How To Build Your Own Website From Start To Finish: Step 1

Myspace is dead… Facebook is being overrun by your parents, uncles and creepy neighbors… Soundclick was cool…back in 1999…  We at The Be A Better Producer Blog think it’s time for you to start promoting yourself and/or your music with your own website.  Whether you want to showcase music, sell beats, bananas or bagels, you will be able to do it after reading this series  no matter what. We will outline this whole process in 3 simple steps. 

How To Build Your Own Website

From Start To Finish!

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Introduction

The idea of building your own website can be intimidating.  Most people assume that you need some sort of computer programming powers.  You don’t… at all.  So the very first thing I want you all to understand is THIS IS NOT DIFFICULT!  IT JUST LOOKS THAT WAY FROM THE OUTSIDE! With the recent advances  in blog publishing software, you can set up your very own (Not myspace’s, soundclick’s, google’s, etc) professional looking website in an hour or less.

For this guide, we are going to use the most popular (and best) of these blog publishers, WordPress.  WordPress is a blog publishing application and content management system.  What that means is that you log into your wordpress account, just like gmail/yahoo mail/myspace/etc and add stuff (posts, pics, mp3′s, videos, etc) to your website.  It’s like myspace & soundclick, but much more customizable and sexier.

Note:  This site (Be A Better Producer)  is a wordpress “blog”.  So is this site… http://www.brawlin.net/blog/ and this one… http://www.kineda.com/ . Although all of these sites are considered “blogs”, they do not have to conform to the old traditional vertical column blog format.  “Blogs” can be customized to look and function just like any other website.

Now we move onto STEP ONE…

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Step 1: You Need A Name!

The first thing you need to decide is the domain name of your website.  The domain name is the address someone is going to type after the www. in their browser.  Take some time and think things out before you pick a domain name.  Also consider a few things…

• Pick something that is easy to remember AND spell! -  Keep things simple.  Try to choose something that is easy for anyone to remember.  Avoid any alternate spellings (like “Musik” and “Beetz” ), unless it is absolutely necessary.   You do not want to confuse a prospective site visitor!

• Go for the .com!  - When you register your domain name, you have the options of various TLD’s ( Aka Top Level Domains, Don’t even worry about what that means).  TLD’s are the little things you put at the end of your domain names, like “.com”, “.net”, “.org” and “.info”.  Naturally, most people are used to typing in .com at the end of domains.  I would advise against getting anything other than a .com… You do not want to confuse a prospective site visitor.

When you have chosen your domain name, its time to head over to a domain registrar.  A domain registrar is a company that you pay and in return they register your domain name for you.  Depending on where you go and what TLD you pick,  owning the rights to your domain name will cost around $7 to $12 for a full year.   There are a bunch of different domain registrars out there, but the only one I have ever dealt with is the biggest, Godaddy.com.  I’ve registered over 200 domain names with them so far and have had no troubles.  They have great customer service and almost always have some sort of sale going on for domain registrations.

So that’s it… We are one third of the way to owning a new website that WE OWN 100%!  Stay tuned for step 2 coming very shortly!