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In the past, launching a website yourself was almost an impossible undertaking. People tightened their belts and brought substantial sums of money to web design companies to get their custom designs done for hundreds or thousands of dollars.
Today, you can launch your website yourself if you have at least the smallest desire to dig into the world of web design and learn something new. At the same time, you’ll spend your money wisely and build a website without breaking the bank.
Intrigued? If yes, then this article is for you as it tells how to quickly and effectively launch your website.
Step #1: Choose a Platform
To run a website, you need to decide on what engine you’re about to use. Notwithstanding the fact that there are many website platforms available online, this initial choice is not that hard.
To make the most out of your website with no prior exposure to coding, go for WordPress CMS, which holds the full superiority in CMS segment and boasts of being the most widely adopted website engine (learn more here).
This website platform is a simple and flexible solution for running a full-fledged website without advanced site management skills and apprehension of HTML and CSS.
With WordPress 5.0 released on November 27th, this most popular CMS has officially entered the era of visual editing. No doubt, you’re into it if you have no prior website creation experience. Visual editing makes website creation a simple process that involves drag-n-drop to position your content and other design elements.
So, with WordPress 5.0 you get access to the free Gutenberg visual editor that was developed by WordPress creators. You can also use other premium visual builders, some of which are included for free in WordPress themes by providers.
Step #2: Choose a High-quality Website Template
A website template is a ready-made solution for creating a website, with all the design elements, features and functionality included. Modern templates account not only for the design of your website. They also deliver crafted-by-professionals design concepts, color schemes and layouts.
Moreover, they prepare a sound technological basis for your website as they come with multiple premium plugins on board. Needless to say, you get these plugins free of charge and can use them to take your website up a notch and to beat the competition.
One more advantage of the ready-made templates is that their coding is valid, clean and well-structured. It’s often the case that independent developers that create custom designs neglect coding standards as they know that they’re selling websites to laymen. As a result, the client ends up with the website that gets a lower position in search engine search results and functions not as fast as promised.
Fortunately, that’s not the case with the high-quality website templates. They undergo multiple checkups and come bug-free with polished and shining coding to please the wider auditory and make people come back for more themes.
When choosing your high-quality website template, make sure that it has all of the following features:
- The template of your choice should be fully responsive. Use the Live Demo of the template to check its appearance and performance on tablet and mobile screens. Opt for the theme that’s appealing in all the viewports.
- Secondly, the theme should be cross-browser compatible, i.e. having the same look and functioning the same way in all the modern browsers.
- Moreover, you need a theme with high-quality, Retina-ready imagery. If the image pack comes as a part of the theme, you’ll save a lot of money by having the top-notch imagery on board.
- Next, prioritize the templates that come with a thick bundle of plugins. Typically, those are the premium plugins that you get free with the template. As a result, you get a chance to build a feature-rich website without breaking the bank.
- Finally, opt for a theme with a visual builder on board. As mentioned earlier, this will greatly speed up the process of website customization and simplify what you’ve got to accomplish.
Want to see a great example of a website template? Check out Monstrdoi2. You can also read our full review of the Monstroid2 theme here.
Monstroid2 Multipurpose WordPress Theme
Details | Demo
Let’s briefly review its features:
- Two visual builders to choose from: Elementor and Gutenberg;
- 500+ ready-made website sections;
- 20 alternative skins, which make this template really multipurpose;
- Modular structure, which allows you to incorporate the blocks from different skins into our site design;
- Fast and Lightweight: Monstroid2 loads in 1.2 seconds and is not demanding in terms of hosting;
- 9 Premium Jet Plugins and a bunch of other extensions free;
- Fully WooCommerce-ready;
All in all, Mostroid2 is a front-running template to build your website with.
Step #3: Settle Down with the Domain Name and Hosting
When purchasing a theme, don’t forget to check out the Details page. There, you’ll see the section titled ‘Hosting Requirements’. Keep the requirements mentioned there in mind when choosing your hosting plan.
