Getting Started Guide – how to use website building tutorial
Welcome to Website Building Tutorial!
Are you a complete newbie in website building, but want to build a good-looking & fuctionable website from scratch?
You will find everything you need to get started in this guide.
Website Building Tutorial: Action List
Below are the basic steps that every website builder should know. If these concepts are complete strange to you, simply follow the sequence one by one. If not, then you can jump to the part that you are most interested at this moment.
I. Domain name, hosting, and Content Management System
Time required: 5 minutesLevel: Absolute Beginner
This tutorial will teach you how to register your website under a domain name like www.MyDomainName.com, setup a hosting machine that store your content, and install a content management system for creating web pages with ease.
more to come…
How to Register Domain Name, Setup Hosting and Content Management System
“How to register domain name” is a common question for beginner website designers. But it’s not the only thing you need to consider when building websites. Setup hosting and content management system (CMS) is also important parts of the structure that you should take care.
In this tutorial, we are going to walk you through these first steps to get your website built. By the end of this tutorial, you will have a website running on your own domain name, with your first piece of content live to the world.
Time required: 5 minutesLevel: Absolute Beginner
Part I. Register Domain Name and Setup Hosting
Domain and hosting can be setup separately. In this tutorial, we will introduce an easy way that could get the two jobs done at the same time with only the cost of hosting (i.e. register a domain name for free!). The entire process should take less than 3 minutes.
Step 1:
Click the below link to visit our recommended domain and hosting provider.
http://www.websitebuildingtutorial.com/bluehost (affiliate link)
You should see the screen like below:
Click the “Sign Up Now” botton.
Step 2:
Input your desired domain name in the input box, and choose a suffix (suggest to use “.com”). Click the “Next” button on the right.
Step 3:
If you first choice is registered by others already (like the case in the example, I cannot get “NewYorkDentist.com”), the system will suggest you a group of alternatives. You can click any option in the list (including those on the right with “.net” “.org” etc.) and proceed to the next step, or enter another domain name of your choice at the input-box below.
Step 4:
Ignore and uncheck the unnecessary parts, simply filling the basic billing information (similar as any online shopping), and click “Next”.
There may be a “successfully registered” page with a simple “click to login” button depends on the version Bluehost is currently running.
Congratulations! Now You have registered your own domain name and the server has also been successfully setup!
You may see a click to login button on your current page. If not, there is login details sent to you by email. Follow the instruction and login to the control panel.
Part II. Install Content Management System
In the 2nd part, we need to install a content management system on your server that could help us easily create web pages.
Our top choice is WordPress. It’s THE BEST content management system that most websites use. (Most of the other tutorials in this website will be based on this platform.)
Step 5:
Here is the welcome page of the cPanel. Click “no thanks” to skip the wizard.
Step 6:
Click “WordPress” to install the WordPress platform.
Step 7:
Click “Install”
Step 8:
Keep the choice as default, check the terms & conditions, and click “Complete”
Step 9:
Wait till the install progress is completed. Save the information in the red square.
Congratulations! Now your domain has a wordpress platform installed and ready to go! Next we will create the first piece of web content on this domain.
Part III. Using WordPress to create web content
In this part, we will just quickly generate a piece of web content for you to taste what is it like to use WordPress. More detailed instruction will be provided in other parts of this website.
Step 10:
Type in your “login url” from last screen (which should be www.YourDomain.com/wp-admin), and you will reach the below WordPress login screen.
Enter your admin username (should be “admin”), and password. Press “Log in”.
Step 11:
We are going to write a post as our first piece of content. Click “Posts” on the left
Step 12:
Click “Add New”
Step 13:
Enter your post title and content as instructed below, and click “publish”
Step 14:
Click “My Blog” to view the site
Congratulations! Now you have publish your first piece of content on your own domain!
It should look like this:
Related Post with Thumbnails Plugins That Actually Work
I saw a photo-centric website the other day that has a cool “you might also like” section under each post with thumbnails of other cool images.
“What a great idea!” I thought. This is very similar to YouTube’s related video, which, I think, is the most effective way to keep you spend hours more than you intended to on that website.
So, naturally, I want to implement it on one of my photo-centric site. And to my surprise, rather than a simple search of plugin in wordpress plugin install interface, the process is actually quite bumpy! Here is the record of my trial and error process. If you want to save time, you can jump to the end and simply use the final solution that works for me.
1. LinkWithin
Linkwithin is the plugin that I saw on that website at the small link below the “you might also like” section. I go to the website www.linkwithin.com, register my blog, choose the number of post I’d like to show, and get the wordpress plugin file.
After I install it on the website, the related post starts to show up! Easy and Simple!
But…
Later I found out, that seems only my first 3 to 4 posts are showing up, no matter how different my new posts are related to them.
The setting for the plugin only has one option, which is “show on single posts only”. Not relevant to my problem; I tried to edit the plugin file in the wordpress admin interface, but failed to find any spot in the coding that should be addressing this issue.
I tried to contact through the plugin website, but you can guess what kind of respond will you get from a free plugin…
So although I can see quite a lot of website are using this plugin, it doesn’t work for me.
2. Outbrain
Outbrain.com is the next solutions I came across. Not only can it show your own related posts, you can earn some money by showing sponsored post of other websites who register on the outbrain platform.
I registered and install the plugin. The service need to index the blog content in its own server in order to work. So I leave it there to process.
But after a few hours, it still doesn’t work! At this moment I have no clue whether the problem is the installation or the service. Without sure what to do, I need to find another solution…
(Actually the plugin start to work on the next day. Guess they are too popular and the server are too busy?)
3. nRelate (our choice)
And finally, the solution by nrelate.com. The related post is one of it’s package which has the basic function and also the sponsor post capability.
It also need to index your blog content in order to work. But not like Outbrain, it just takes less than 20 mins to get the job done! And in the mean time, it notify you the status in the plugin setting page so you know what is happening.
So now I finally got the related post, that are actually related posts, running on the blog!
Another thing I like about nRelate is that it offers you quite a few style to choose from:
I actually like the linkwithin style, so I pick that one. 
Hope our trial and error journey can help you save some time. What have your experienced in putting up the related posts? Let us know your thought from by commenting below.
Personal Website Design – Using Personal Website Template to Easily Build a High Quality Personal Website
Having a personal website on your own domain name (such as JohnJackson.com) is an easy and effective way to standout from the crowd.
And thanks to all the genesis around the world, building a beautifully designed personal website can be really easy nowadays with all the plug-n-play systems.
This tutorial will teach you how to build a personal website from scratch using personal website templates. At the end you will have your own personal site such as this one: http://www.websitebuildingtutorial.com/demo-myresume
Time required: 15 minutesLevel: Absolute Beginner
Before we start…
You need to prepared the below before we start:
- A domain name
- Hosting
- WordPress installed
If you don’t have a clue of what these are, don’t worry. Follow our guide below:
Domain name, hosting, and Content Management System
(will be opened in new tab/window)
It only takes 5 minutes.
