Five Steps to Building the Best Website

These questions are important as the answers will guide how your home on the web is established. In this article, we will provide answers and give you the needed information to build the best website that you’ve envisioned for your brand.

1. Choose a domain

Whether you build the website yourself or hire a developer, purchasing a domain name is something that will have to be completed either way. Choosing a domain name doesn’t have to be hard. We recommend that your domain name is your business name or something very similar. Example: If your business name was Bears Coffee Co., you’d want to try to get bearscoffeeco.com bearscoffee.co or bearsco.coffee. Check to see if your domain name is available.

Tip: Be careful not to choose a domain name that’s hard to spell, has a lot of numbers, or has many characters. Read more tips and tricks for choosing the best domain name for your brand.

2. Choose a hosting provider

After you choose and register your domain, it’s time to choose a web hosting provider. Web hosting is the service which stores all of your files, allowing your website to be viewed online. You can’t launch a website without hosting. There are many web hosting providers to choose from, but we recommend InMotion Hosting for the highest quality hosting at an affordable price. Their “Launch plan” is the perfect guide for getting started.

Once you have signed up for hosting, it’s important to make sure your domain is connected to your hosting. Check out Hover’s Helpdesk articles to learn how to connect your domain to your hosting account. InMotion Hosting’s nameservers are ns1.inmotionhosting.com and ns2.inmotionhosting.com.

3. Build your website or hire a developer?

Congratulations on getting your domain and hosting setup. Now is the time to decide whether you want to hire a developer or build the website yourself. We know how hard of a decision this can be. In the article entitled, Should I Hire a WordPress Developer to Build My Website?, InMotion Hosting shares several things which may help make this decision clear.

“You should consider building a website yourself if:
You are familiar or willing to learn more about WordPress.
You need a basic website launched quickly.
You have a minimal budget.
You have found a WordPress theme that you like.”

“You should consider hiring a website developer if:
You want a high degree of theme customization.
You have a larger budget.
You have limited personal time.
You want specialized features built into your website.
You have complicated project requirements.”

Building a website yourself gives great flexibility and customization. If you decided to build your website, we recommend using a tool called, BoldGrid. BoldGrid is a suite of plugins which includes a drag and drop editor, allowing you to easy place your content wherever you’d like. InMotion Hosting is an official host with BoldGrid and provides a 1-Click install feature, allowing an easy install.

4. Start building your website

If you decide to hire a web developer, spend time sharing and showing examples of websites that you prefer. They will then work with your content to create a website in the style of your preference.

If you installed BoldGrid, it’s time to choose a inspiration and start inputting your content. BoldGrid has over 200+ inspirations (themes) to choose from. Each of these inspirations don’t just have placeholder text with some images, but actual text written specifically for your inspiration category.

After you have installed your inspiration, add your own images and content. Change your site colours and make sure your footer copyright information is correct. Wonder how to make certain changes? BoldGrid has a large support centre to assist you.

5. Launch and manage your website

Once your website looks exactly how you like, click that ‘Publish’ button. Your website is live! Just because your website is live doesn’t mean that all the work is complete. You will want to make sure that all software is updated and that as time goes on any outdated content is updated.

From choosing a domain, to installing BoldGrid, building a website isn’t as complex as it sounds. The tools and tips that we have shared with you are some of the most powerful tools available in the web industry to help you build the best website.