Could it really be a simple as 3 steps to create your own website? Shouldn't you hire an expensive web developer to make your website for you?  If you like 95% of the small businesses out there who are just looking to expand their presence on the internet, then NO! Why would you spend thousands of dollars just to do that?  Are you a large business looking to sell millions of dollars on the internet? Then yes! Call a design company and have a custom solution made for you.  For everyone else, learning a little... can save a lot.

General Topography of a website

Let's use easy123websites.ca as an example of a website out there on the internet.  The first thing that you when you want to come here is type in their address in the address bar of your internet browser and hit go and the website appears... seems simple enough, but there are a few things going on behind the scenes

Websites are nothing more than a collection of code sitting on special computers called servers that are connected to the internet.  A good analogy of the how servers are interconnected on the internet is to visualize a house and all of the connecting houses and streets in it's neiborhood.  Servers that connect to the internet have unique addresses just like houses, except instead of using street names, they use what is known as an IP (internet protocol) address. Take this website on this server for example. The Server's unique address is 64.22.138.9.  Could you imagine if you had to remember numerical addresses for every website you wanted to visit? There has to be an easier way

Domain Names make things simpler

On the interenet there are many DNS Servers (Domain Name Service) whose job it is to translate those hard to remember numbers into meaningful names and vice versus.  When you type an address into your browsers address the first thing it does is contact a DNS to find out what the numerical equivilant of that address is... this way instead of remembering numerical addresses you can just remember the easy to remember shortnames for the site. 

Websites are hosted on dedicated servers on the internet

After you have entered the sites address and the lookup is performed your browser has enough information to direct you to where the site is being hosted.  This is the server that actually holds your website files, images, code etc... that is used for presenting your information.  Most hosts offer a few common ways to access your files. Be it FTP (File Transfer Protocol), WebDev, or FrontPage Extensions... there is a way for you to add information to your site.  Up until this point, most websites havent even crossed the $100 dollar mark as far as price goes... it's usually the cost of the design of your pages by a professional artist/coder that costs the most out of the process.  Do you really need a professional designer though?

Open Source (Free) and low cost templates are available

This website is an excellent example of what you can do for a very little amount of money.  The design is an adaptation of a template found on free css templates and the blog software driving this website is an open source project called BlogEngine.Net!  Truth be told, it cost me under $200.00 to set up this website! And setup was a cinch...

Conclusion

Contrary to what most designers tell you, it's not rocket science putting a website together.  First you need hosting, second a domain name (usually included with hosting), and something to put on your website once you're done setting up.  THATS IT!

Stay tuned for future tutorials on how you can set up your own website for less than 200 dollars!