What You Need to Make Your Own Website

Creating your own website can be exciting as well as frustrating. If you don't know where to begin then GoDaddy and Yahoo! Affiliate Program can help. There are many ways to get your website up and running on your own, but it never hurts to have a little help. Below is a starting guide on how to create your own website.

What is the Website for?
You first have to determine what your website is for, a blog site, merchant site, store front, e-commerce or just a personal website. Once you determine what you want to use your website for it will make it much easier to begin the work on getting it completed and ready to launch.

The Design
Website design has been made easy with software that you can purchase online or from the web hosting sites that offer easy to use software and even offer custom website designs for a small fee. You might want to create the website on your own from scratch or from a template that you find online or came with your software, or you could hire someone to do it for you. If you don't know anything about web design and feel overwhelmed it might be a good idea to use a web hosting site that offers assistance with the design. You can however create your own website design without any prior knowledge; the software tools that are offered make it as easy as dragging and dropping images and clicking to add links, images and backgrounds.

How to Find a Host
When your website design is completed and you are ready to launch it, you will need to find a site that will host your site. Create the domain name of your choosing and check to see if it is available. Most web hosting sites will assist you with finding a name that is similar to the one you first selected if that name is taken. Once you have found the name you wish to use you will need to purchase rights to that site name and then compare hosting sites for the best deal for your needs. Be sure you check the top sites to ensure that you are getting enough bandwidth, storage space, email accounts and other features that are needed to run your website smoothly.

Manage the Site
If you are running a large website that offers services or products for sale, you might want to get help with the day to day management of the site. If it is a small site or a personal one, you can normally maintain it yourself. Most hosting sites offer tools to manage broken links, edit content, manage email accounts, submit to search engines and increase traffic.

Once your website has been launched you will have to maintain it and update it frequently to keep it in good standing with the search engines. There are some great tools offered for search engine ranking maintenance, research them and use them to stay on top.