If you want to get your message out to the world, you need to have a website. And it needs to be a decent one if you want anyone to really take you seriously.
But most people out there don’t even know where to start on creating a website. A lot of people end up spending money on a professional website designer. Instead they could put the money to much better use in their business or project.
As a finance blog, on the project we’re undertaking, we just couldn’t justify any extravagance on the website. So we did it ourselves. And whilst it might not look much after just 1 week online, we’re confident that in a couple of months the website is going to be looking great and serving the purpose we need.
In this article, we’re going to share with you how we got ourselves online, and how we built a professional-looking website as cheaply as possible.
Be realistic about what you need your website to do, and your level of expertise
Let’s start with the objective in mind. If you want to do something super-complicated then you might need specialist assistance from a professional.
For instance, if you’re imagining developing the next Facebook, it’s not going to happen without hiring an army of programmers and developers. Trying something as complicated as that with only your basic computer skills and your trusty laptop is going to result in mega-frustration:
The more complicated your site: the more difficult it will be and the more you may need a specialist. Though it’s not a route we’ve been down ourselves, you can get reasonably priced freelancers to work on it from places such as https://www.upwork.com/ or find local specialists who will be able to give you a face-to-face experience – just make sure you do your research on who you’re hiring.
The good news is, however, that if you want something more simple – a blog site like this one, for example – then you can easily do it yourself. That’s going to save you a considerable amount of cash. And that should suit the needs of the vast majority of people out there.
You can make a simple but professional site for your business or project without knowing anything about web design
That’s right. You don’t need to know anything about HTML or CSS (and if you don’t even know what either of those terms refer to, then that’s fine too).
If you’ve got basic levels of computer literacy – and I’m talking about being able to use something as simple as Microsoft Office – then you’ll be able to do your website yourself. That’s as long as you’ve got a bit of patience and are happy to learn a few new tricks.
And of course, that’s going to save you money! We should know because not only did we create this site ourselves, but we’ve created others in the past (some that have received millions of views), in just the same way. In fact, it’s even better than just saving money. It’s entirely possible to make money with a website – through various means.
Here’s how to get your site online:
1. Think of a Domain Name
This step is really hard and it’s not something you really want to rush.
If you already have a business name that you’re trading under, it’s usually just a case of seeing which domain names are available that fit as closely as you can.
But if you’ve not already got a name in mind then you’re going to have to think. And think some more. And then some more still.
To help inspire you, and also point out some of the really useful factors you need to consider when naming your website, check out these articles – the first is a really easy read with some high-level tips, the second is more in-depth:
- How to Choose the Best Domain Name (8 Tips and Tricks) – WP Beginner.com
- Choosing the Domain Name For Your Blog – Problogger.com
For us, the process of deciding on our name, themoneymountain.com was a really tough one, which we took weeks over.
Initially we made the mistake of just brainstorming all kinds of ideas, only to realise that a vast number of them were already taken.
What really helped us focus on the more available names was using a multiple domain name checker: like this one from GoDaddy which is really useful in allowing you to check batches of names and narrow the search down just to the extensions you are interested in (e.g. ‘.com’). By the way, we’d usually recommend you choose ‘.com’ too.
When we narrowed our list down to actual names that were available, it really sped up our process – even though it still took a couple of weeks of dwelling on whether we were really going with the right option. But that’s fine, it’s worth thinking hard about – you don’t want to go changing it once you’ve got your site up and running.
2. Register your website address (‘domain name’)
A domain name in your head is no use at all. Once you’ve checked it’s actually available, you’ve got to register it in order to make it your property.
There are lots of companies out there that can do this for you and all you need to search for is ‘domain name registration’ in order to bring up a whole list of providers that you can compare and contrast. Essentially though, the service you want is quite basic – you just need to get them to make you the legal owner of your chosen website domain.
Note that when you’re buying your hosting (see below), some hosting providers such as bluehost will offer domain name registration services as part of the deal. Before you register your domain name, it’s also worth working out who you’re going to host it with.
