How to Set Up a Website

Step 1: Register a Domain Name

You will need a domain name for your website, for example www.YourSite.com. Go Daddy is one of the cheapest and most reliable domain name registrars. They're $8.95/year right now, which is a pretty good price.

Step 2: Set Up a Hosting Account

Host Gator is my top choice in hosting services for a couple of reasons. First, they allow hosting of as many domain names as you want. This is perfect for web designers who want to host sites for multiple clients, or people who want to run more than one online business. If you don't think you want more than one site right now, you may in the future so this is a good way to allow for future growth.

Also, Host Gator has user friendly control panel where you can set up new email accounts, upload files, add records to your database; basically anything you need to do with your hosting account is there.

The icing on the cake is a ton of free scripts from Fantastico, including blogs, photo galleries, forums, and polls. You can find these in your control panel. The "Baby" hosting plan costs $9.95/month.

My second choice for hosting is ICD Soft. I have been using them for several years. They have great customer service, fast support and a good price. When you email ICD about a script you wrote yourself, they will help you debug it. A lot of hosting companies will say "that's a third party script, sorry, can't help you" so this is a big selling point.

What I don't like about them is you can't host multiple domains within one account. No Fantastico goodies either. Still, this is the best hosting company you'll find for $6/month, but you have to pay for the year in advance.

You can also register your domain name for $5 when you purchase an account with ICD. When you renew with them, you save 20%, and when you have more than one account with them you get discounts of 25% and up.

Step 3: Create Your Pages

There are a few different ways to go about this one. Host Gator offers a couple of different "content management systems;" Joomla is one. These are tools that will allow anyone with basic computer skills to create a website in a "point and click" environment without knowing any HTML or other web coding.