone to host it. Companies that sell you domain names are also keen to host your site.
I found it best though to choose a host based on who had the best software to design my website (see point 3.)
3. Design your site
This is not as frightening as it sounds.
In my search for website software that I was happy to use, I ended up designing three different websites on three different platforms over three different days. I spent about half a day on each. First I tried Crazy Domains software. I found it difficult, and not at all intuitive. It took me over half an hour just to work out how to get an image on the page.
Next I tried Wordpress. If you are primarily going to be blogging, then this comes highly recommended by many people. Stephen Lewis certainly recommends Wordpress. You can set up a blog for free (without having to pay for a domain name, but it will just be a long address and not your 'personal one').
However, I just couldn't seem to make it do what I wanted to do - combining a blog with other information etc. Others have succeeded, but I struggled, so I gave up.
Then a designer friend recommended www.wix.com.
As soon as I started designing on Wix.com, I knew I had found the software that would work for me. It was so easy to use and just made perfect sense to this "doofus". It is easy to take a blog feed from Google Blogger or from Tumblr, and also easy to add Twitter feeds, Facebook etc
On top of that, three times I emailed their customer service people questions about using the software and each time they got back to me within 12 hours, with an answer that I could understand.
Not all the issues have been resolved, and the website is far from perfect. I think looking at the blogs on the website is particularly odd: I have chosen a "grid" format, which means that each of the blogs lose their formatting until you click on them, and then all the headings etc come back. And for some reason on the iPhone and iPad, the blog page acts particularly oddly (apologies if you are trying to read this blog off my website on an iPad or iPhone). As I find software issues like that, I let customer service know and they claim they will hopefully fix them.
It is free to design a website on Wix.com, and you can even make it live for free. However, to choose your own domain (or use the one you bought) you need to click on "premium", which means you are paying Wix.com to host your website. However, by doing that, you then also score a free domain name (so I secured www.kensbigbackyard.com and then linked it back to the .com.au domain name quite easily). It still isn't that expensive - all up costing me $99 for two years. As a freelance journalist, I think a tax-deductible $75 a year is a pretty good investment.
Overall, my wedsite is basically how I wanted it to turn out. It is relatively easy to update, and at last I have an online presence. For better or worse. Or richer and poorer. Sorry, website, not wedsite!
Please feel free to comment or let me know how you'd improve kensbigbackyard.
No comments:
Post a Comment