If you want to develop a website and you are not sure where to start, don’t worry. You are looking at the right place. This article is written to guide the viewers about the process of website development from end to end. The website building process can be overwhelming for a beginner but once you read through this article, you will have a fair amount of understanding of everything you need to know about the procedure. Irrespective of whether you are a DIY (Do-it Yourself) kind of person or you want to just get an overview of the process so as to be able to find the resources for it, this article will provide you with enough information to get started.
- First and foremost, you need to have an idea about the website which I assume you already do, because that’s what brings you here. But still, I want you to be able to answer the basic question about your idea. “What is the purpose of your website?” Is it about your business? Or is it like a blog? an e-commerce store? Or something as basic as- some pet training tools that you want to share with the world? Whatever it is that you want to build, what you need to understand is that there are 3 major classifications for websites- Commercial, Social, Entertainment. Depending on what you want to achieve, some of the following content might apply to you or not.
- Website Design: Once you know the purpose, you will need a design for the website. The design for a website is like a blueprint for a building. If you have even a slightest idea about what your website will look like, then you are already doing great. If not, then I would suggest you to get some basic idea by scrolling through some pre-built templates online. You can also use competitor websites to activate your imagination. If this doesn’t sound like you, then you can always hire a designer who can convert your idea into a design. You can look for freelance web designers, who can do it for pretty cheap rather than hiring an experienced designer. We provide this service as well (more on that later)
- DIY Website Development: Building the website can be a project taken by yourself or by hiring someone. Now, if you are doing it yourself, you can use many useful tools available in the market. Shopify, wix, Wordpress to name a few. But to be able to do that and if you are not a professional developer, you need some patience and some understanding of how a basic flow of website looks like. These tools provide you with all the necessary tools required for building and running a website. I will not go into details of how they work because their own platform has done a much better job at explaining this than I can. The cost will depend on what you need. But If you are building some e-commerce or some website for your side business, these tools can be very handy and affordable.
- Hiring Website Development Companies: Usually, development companies cover most of the next steps. But to understand the process, I have laid them down for you as follows:
- Website Building - It includes building the user interface, setting up databases, setting up emails and other business needs. A lot of technical stuff which you don’t need to bother about.
- Website deployment - Making a website ‘live’ involves buying a domain name and hosting the website. Domain name is the name of your website (ex- www.mywebsite.com). You can think of this as virtual real estate for the website. But don’t get it wrong, it’s not costly. It’s virtual real estate which means no preferred locality or no walk score determination required. You can pick the cheapest option and it works the same as the costliest one. You need to buy a space at serve to ‘host’ your website and then you need a relatable domain name which users will refer your website as. Domains are to be purchased and need to be renewed at a frequency. It isn’t very costly, its just about $150 per year (unless your domain name is popular in which case you will have to pay a relatively higher amount to purchase it). Web Hosting is renting a space for website. There are servers which are running 24*7 to provide access to your website. You will have to purchase a subscription (kind of like a lease) to the hosting servers where the website code will be deployed and contained. Then, last step is to connect your domain to the web hosting.
- Website Maintenance- Business evolves, website technologies evolve, new features are regularly invented by browsers. To keep up with the competition, your website might need regular maintenance. This may range from updating contact information to uploading new products to adding new media content or to rebuild whole design (a new theme or something). Maintenance can be an ongoing process or it can be on-demand. That can be worked out between you and the website development company. (Tip- Always ask for an admin page to be able to control the content of the website without needing much involvement of a developer, this can reduce your maintenance costs significantly, Our company includes this as part f our very basic package)