One of the first questions people always seem to ask is: “How in the world do I get started with my own website?”

Here’s the simplified step-by-step guide:

1. Figure out which name you want for your website, like “mygreatwebsite.com”

2. Now that you’ve got that in mind, we’ll need to buy the domain name (or rather rent it). There’s lots of places to get cheap domain names, but you get what you pay for. I use 123registration.com as Mike Wolverton over there provides me with fast service whenever I need it. It’s nice being able to actually talk to a person when you run into trouble. Here you’ll be paying by the year for the rights to the name (hence the “renting”).

3. After we’ve purchased the name, you’ll be asked to “park” it, which is just a temporary placeholder for it. We’ll get back to that in a bit.

4. Now you’ll need to get yourself some hosting for the HTML files and images. There’s a whole range of hosting options, from free to hundreds of dollars a month. Again, you get what you pay for.

5. Once we set up the hosting account, we’ll be given DNS records, usually a string of numbers (like 123.456.789.1234) or a cryptic name (like NS1.webhost.com).

6. From there, we’ll go back to where we registered the name and plug in these DNS records (they’ll normally give us two).

7. After that, it’s a bit of a waiting game. Those DNS records have to propogate throughout the world wide web so that when you type in “mygreatwebsite.com” it will convert itself to that DNS record we were given. This sometimes takes a couple hours, sometimes 4 or 8, though I have heard it can take from 24 to 72 hours to take effect.

8. After that, we’re good to go!

Email me at todd.a.griffith@gmail.com to discuss your needs.

In fact, with the proper combination of a theme and plug-ins, we can turn your whole website into more that just a blog. Imagine your very own photo gallery site, like Joe Duty’s. Or a portfolio site, like the one you’re on right now. WordPress can even be modded to function as a full-blown CMS (content management system) WITHOUT the complexity OR the hefty price tag that some CMS’s come with.

AND, most importantly, YOU control the content! That’s right, no need to pay me or someone else to create your own blog posts, create new pages, add graphics, fix typos, change a date here or there… You get access to the backend to make those changes yourself.

Click here for more details on available WordPress themes and essential plugins.

E-mail me at todd.a.griffith@gmail.com to discuss your needs and to see if WordPress is right for you.