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Complete guide on how to create your own website - for beginners

A quick full guide showing how to create your own modern website without being dependent on others - and how to avoid most common mistakes. Both for small businesses and personal websites.

This tutorial will show you:

Advanced topics: Imprint? SSL? Fonts? Cookies? etc

Let's start:

Step 1: Find a free domain name

First, you will have to think about a domain name for your website. Like example.com or johns-best-tomato-soups.com or similar. To find out if the domain you want to get is still free, use a domain registation lookup tool, like for example ICANN Lookup or whois:

Just enter the name of the domain you want and click 'lookup'. If you get a message like "The requested domain was not found [...]", then the domain is likely still free.

⚠ Important: Do not use the similar tools of a webhosting provider to check if a domain is still free. Some webhosting providers are known to buy a free domain after you looked it up, in an attempt to later sell it to you for a larger price.

Step 2: Create your website

Before getting the domain for your website, it is a good idea to create your website. During this process, you usually get the idea if the domain name you've chosen is actually a good one and fitting your needs - so in case your change your mind on a name, it's not to late yet.

Creating modern websites today

Creating a website today is a bit more complicated than it was a few decades ago, because people expect websites today to fullfill quite a few requirements. They need to be:

Responsive: This means they need to work nicely on all types of screens and devices: From smart phones to desktop PCs.
Be fast and snappy: Even on slow phones your website needs to be usable
Findable by search engines: This is called SEO and important so that users can find your website at all

Fortunately, there are free editors available which let you create website with all these features easily.

⚠ Important: Some editors will try to "lock you in": When you create your website with an editor like this, it is sometimes not easily possible to move your website to another place or use your website without this editor anymore. Be sure to use an editor which doesn't do this.

For this tutorial, to create the website, we will use the website builder RocketCake:

It's free in the basic edition and enough to create a useful website easily. It works like a text editor similar to Microsoft Word but can create responsive websites. But you can use any other good WYSIWYG offline desktop editor as well for this.

Design your website according to your needs

Download, install and start RocketCake. Then you can start with an empty website or with one of the existing templates.
There is a detailed tutorial on how to create responsive websites with RocketCake, but it is rather easy:

Place some containers, enter some text, add components like a navigation menu and images, and you are done:

You can use the container feature by adding a container element to your page. This container will act as a wrapper for your content, helping to control its layout and responsiveness. Inside the container, place your content elements such as text, images, or other components. Adjust the properties of the container, such as width, padding, and margins, to ensure your content adapts well to different screen sizes. Add more containers if you like, for more content.

When you click "Preview" you can see how your website looks in the browser already. Be sure that the website looks nicely on various screen sizes - you can just resize the browser window to see how it looks, and in RocketCake, move the slider on the bottom of the editor to see it in the editor. Again, if interested, see the detailed tutorial on how to create the website in detail.

Once you have the website created, publish your website (click "publish to local disk") and now you only need to upload it to the internet.

Step 3: Publish your website on the internet

To be able to upload your website to the internet, you need a webhosting service. That's also where you usually can buy a domain in the same process. There are many webhosters around, and googling for "webspace" or "webhosting" will help you find one quickly. For a small website, you won't need much: A bit of space (for a small static website, a few MB are enough already!), and it's always a good idea that your webhosting package supports PHP and has the option to add a SSL certificate, like a free one from Let's Enrypt.

Once you have decided for a websting provider and bought a package, you can connect to your webspace using FTP (or FTPS, or SFTP - which are the more secure variants of FTP). Usually, you get a password and username and an URL like ftp://example.com to log into your website. Use a free FTP client program like Filezilla for this. Then, there is usually a directory where you can upload your website to.

Tip: Once you figured out how to connect to your webspace using FTP, you can also upload your website using RocketCake with just one click. Use the "Upload to the Internet" button for this, and enter the same URL and username and password as you used with your FTP client.

Common Pitfalls to avoid when creating a website

When creating a website, there are sometimes some pitfalls to avoid. Here are some of the most important ones:

Image licenses

When creating your website, you usually want to add some images to it to make it look nicer. Be sure not to use any random images you find on the internet - they belong usually to someone and you usually don't have a license to use them. You can buy cheap licenses for images from stock image websites like "Adobe Stock" and similar, but there are also free stock image websites. The images in the free template websites of RocketCake are free as well.