When it comes to choosing a hosting provider, it’s advisable to go for large and well-established providers. They are the ones that provide you with sound and secure hosting and give you 95 – 99% uptime. What’s more, they have high customer support standards and answer chats, calls and e-mails in a timely manner. Let’s see a couple of hosting providers that are likely to make you happy in 2019:
- InmotionHosting is an employee-owned hosting company that delivers 5-star hosting experience to their clients. They have high security standards and automatically backup your website for you, as well as update vulnerable apps. Moreover, they let you choose the location of your servers, ensuring the speedy performance of your website.
- BlueHost is a reputable hosting company that’s out there since 1996. Their affordable plans start from $3.95 for shared hosting. At the same time, they manage to bring you the 99.74% uptime and resourceful support.
- SiteGround is a hosting provider that brings you 475ms load time and 99.95% uptime. They are not as cheap as InmotionHosting and BlueHost. However, if you’re ready to pay $6.45 a month, you’ll be more than pleased with this hosting solution.
- Other hosting providers that rock this year include HostGator and A2 hosting. Check out their hosting plans and opt for one of them if you find these companies more appealing.
When choosing a hosting plan, make sure it gives you the needed tools. In the majority of cases, you’ll need a hosting plan that has such tools as cPannel and MySQL on board. Thanks to these tools, you’ll get a chance to work with the files of your website directly (without FTP), as well as access SQL databases when needed. If you’re not sure whether you get these tools with this or that plan, it’s worth contacting your hosting provider and double-checking this.
A domain name can be purchased with the hosting plan. If you pay for 6 months or a year of hosting, you’re likely to get the domain name free, which is a good option. We advise that you go for .com domain name, as this is the most widely accepted one. People are likely to type .com after your name if they remember just the first part of your website address. Go for a short and readable domain name that sticks in mind and you’re likely to get more visitors to your website.
#4: Jump On Your Customization Job
Now, you have a template, a domain name and a place for your website on a server. These are all the ingredients you need for building your website.
So, it’s time to install the template and start adding content to it. Modern templates are the ones that have the installation process automated. If you have a WordPress template, you should install WordPress first (download the CMS from wordpress.org). Then, you should install the theme in the Appearance -> Themes section of your WordPress admin panel.
Every template comes with a set of default pages, widgets and blocks. If you go for a multi-skin template (for example, Monstroid2), every skin your template will have its own set of professionally set up pages, widgets and content modules. Moreover, you’ll have access to all the elements available in this theme within your Elementor Builder interface. You just have to pick the elements you love and fill them with content.
Moreover, if you want your website to be successful online and bring you a high conversion rate, you should set up your website’s contact form, social buttons and social sharing buttons. To generate quality leads, add a newsletter subscription box/popup. Refer to your template’s documentation to get a step-by-step guidance on configuring these elements.
Step #0: Get a Ready-made Website
Yes, you’re not mistaken, this step is #0 as it lets you skip all the steps of building a website altogether. How is this possible? With the ‘Ready-to-Use’ offer by TemplateMonster. This option lets you free yourself from building the website by delegating this task to the team of skilled web design professionals.
The ‘Ready-to-Use Website’ offer includes the following:
- Any website template by the top seller ZEMEZ;
- Domain name (1 year);
- Professional hosting;
- Template Installation;
- SSL certificate;
- 5 pages and 10 posts customization;
- Logo and Color Scheme Customization;
- Adding Social Profile Links;
These are the products and services included to the package for the non-ecommerce websites. You can learn more about the offer and what it includes for e-commerce websites here.
Why are we mentioning this option? Currently, there’s a great promotion that lets you get it for $149 instead of $279. The promotion lasts 4 days only (February, 4 – 8). So, you’ve got to hurry up if you want to save your time and spare your effort building a website. The professional team will cope with this task with flying colors.
Wrapping Up
Creating a website is not as hard as it may seem initially. To make this process simpler, you have to make a couple of informed choices, e.g. choose the engine that best fits your needs, go for a modern responsive template with stunning imagery, and choose a reliable hosting provider, etc.
At the same time, if you’re not into installing, setting up and customizing your future website on your own, it’s enough to get the ‘Ready-to-Use Website’ offer for $149. With it, you can be a happy owner of a professionally customized website no later than tomorrow!
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