How to make Internet website

Building a website used to take a lot of effort and technical skills. Now, even a computer newbie can set up a webpage easily. Below are some useful resources for getting started.


----- Explanations -----

- The Basics of a Website
- What is a domain vs. a subdomain


----- Useful Services -----

Disclaimer: I do not receive any commission or revenue by introducing these services.

- Domain Names: Dynadot

Most computer newbies make the mistake of buying a domain name through their web host. Not only will it cost much more, but the web host may also hold the domain name "hostage", making it difficult to transfer to another hosting company.

Wiser users use an independent domain name reseller. Dynadot provides domain names at only US$8.99 (SGD$13) per year. If you buy a .info domain name, you can pay even lesser. (But be aware that .info names are associated with spammers because they are so cheap that the crooks often buy them in bulk.)


- Email & Simple Web Hosting - Google Apps

If you wish to have 100 free email accounts with 7GB of storage each, superb spam protection, free webpages etc, check out Google Apps. [Unless you are very rich or running an organization with 10 or more staff, the free edition is good enough.] Likewise, there is no need to pay for ineffective spam protection or stingy email accounts from your ISP.


- Blogging Service: Blogger

If you do not want to go through the trouble of designing and maintaining a website just to post some simple text or pictures, you can use a blogging service.


- Discussion Groups (Google Groups)

You can also start your own discussion groups and newsletters without any computer programming knowledge.


- Hosting Videos - Google Videos

You can use Google Videos to host your video files. Unlike its popular cousin YouTube, you can post video files longer than 15 minutes and retain their copyrights.


- Hosting Large Files - MediaFire

MediaFire hosts files as large as 100MB for free. Registration is optional. You can embed the files on your website as if you are hosting it.


- Free Web Host

If you just want a no-frills free web host, try out 0fees.net. It is pretty good and totally ad-free! It is perfect for newbies to get a taste of what it is like to run a website.

If you are still designing your website, it is best to just register the domain name (to prevent it from being taken away) but not subscribe to any paid web hosting plans until it is almost completed. In this way, you will save much money. One of my friends subscribed to a year's web hosting plan without thinking and ended up never even touching it at all.


- Reliable Web Host

I was using PolurNet Communications as my web host. They were rather good until one of their servers was hacked. I have switched to Vriends Hosting (which has a 100% uptime guarantee) with 0fees.net as my backup server.

If you are just building a new, simple website, the cheapest plan is usually good enough. One of my established websites (which has over 12000 visitors a month) does very fine with that plan.


----- Internet Marketing -----

- What is Internet Marketing?

If you do not know how to do marketing on the Internet, read this first.


- Advertising

You can earn money from putting advertisements on your website, or start your own advertisement campaign.


- Google Zeitgeist

This is a good starting place to know what people are interested in, so that you can make advertisements, websites and blogs to take advantage of the market trend.


- Google Trends

If you want to know what to call your website, product or service, you can try this free service from Google. You can input a few possible names and pick the most popular terms.