You are running your local small business for a decade. In past we do not need any small business website or small business web designer for our small business shop. We have to take a shop for our small business and drive the local customer by advertisement or sales representative. But now in the modern age things is very different. Now we need a small business web designer or web developer for getting customer for your small business websites.
Believe me I am also a small business owner. I have a shop now running almost 14 years locally. I choose the old method advertising by locally and by my own for getting customer. But I was struggling as I didn’t get many customers as previous time. I was become very worried for my shop as I have to earn for running my family. One day a young aged customer came to my shop and asked for my shop website address for online information and shopping. Believe me I have no idea about small business website and how it’s work etc.
Later that night I came home and search online for set up a small business website and custom website design price all this stuff. After researching about 2-3 days (I didn’t remember the time exactly) I understand and know the steps for making a small business website with WordPress and How important a custom responsive website become for a small or large business for getting customer. So I am just sharing my experience and how you will get a small business website.
How to Build a Small Business Website For Free:
Step #1: Choose your platform for your small business website
A Website Platform is a website in which additional functionality can be seamlessly integrated by means of an external application programming interface (API). The platform should provide integration points. These integration points are places in the application where new functionality can be plugged in.
Well when I search on net about it I came to know that previously many website were in HTML, CSS and Flash. Need a lot of time to learn it. That’s why previously many hire a small business website designer and developer for their real estate business, small business, church website or even online shopping website because they don’t have the time to learn all the stuff. But things are easier now. You can have your own attorney general, online shopping or business website by our own. In recent time there were many content management systems (CMS) like WordPress, Joomla, Drupal etc.
What is CMS?
Well content management system is a user- friendly platform for building websites and managing by your own. You don’t have to learn the coding. You just have to put your content in the right place to get start. Below is the Free CMS provider.
But not every platform is easy to use. I am giving you statics about most popular platform in 2016.
As you can see WordPress is the most user and popular platform. Almost half of the small business website, photography website, real estate website, restaurant website, dental website is running on WordPress now. I also prefer WordPress because of the user-friendly interface.
You guys are wondering why I am choosing WordPress right? So here the explanation about it:
Why WordPress is most popular platform?
Easy to use and learn
It is extremely easy to learn. You don’t need to be a developer or designer for use a WordPress. You don’t need to learn any programming language for that. You just have to know the functionality of each option. That’s all.
Cutting-Edge and Update plugins
Without- even write a single line of code you can actually add any functionality in your website. WordPress offer a large number of free plugins for your website that you can add it for free. WordPress has introduced some of the amazing plugins, such as Word fence, Visual Form Builder, And Infinite SEP a lot more. Also there are many WordPress themes which you can actually get for free.
Mobile-optimized platform
You know many of the users are using via mobile. Mobile becomes a part of our life. So you can have a mobile-optimized platform in here. It also offers you a large amount of tools for adding you website for free.
Fully Customization
You can edit any where anything in WordPress. If you want to update content or change anything you just have to go to that option and change it. No need any coding for that.
And Many More
You can see the benefits of using WordPress more in here WordPress Features
You can see the benefits of using WordPress more in here WordPress Features
You can also use the Drupal or Joomla for you website. But I prefer the WordPress most.
Joomla
Joomla is an open source platform on which Web sites and applications can be created. It is a content management system (CMS) which connects your site to a MySQL, MySQL, or PostgreSQL database in order to make content management and delivery easier on both the site manager and visitor. See more at Joomla
Drupal
Drupal is free, open source software that can be used by individuals or groups of users — even those lacking technical skills to easily create and manage many types of Web sites. The application includes a content management platform and a development framework. See more at Drupal
If you are a beginner for small business website, photography website, real estate website, restaurant website, dental website or even your portfolio website than you should go with WordPress. It has amazing themes for business, photography, travel, personal blog etc.
Step #2: Choosing a Hosting and Domain for small business website
What is Hosting
Think about a land to buy for your small business in internet. Hosting is just like that. A web hosting service is a type of Internet hosting service that allows individuals and organizations to make their website accessible via the World Wide Web. See more atWeb Hosting
What is Domain
Think about having a property name for your small business website. Domain is just like that. In general, a domain name represents an Internet Protocol (IP) resource, such as a personal computer used to access the Internet, a server computer hosting a web site, or the web site itself or any other service communicated via the Internet. See more at Web Domain
To get a new website for your small business it is very important to choose you domain name properly. I usually use Host gator for hosting and GoDaddy for domain. There is lot of service provider for this. But I prefer to go with the best one. I am giving you the screen shot of the packages for hosting and domain. You can visit Hostgator for hosting and GoDaddy Domains for domain to read more.
Packages for Hostgator (Hosting)
You have to choose a plan to get started. I prefer to use the business plan for your website. There are many benefits to use a business plan.
Benefits of Using a Business Plan
Dedicated I.P
Free Private SSL
Free Toll-free number
Packages for GoDaddy (Domain)
This is only the demo. You domain name price will be go up and down in respect to your domain name selection.
What will be my domain name for my small business website ?
- If you are making a website for your business so it will be best to go with your company name. It will help you to brand your company.
- If you are making a website for yourself then choosing your name for domain is the best option for you.
Normally people use .Com for the website. But you can also choose .net, .org, .info for you business website.
Difference Between (.Com, .Net, .Org, .Info)
.COM is used primarily for commercial businesses.
.NET for network related organizations.
.ORG is for nonprofit groups.
. Net is for informative type websites.
My Best Advice will be go with the normal one and most widely use .COM. And your domain name should be brand able, Memorable and catchy.
Now the most important thing is to adding a domain name in the hosting account. As I use Hostgator for my website so I will show it for Hostgator.
How to add domain to hostgator
If you want to add a new domain name to your HostGator account then follow these steps.
- First login to cPanel using your login ID and password.
- Then under the Domains section, you will find Addon Domains button. Click on the Addon Domains button.
- Next you need to enter the domain name, FTP username for the domain, document root and password. You can use any FTP username. Just make sure there is no FTP user with the same name already exists. If the FTP username is already linked with some other domain then you will see the error message. I prefer to use domain name as root directory and place it under the home directory.
You can enter the password or you have an option to generate the password.
- When everything is entered correctly, click on the Add Domain button. You will see the success message of adding domain like following.
If there is any error then the error reason is also shown. Fix the error and try again.
Now you know how to add a new domain to your HostGator account. Go to browser and make sure that your new domain is working properly. See more at Hostgator Support
Now as you are done with your domain and hosting now you can go to the next part Platform installation.
I will show you how to setup a WordPress platform for your small business website.
Step #3: How to install WordPress and WordPress themes
Install
There are two types of WordPress installation.
- One click installation
- Manually
Almost 99% people is going with the One clink installation. It is very easy to install.
Steps for Installing WordPress:
- Log in to your hosting account.
- Go to your control panel.
- Look for the “Quick Install” icon.
- In the left menu, under Popular Installs, click WordPress, then click Install WordPress:
- Complete the form that appears with the following details:
Your WordPress platform should be ready. You can see more details in here Hostgator Support if you are not getting it done.
You can see how to create small business website with WordPress in my upcoming writing where I describe all the function in details about how to build website with WordPress. This article is all about building a platform with WordPress.
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