Lets Build a Website(prt1)

Ever wanted to have your own website and googled “How to build a website “…flooding the search results with keywords like wix,wordpress,squarespace..etc.Well today anyone can build a website, regardless of technical skill level and to do that there are few things one must know!

The platform

You first got to decide what platform you’re going to build your website with.Platform??Building a website today is accessible to anyone with platforms like wordpress(Content management System) providing a user friendly graphical interface instead of building through languages like PHP,JS,HTML,CSS which can take years to master.

As shown above WordPress (WordPress.org, not to be mixed up with WordPress.com)is the most popular open source CMS on the internet today. WordPress was established way back in 2003 as a blogging platform and has since evolved into a fully functional CMS widely used on any type of website. You can find huge Fortune 500 companies using WordPress, the official Facebook blog or just any news site.
WordPress’ market share is currently around 27% of the entire internet, and almost 60% of common CMS platforms.

Why you should Build with WordPress and not Website Builders?

1. Opensource platform(Yes that’s right,its FREE)
2. Extremly User-Friendly
3. Large community so easy to obtain help
4. Customize as you need
5. You are fully in control

Website platforms like Wix, Squarepace, Weebly can be a good choice too if you don’t want to get your hands too dirty with the hosting and domains but relatively these platforms can be more expensive depending with their plans of course and the limitations depending with the platform

QUICK FACT=RI-SKILLS is powered with wordpress.org

Now that we got the basic idea ,lets get building a website with wordpress.org.
So visit wordpress.org and download the files? No, at this point you don’t go looking for wordpress.org.The first step is to

Find a Domain Name and a Hosting service

To get your site up and running there are 2 requirements that need to be met.

1. A hosting Service
2. A domain name(www.ri-skills.lk)
   Although wordpress is an opensource service,there is a catch.The hosting and domain name is something you should pay to obtain,that can be together less than you spend on a movie ticket

So if your wondering what a domain name is imagine your house as the website.Now for someone to find your house,you will give them your address.The same principle is used here. To identify each site an ip address is allocated.To solve the problem in remembering strings of numbers such as 192.145.6.81,domain name were introduced

Considering the same real life above example, hosting is like the land your house is built on. Hosting companies do this task for you by storing all the files related to the website in special computers called servers.

There exist many hosting services but having a quality service is very important for the performance of your site.You dont want to wait the whole day waiting for a page to load.Some of the famous hosting services are www.bluehost.com,www.hostinger.com that can offer various features such as a domain,SSL,email accounts..etc.Now ofcourse you can host your site by yourself and not depend on a third party company but it is a very complicated process and often wouldn’t be capable of serving your website visitors. Important point to consider when you purchase a hosting plan from hosting providing companies is to check your all needs and purchase the best plan meeting your needs such as the traffic you expect to your site

With a custom domain name(www.ri-skills.lk),you get your own custom email(depending with the hosting plan or domain plan) such as admin@ri-skills.lk or contactus@ri-skills.lk which can be very professional rather than a gmail or yahoo address.

QUICK FACT==RI-SKILLS is hosted through hostgator

so now you chose a hosting company to get your hosting done and a suitable domain name address,you can procede by logging in to your hosting service you purchased and access the cpanel to install wordpress through

using ONE-CLICK-INSTALLATION(Almost all well-established and reliable web hosting companies have integrated one-click installation for WordPress these days.) If this is not a option for you then yes,it is time to go to https://wordpress.org/download/ and follow the documentation in https://wordpress.org/support/article/how-to-install-wordpress/ .

Yes this is the basic installation process and after this is your creativity 100%. You can start exploring and bring a beautiful site to life.

RESOURCES

websitesetup.org

https://www.wpbeginner.com/

SAHIRU ELVITIGALA