How to Make a Website

May 7, 2012, at 12:52 AM

Series: How to Make a Website

Have you always wanted a super cool website? Do you want to enter the exciting and unfathomably vast and lonely sea of websites and mostly garbage that is the Internet? Do you look at Me with scornful envy in your eyes, cursing and damning and cursing again at my ability to website a whole bunch of times when you could never hope to website? Well, my friend, the time has come to learn that it isn’t that hard to website - in fact, even you can do it! Over the next few posts, I’ll show you every step in the process of putting together and deploying a fully functional blog-based website! No longer will you be held back by your technical ignorance. In a few days, the only thing that will be able to stop you from having your own website is your inability to come up with interesting things to write about.

I am a professional websiteman, by trade - that is, I specialize in doing websites. Aside from DenyConformity.com (pretty much the best website), I’ve made quite a few others for friends, clients, companies, or myself. The hard part is designing and putting together a unique and interesting site layout, and for the most part that’s what I get paid a bunch of money for. It’s actually really easy to website, though, if you don’t mind using pre-made components. Okay, so it’s still pretty complicated, but as long as you follow the proper procedure, for about $100 a year you can have your very own website on your own unique domain name. This is all assuming, of course, that you’ve thought about what you actually want a website for, and have a clear goal in mind for what you want to do with it. I’ll show you the “how” but you have to bring the “why.”

I should mention that this whole guide is about Windows 7. This is all equally easy in Mac OS or Windows Vista, but I don’t have those so I can’t really get screenshots of them.

Part 1: Get Ready to Website

You could make things easier for yourself by just buying a hosting plan and doing everything there, but that’s not the right way to do it. You could end up taking days or weeks (or years) setting up the site, and in the meantime your janky-assed “work in progress” is fully public for the world to see. Sure, you can set it up to show a “coming soon” page and block search engines until you get it finished, but it’s way easier to just set the site up on your computer and then deploy it to your web space.

That Bluehost.com lady is really ready to help you website.

You probably should go ahead and buy your hosting plan right away, though. The sooner you register your domain name, the better, so that nobody else steals it from you. Also, it can take up to a few days for your new domain name to start working, so you might as well do it now. I won’t get into explaining what a web host is, but basically you need a little hard drive to put your website on which is visible to the Internet. There are many companies you can use, and most of them are very similar - just make sure your plan includes a MySQL database (you’ll be hard pressed to find one that doesn’t) and email addresses if you want your own email addresses. DenyConformity.com is hosted on Bluehost, and I’m very pleased with them. Whatever you do, avoid GoDaddy or Startlogic.

Damn, pin15.com is not available.

The process is different based on who you use, but it should be pretty simple. Just find the “sign up now” button and fill in the blanks. Most hosting companies will give you a domain name with your plan, and they will help you register it (and make sure it’s available). There is really a whole industry around picking a domain name, but don’t overthink it. If you’re setting up a personal website, just use your name (dot com). If you have a small business, use the company name - or some variation of it (dot com). You can use a .org or .net address if you absolutely have to, but you should stick with a .com. Also try to avoid dashes, underscores, or other awkward characters; it can be harder to tell people “something dash something dot com” than just “something something dot com.”

What a waste of a perfectly good domain name!

If your preferred domain isn’t available, but it obviously isn’t a real site (like the picture above), it’s probably held by a cybersquatter. These ne'erdowells are the scum of the Internet, but there isn’t much you can do about them. Sometimes GoDaddy can help you buy these domains, usually because they’re the ones illegally holding them. If all else fails, you can do a WHOIS lookup on the domain to get the contact info for the people who registered the domain. Don’t expect much luck, because usually these are very undesirable types, but you never know.

Anyway, once you get the hosting all squared away, they’ll send you an email with a bunch of technical gobbledygook in it about your new website. Make sure you archive, print out, or otherwise save that info in a place. Don’t worry about it for now, but know that it is important. Now you just have to wait patiently for Magic to Happen so that your new website becomes an Internet (it’s all very technical).