Online Website builders

You might notice that there are online site builders with which it is possible to click websites easily together. Note that when using them, you will be likely locked into their framework. Moving your website away from such a builder or extening your site further is often not or not easily possible afterwards. You likely won't have access to an independent code base of your site anymore and are now depending on this system from now on. It's always a good idea to use an offline desktop editor instead which creates your HTML pages on your own PC/Mac where you have full access to. That way you stay independent and you have full control of your site and your costs.

Search engines

In order to make your website rank nicely on search engines, focus on choosing relevant keywords related to your website's content and incorporate them naturally into your website's text, headings, and meta tags. It's important that the 'title' of your websites are descriptive of the content, and that you add a description meta tag to each page.

Ensure that your website is mobile-friendly and loads quickly, as user experience is a crucial ranking factor (see next paragraph). Additionally, create high-quality, original content that provides value to your visitors. Utilize descriptive URLs, optimize images with alt text.

Then, you can submit your new website to search engines like Google: You can manually request Google to crawl and index your website through Google Search Console. Also, it is a good idea to promote your website: Share your website's URL on social media platforms and consider building backlinks from reputable sources to improve its visibility.

Mobile and Desktop users

Websites today need to work seamlessly across both mobile and desktop platforms. Using a WYSIWYG (What You See Is What You Get) editor like RocketCake makes this process of creating responsive websites a lot easier, but you still need to test if your website works nicely both on phones as on PCs or Macs. But you can preview how your website works on most devices with a small trick: In your browser (for example Chrome or Edge) press CTRL+Shift+I. Then, the developer tools will open. Now press CTRL+Shift+M, and a toolbar opens where you can select how your website will look like on a specific device (like the iPhone 11).

Further common questions for website creators

Do I need an imprint?
This depends on the juristiction of your country. But for example for Germany and Austria: Yes, you most likely need to have an imprint on your website.

Where do I buy a Domain and Webhosting?
Depends on your country, situation an budget. The best option is to buy some webhosting from a company in the same country or at least time zone where you are in - so they can help you easier just in case. Domains are usually included when buying a web hosting package - use that, it's easier that way.

Do I need to get a Vertrag zur Auftragsverarbeitung (DSGVO / GDPR)
Yes, usually you have to nowadays. Most hosters today have an automatic mechanism for this contract which you can start by clicking some button when logged in on their web interface.

Where do I get an analytics tool for analyzing the traffic on my website?
For most small websites, the built-in stats of your webhoster usually are enough. For more details, use a sophisticated tool like Google Analytics or Matomo. It's at least a bit controversial if they are data-protection-compliant, but their respective websites will tell you if and how they are.

Do I need Cloudflare or Google Cloud CDN? Or Amazon Cloud?
No, for small or mid-sized websites you won't need it. Should your website become huge and very popular, you might need them later, but in that case you will start getting lots of other problems earlier, and need people to help you anyway.

Is my website SSL/TLS enrypted? Should it be?
Today, usually, they are by default encrypted like this. You'll notice that your website's address starts with "https://" instead of "http://" or that the browser doesn't show a scary looking symbol next to your address. If it does not have encryption, it usually is just a click to enable this feature in your webhoster's admin panel. They offer usually some type of encryption certificate like "Let's encrypt" which is even free.

Do I use cookies on my website?
For simple static websites, usually not. If you don't know if you are using cookies, you are likely not using them. Cookies are usually only for doing more advanced stuff like when a user needs to log in into your website and similar.

Do I use google forms?
Likely not if you don't know that you are using them.

What fonts do I use on my website? Do I need Adobe Fonts? Google Fonts?
The operating systems (Android/Windows/macOS/iOS) today have a lot of good looking fonts built-in. And the editors (like RocketCake as used in the tutorial above) know how to use those. If you only use built-in fonts, you won't need Adobe Fonts or Google Fonts, and even better: Your website will load much faster. But in case you want to use some specific font, you can do that, but of course be sure to buy the correct license for using it.