The key things to look out for when choosing a service for registering your domain name is:
a) Cost
The most important thing to check is the ongoing renewal fees. If you’re likely to be in business for a while, then it’s the ongoing cost that you really need to worry about. Look past the initial teaser period and see what your ongoing cost is going to be.
b) Features included in that cost
Registering a site is all the same, whoever you do it with, right?
Well, kind of. The ownership of all sites must be centrally registered and this is a largely administrative job that you’re paying a company to do.
But there are other things that they may throw in, and you should check if these are included as standard or if there will be additional cost. The two that we think are key are:
- Whois privacy – All website owners need to register their details into a central database called whois. Every website will be on here and is searchable. You can give it a try at: https://whois.icann.org/en . Ideally you probably don’t want the details displayed to be your home address and your personal email – at least not if you want to avoid huge amounts of spam. So, that’s where whois privacy comes in: your chosen company will put their own details in there instead of yours, thus relieving you of sack-fulls of spam. A lot of providers charge extra for this service.
- Email forwarding – When you create a domain, you may well be wanting to set up an email address like you@yourdomain.com so that you get that extra air of professionalism. Make sure that you’ve got a provider who will let you create such an email address and provide free email forwarding to your personal email address (as you’re likely to find that the email system offered by your host isn’t that good).
Our recommendation on domains
Obviously, feel free to shop around and find your own provider, but on balance we decided that the best domain name provider for this site was Google Domains.
We picked it for the following reasons:
- Pricing – simple, competitive and transparent. There’s no weird introductory offers – they just tell you what you’ll be paying annually. When we compared that to other providers it was very good value.
- Free whois privacy – on the whois database it’s not our own address that will be showing up. So when we get our first themoneymountain.com superfan we won’t have to worry about being stalked. 🙂
- Free email forwarding – You can create up to 100 emails with your domain name ending, and google will forward them to your personal email address, for free. Then you can deal with them in your usual hotmail, gmail, or whatevermail inbox. (Downside with this method is that when you reply it will come from your personal email).
- Google email integration – If you eventually want to step it up further then you can purchase G Suite email, which will allow you to create custom email addresses for your domain and manage all your mail from one inbox. Each user subscription includes 30 GB of online storage, plus other features and online support. For this you have to pay a monthly subscription which we’ve not done right away, but one day when the budget allows, we might.
- Having the google name behind it – yeah, google aren’t perfect, but you know it’s a massive company who shouldn’t let you down.
3. Purchase Hosting
If you didn’t know, Web hosting is the term for the service where your website is stored (on things that are referred to as ‘Servers’). It’s from there that every one of your readers or customers will be able to access your website content when they go online and type your website address into their browser.
In our opinion, choosing your hosting is a more important decision than choosing your domain name provider. Not only is this going to be your largest ongoing expense, but it’s also going to be the thing that determines how fast your site runs, and also how difficult or easy it is to get support with any hosting issues that may arise.
So, here’s what you want to look out for when you’re choosing a hosting provider:
- Cost: Look beyond initial introductory periods and see how much you’ll be paying overall. Also, check for any hidden costs.
- Server space, speed and reliability: Check out how much space there is (i.e. storage for your site), and how quick it will run. You can find speed comparisons of the major hosting providers online.
- Bandwidth and usage limits: Ideally, you want as few limits as possible, so that you don’t have to pay extra fees as your site grows.
- Ease of setup and ongoing support services: You want a hosting provider that can get you online quickly and that will provide good ongoing support. Having 24-hour chat support can be helpful, especially when you’re raging about why your site is down at 2am.
- Number of domains you can host: you might just have one site now, but do you want more in the future? If so, pick a package that allows multiple domains.
- Integration with WordPress: Most simple websites, including ours, are hosted on WordPress these days. So, unless you know what you’re doing coding and programming, you absolutely must have WordPress underpinning your site – good news, it’s free!
What does The Money Mountain Use and Recommend for Hosting?
Here at TMM, we did a lot of shopping around. A LOT.
We need a good quality hosting package (with excellent WordPress integration) at the most competitive price possible.
