How to Create a Website?

Do you need to create a website on your own?

Hey there! People often ask me how to create a website? The short answer is ‘you don’t’ (need to). The longer version is ‘he shouldn’t be actually building the website yourself’. That’s not how it’s supposed to be. Because, for example, every time you need a car you don’t just go and make it with your hands, do you? Why should a website be different? That’s right, it shouldn’t.

As you would do a car, just go to your local website dealer or not local website dealer, check out the variety, think about what you want your website to be capable of, what you want it to look like, pick the right design, buy and then it’s yours. Now, as to the capabilities of the website this is where it starts getting a bit more difficult but not too much.

What are the main kinds of the websites?

Let’s think about this as there are three big categories of websites. There are small business websites, that, like, you know, sixty percent of the Internet consist of them. Think of them as of a cheap car that you only use once in a while, when you’re too lazy to walk. These websites don’t get updated too often. They normally contain like 6 static pages.

Next category is the Blog. Blogs are the websites where people post content to on somewhat a regular basis. You may think of them as of a pickup truck, *that’s what we think the pickup truck looks like* that people use for the small businesses.

And then there are E-commerce websites, the big websites with big databases of products with a whole team supporting this website. This may be compared to a big trailer shot that is pretty much expensive to acquire and it is pretty expensive to maintain.

Do I need anything else? Or the theme files are enough?

Now, the dealer parties will get a little bit trickier because there are various ways of how you can proceed with the website that you pick. Plus, which is also important, it’s not enough just to have a website in a form of the files, there’s the place that you need to host it. This is provided by the hosting companies and the point of it is to make the website available for other people to visit. I won’t talk too much about hosting because it is not exactly what we’re talking about today.

What are the template vendor companies and how do they differ?

Now, there are different types of the website template vendors. Basically, they can be divided into two big categories. There are providers that sell templates on a one-time payment basis, you acquire the lifetime license and you basically keep it for a lifetime. And the second category are the SaaS websites. The SaaS website is where you purchase a website template and a hosting all-in-one package and you pay them on a yearly basis or on a monthly basis because that’s how it actually renews.

With both types of vendors there are pros and cons. With one-time payment companies pros are the flexibility, because you have a complete control over the website you host, the scalability, because it is a lot easier to multiply pages, to control the structure of a website and there’s the price which is also a big plus of this type of vendor. With this option you only pay once from $55 to $150 and the website is yours for a lifetime.

With SaaS companies you get a lot less hassle because it’s an all-in-one package, the thing is already installed, the template is over-tuned and you don’t have to do anything other than adding your content or images and which is why it saves a lot of time.

So, what kind of a template vendor do I choose to create my own website based on a theme?

I don’t know which option is better for you personally, because all of you are different, so you decide for yourself. Based on the resources that you have, based on the budget and your time and what you want your website to be capable of you just pick the right type of the vendor and you’re good to go. If you ask me, I’m pretty much a control freak, I tend to optimize my costs, that’s why I choose the downloadable product option. This provides me with lot greater extend of control over what I do and that’s a lot better for me, it feels more safe. What’s your preferred option, let me know in the comments.