Want to create your own website? Thanks to the CMS (Content Management System) and good will to learn and understand how it works, you’ll undoubtedly realize projects attractive as a fantastic blog that stories of your passions, an E-commerce site that will allow you to start your first business online or maybe you already have a business and want to get in touch with new customers and avoid further burdening the bank account. All good reasons to commit to make your first website!
Know that create and manage a website, although it is a little blog constantly requires time, passion, and curiosity to keep up with the rules of the evolving web, which is why if you have one of these three elements should undoubtedly rely to a professional who will enhance your vision in the best way by creating you a functional site, optimized in performance and reflecting all directives SEO as Google wants to God!
Image Source: Google Image
Oh yeah! I just wrote “God Google” because as soon as you intersession in this world really understand what it is Google, so far it has been your faithful search engine from now on will become a kind of employer: if you respect its rules (which often are not even released officially announced by the company but at random by some employees) will not come for some fired, but the food will be saw in a few days, because Google is the only company able to calling the shots on the web, will be your main source of traffic, that can bring you thousands and thousands of visitors every day.
In this article you will find the various steps to follow for getting your online project, will not be treated specifically the various CMS (wordpress, joomla, prestashop, open carts etc etc) of which you can read the comprehensive documentation that you will find for each CMS directly in the web.
How to choose the domain
The choice of your domain, which is nothing but the web address of your site, it is very important and should be evaluated thoroughly, could be the key to getting a good ranking in no time or why your site It will be relegated in the maze of the web.
“On paper” does not exist domains better than others, but there are domains that will identify and will position your brand better than others, that will improve the perception and thus also visitor retention.
So what are the best practices in the choice of the domain?
- Identifies what will be your target audience, If you want to create a website that targets a foreign audience in part, it would be more appropriate to use the .com because it is little known abroad as here is the little known .de (Germany) or. co.uk (England).
- Create Your Brand, associate your content to an easily identifiable name and little generic, the web is now full of sites of any kind, your goal is to stand out from the crowd and carve out your own niche.
- Choose a domain name simple avoiding dashes, accented letters and other “extravagances grammar”, everything will facilitate your audience to remember the domain more easily.
Which hosting to choose?
Now you’ll need a server that will contain your website, and to which collegial the chosen domain (often this is done automatically if the hosting provider is purchased at the same time offer that includes domain + hosting).
With a little research you will find a large selection of server / hosting, and initially you may find it difficult to understand what is the most suitable for you, below you will find a summary of the various types of services offered and their meanings:
- Shared hosting is the cheapest solution to put your website online, in order to contain costs, the hosting provider will host your website on a shared server with dozens of other websites, some space on reservation hard disk of the server. The advantages of this solution are the costs really low offer. Among the disadvantages: performance quite limited available which will result in poor performance as soon as the website will receive a constant daily traffic, especially if you use a CMS like WordPress and a premium theme that includes many scripts. Among the disadvantages it is worth mentioning also the unreliability linked to this option, if a neighbor disguise malicious scripts that could affect the performance and safety of your website.
- Hosting Semi-dedicated: Much like shared hosting, with the difference that will share the same server with a few other sites, so there will be more resources available to you, all for the benefit of performance.
- Dedicated Server: As the names imply, with this kind of offer you will be granted an entire physical server. The advantage of this solution is its high performance in granted, among the disadvantages instead there will be a fairly high cost, you should also look after the management server in person unless you being offered Managed service that indicates precisely the commitment of hosting provider in prestige server.
- VPS (Virtual Test Server): It is a virtualization of a dedicated server, then from one physical server will create several virtual servers, completely independent of each other. This solution provides each customer with dedicated resources and high performance, the website will also not be housed together with those of other customers, but will reside in an area completely isolated, considerably increasing security than shared hosting and semi-dedicated, a good compromise between shared hosting and dedicated server. The advantages of VPS are high performance, control server (choice of operating system, firewall management and installation of third-party scripts), the scalability of resources and ultimately reduced costs compared to a dedicated server.
After this brief overview of the most popular hosting services which will be the most suitable for you?
If you are creating a new website, and you do not have any experience in the management server you may opt for a shared hosting, initially you will have a negligible traffic that does not require who knows what hardware resources, also will not have to worry about anything as it will be the hosting provider to deal with the management server.
When your site will receive enough traffic to saturate the resources at your disposal, just buy a hosting semi-dedicated and “climb” so your offer, even in this case the hosting provider will take care of everything and you will have no service disruptions.
If you want to personally manage the part of the server you may opt for a VPS, your website will assure the best performance and more safety with cost almost similar to a good hosting semi-dedicated.
The dedicated server is to be discarded a prior if you have no experience in its management and if you’re creating a brand new project, in fact it requires a lot of resources difficult, at least initially.
Whatever service you make sure it has chosen as the Linux operating system, a fundamental requirement for the proper functioning of almost all CMS.
The choice of CMS
Now you just have to choose the best CMS to create your website, you are spoiled for choice, below I will show you the most popular:
- WordPress: Born primarily as software for blogging now is something else, over the years he has had the ability to adapt to new communication needs and the great work done by developers and by the immense support community led to the creation of a software magnificent, with which you can create: Blog, small e-commerce portfolio, corporate sites, sites-like YouTube and more. The wide availability of plugins, themes and online tutorials allow anyone with a bit of goodwill, to create an eye-catching design and easy to index.
- Joomla: Another well-known open source CMS, with excellent community support and a host of plugins and themes that extend its functions. Although its operation is completely different from these 2 WordPress CMS allow you to get the same results, even with Joomla you can create websites of various kinds: blogs, business sites, portfolio, small e-commerce etc etc.
- Drupal: CMS is completely open source, maintained by thousands of developers around the world. More advanced than the previous ones, the best choice for the realization of complex web sites requiring high reliability and security. Thanks to its flexibility and scalability you can achieve whatever you type website, from simple personal blog to a complex corporate website or e-commerce. Much more difficult to learn than WordPress and Joomla.
- Prestashop: The youngest among all the CMS on this list, created in 2007 as a CMS purely oriented e-commerce is having considerable success for the realization of e-commerce sites through its own unique features: ease of use, ability to manage every aspect sales (shipping, billing, inventory management), great graphics and great possibilities for customization community support.