Eventually, we settled on using Bluehost, which is one of the largest, best established and highest quality hosts out there. In our opinion, the total package that they can offer self-hosted WordPress sites makes it a clear favourite.
Bluehost also offer deals, and you can check them out here. They’re known to be great for WordPress, but you need to make sure you ask for it to be installed when you’ve purchased your hosting (there’s no extra charge for this). Their packages basically look like this (if you’re wondering, we went with the basic package):
Can you have a different website host and domain name provider?
Yes, you most definitely can. As we’ve said above, we felt that the best option was to have our domain name registered by Google Domains and our website hosted by Bluehost.
All you need to do is to go into your control panel where you’ve registered your website (in our case in Google Domains) and point the nameservers to your hosting providers (in our case Bluehost). It’s very easy and can be done by a complete amateur, like your good self. Whichever provider you go with, they will have instructions that you can follow to do this.
4. Get WordPress Up and Running
If you’ve done steps 1-3 then you’re now ready to begin using WordPress. You should have it installed and you’ll now need to begin to create an account and get your site up and running.
But wait, what is WordPress?
WordPress is an online, open source website creation tool. It’s generally regarded as the easiest and most powerful blogging and website content management system (or CMS) in existence today. The chances are that nearly all of your favourite blogs are hosted by this. A good number of major company websites are also using this platform too.
It’s really a framework for making and maintaining websites that takes all of the hassle out of knowing anything about web design, and boils it all down to a easily manageable interface. If you’re able to handle Microsoft Office, you’ll be able to handle WordPress. It’s not complicated.
Here’s how your dashboard within WordPress will look – in fact here’s a screenshot of me writing this very article ( you should be able to click on the image to enlarge it):
As you can see, it is a really straightforward interface.
Pick a Theme
You’ll want to pick a WordPress Theme, in order to make your site stand out from the crowd. There are loads of themes available, and each of them can be further customised.
To find all the themes available, and also to download them straight into WordPress, check the left-hand-menu in your WordPress dashboard that says Appearance > Themes. That will take you to a theme library looking like this:
Clicking on a particular theme will allow you to preview and then install and apply it.
What theme did we choose for The Money Mountain?
We chose a premium theme: Lifestyle Pro by StudioPress.
It costs a bit more – around $100 for the Genesis Theme Framework, which you must run to use the StudioPress theme – but we feel it gives a bit extra user interface and also a professional look to it. You don’t need to pay for a premium theme though. (It actually cost us a bit less as we already purchased the Genesis theme for another site. So we just had to pay for the ‘child theme’ on top of that – around $30).
If you want more information on using Genesis StudioPress for a Website Theme – you can read it here.
5. Experiment and Make Your site Your Own
If you’ve done all of the above you’re ready to make your website whatever you want it to be! All you now need is to learn some basics about WordPress and have a play around.
Rome wasn’t built in a day, and your site won’t be either.
Think of it as a construction site for the time being. One that you’re going to have to chip away at until your visitors are going to be impressed with it. But eventually, they’ll love it!
As to us, how did we learn to use WordPress? Well, 2 out of the 3 of us took a 1-day course a couple of years back and it turned out to be money very well spent. It’s really not hard to master the basics of WordPress in just one day, but you don’t have to do it this way. There are plenty of online resources out there, and we’d recommend you start with something like this:
- A beginner’s guide to setting up on WordPress: https://websitesetup.org/ (you can skip straight to step 3 as we’ve covered 1 and 2 above).
Good luck, have fun and welcome to the world of self-hosted websites. At times they’re going to frustrate you, but we’ve found them to be a really fun, rewarding experience. Not only are you going to learn a skill by doing this yourself, but you’re also going to save yourself a lot of money in the process!
Affiliate Links
The above links to the Genesis framework and to Bluehost are affiliate links. It’s only fair to tell you that. If you click on them then it doesn’t cost you anything. You’ll still pay the same competitive price on any purchases on that site. But this site will receive some income from it, which will help us keep doing what we’re doing. 🙂