Don’t just sit back, though, because you still have a lot of work to do! We’re going to create your website right there on your computer, which means we have to turn your computer into a sort of makeshift Internet. Unfurrow that brow; it’s actually pretty easy.

Open up the Start Menu, and hit the “Control Panel” button. If you don’t have a “Control Panel” button, then you’ll have to get to the control panel a different way. Try just typing “Control Panel” in the search box. Just get to the Control Panel, and then meet me at the next step.

Here’s the default Control Panel view. Click on “Uninstall a program” under “Programs” Don’t worry about your computer being powerful enough to Internet. If it’s running Windows 7 okay, it will be able to Internet okay, at least as much as we’re going to ask it to, which won’t be much. It won’t have to Internet terribly hard.

Look, stop worrying about how many C++ Redistributables I have, and just click “Turn Windows features on or off.” Click “allow” or whatever if Windows gives you guff about wanting to use your computer.

Back in the day you would disable some of these things to save precious Megabytes on your hard drive for sweet games, but with today’s multifoliate Jiggabytes, you can use your computer for years without ever needing to remove Solitaire. Anyway, we want to click the little box next to “Internet Information Services.” That’s what turns your computer into an Internet! Note: I’ll be referring to Internet Information Services as IIS from now on.

This is what should happen when you click the box. It automatically selects the most common options, which includes “Web Management Tools” and “World Wide Web Services.” Also, under “World Wide Web Services” open “Application Development Features” and make sure “CGI” is selected. If for some reason you already have IIS installed, make sure you have subitems installed like you see in the picture above so you can properly website when we get to steps down the road.

After a bit of a wait (but not long enough for me to get a screenshot, apparently), you’ll have to restart your computer. Make sure you save anything you’re working on, like for example a post on your blog that you’ve been working on for like an hour but forgot to save. You don’t want to have to start from the freaking beginning again even though the second time you write it you aren’t anywhere near as funny as the first time.

When your computer comes back up, it won’t look any different - and it won’t behave any differently either (it shouldn’t, at least). However, your computer is now basically an Internet. First you have to know where to go to change important settings for that, and then I'll show you how to view your computer’s adorable little baby website.

Type “Administrative Tools” into your Start Menu, and find the Administrative Tools. It might show up before you finish typing the whole thing, so it will save you some precious finger movements.

This is where you can do some serious Administration on your computer. For now, you want “Computer Management”

Expand “Services and Applications” and pick “Internet Information Services (IIS) Manager” from the list on the left. This is where you tell your computer how to deal with being an Internet. There’s a ton to the IIS manager, but we won’t need to mess with most of it.

You should see this “Connections” section, on the left side of the Management Console. You’ll see your computer’s name (that’s your computer’s name, FYI - mine is called SEPTEM for some reason). Expand that and also expand “Sites” and you should see “Default Web Site.” Click on it. If you don’t have a “Default Web Site,” something has gone wrong. Try removing and reinstalling IIS. I brought you here to show you that your computer is running a tiny little Internet. You’ll need to get back here a few times over the rest of the process, so it’s good to know how to get to the IIS console and your Default Site.

Open a web browser (any will do), and type “localhost” into the address bar. If you see the IIS7 logo, you’re in business! You’re looking at your very own website running right there on your computer. When you go to “localhost” you’re telling the browser to look for a web server on the local computer. If you set up your firewall to allow it and you knew the IP address assigned to you by your ISP, you could view your new little Internet anywhere in the world (as long as your computer was on and your ISP hasn't changed your IP address yet). See my ongoing posts about my web server project for more information about web servers.

So today we (maybe) bought a new hosting plan somewhere and got the ball rolling on getting some real webspace, then we set up IIS and took a look at an adorable little Internet running right there inside your computer. Next time we’ll look at setting up and configuring a new local Web Site, and we’ll install and configure a MySQL database.