How To Design A Web Page

Ever wondered how to setup and design your own website? In an ever-growing digital age, having a website is one of the most important details of your business. From information about your company to reviews about jobs well done, a website can tell your whole story to anyone visiting it. It is very important that you set it up right. There are several things that you will need to optimize once your site is up and running. In this article, we will discuss how to design a web page. For now, let’s focus on that last part. Getting your site up and running.

What is a website?

A website is a collection of web pages hosted on a web server. These pages connected to each other and are accessed by a domain name. When someone types your domain name into their URL bar, the web host that your domain is pointing to is then accessed. There are a few words in there that you may not fully understand. Let’s look at things in a little more detail.

What is a domain name?

A domain name is a name ending in .com, .net, .io, .tv and so on that you purchase from a service like SiteGround or GoDaddy to host a website or email.

What is a web host?

A web host is a portion of a web server that holds various files that structure, style and overall makeup your website.

How to build your site

Now that we are past all the boring terminology, let’s dive into how you can start building your website step by step.

Step 1 – Buy your domain name

You can purchase a domain name from several services. A good service to go with is called SiteGround. With SiteGround you can not only purchase your domain, but you can completely set up your site from start to finish. Say you want the domain name martyswebworks.com. You would go to SiteGround’s website and search you domain to determine if it is available. If it is not available, you can use a different extension or a variation of your domain until you find one that is available. Once you have found a domain you can purchase it.

Great! Now you have your domain name. So what now?

Step 2 – Sign up for a web hosting account

Go to SiteGround’s website and review their various web hosting plans. If you are going to use this for one website, you can use the cheapest option since you won’t need a ton of space to handle one website. It should only run you about $20 per month.

Congratulations! You are the proud new owner of a portion of a web server or an empty website.

Step 3 – Choose your platform

There are many platforms you can use to build your website such as Wix, Shopify, Joomla and WordPress. Any of these will do and require a bit of tinkering to fully get the hang of. WordPress is a great option. You can install WordPress to the empty website you just purchased and SiteGround will do the rest for you.

Step 4 – Pick your theme

Now that you have your domain name and your empty site with WordPress installed, it is time to start thinking about how this website will look. WordPress has tons of free themes to browse. They have a theme for any industry or niche you can think of. Once you have your theme set you can visit your website to see how it looks! It will have some filler text and basic structure. Now is where the fun begins.

Step 5 – Plugins

You may want to do some research on plugins that will help you build your site. Some good ones to start out with are Elementor and WordFence for security. Elementor is an easy to use, website builder plugin that makes building your site a walk in the park. WordFence is a security plugin that send you alerts when anything happens on the site such as a plugin is out of date.

You are now ready to design your website. Not too bad! Using Elementor should make your web design experience fun and rewarding. There are many things you can do with this plugin as well as WordPress itself. If you ever have any questions on how to do something or why something is going wrong, just remember: Google is your best friend! Google your problem and most likely tons of other people have experienced the same thing and even found solutions. Luckily for you, as a web designer you are always close to the greatest source of information ever compiled.

I hope that this article has helped you learn how to design a web page and that you are excited to design your first website!