What You Need to Build a Website - Checklist
13 Mar 2020
Home » BLOG » Web development » What You Need to Build a Website – Checklist

What You Need to Build a Website – Checklist

Last updated on   by    /   category:  Web development, WordPress
  Buy me a coffee!
4 min read

To build a website, there are four things you need.

Domain Name

What is a domain name

A domain name is a digital address for your website. It is where people can find and access your website. For example, my domain name is applerinquest.com. When you type “applerinquest.com” into browsers such as Chrome, IE, Firefox, or Safari and hit the enter key, you will see my website show up on the browser.

How to name your domain name

To find the right domain name, you want to name that relates to your business or the purpose of your website. Try to keep it simple, memorable, not to be too trendy, and include the local location if you are generating leads for a local business.

For example, if you own a bakery shop named “Bake and Bite”, you may name your domain name “bakeandbite.com”.

Where to register your domain name – Namecheap

Namecheap is one of the popular domain providers. It provides 24 hours of Live support with a real person and it is cheap. The interface of Namecheap has a modern design and is easy to use.

Namecheap offers Free Whois Privacy Protection for every purchase and renewal of a domain. With Whois Privacy Protection, the contact information that you register with your domain name will be hidden from the public. That means you won’t get any spam emails from the spammers. Register or transfer your domain name to Namecheap from this link.

Important note

There is an organization named ICANN (Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers) which is responsible for managing the Domain Name System (DNS). Normally, you don’t need to do anything with ICANN but you have to know about the transfer policy from ICANN. According to regulations established by ICANN, it is not possible to transfer a domain within 60 days of:

– Registering the domain
– Changing the registrant’s contact information
– Transferring your domain between different domain providers

Please contact your domain providers for further information. With Namecheap, you get 24-hour live support which is great for you if you have any questions regarding the domain.

Business Email Address / Contact Email Address

An email address is very important as well as a phone number. Your clients or people can contact you 24 hours a day by sending an email. They can be anywhere in the world but they still can contact you.

You can create your business email with your domain name. For example, your domain name is example.com. You can create “sale@example.com” for inquiry or pre-sale. Or you can use your Gmail account for your contact email if your website is a personal website or blog website like mine.

Platform – WordPress

A platform is a site builder tool in which you make your website. I strongly suggest using a CMS (Content Manage System). The most popular one is WordPress. Of course, your developers can use the framework or other CMS for building a website but with WordPress, the developers can build the website faster using a pre-built theme, and more features are available for both free and paid versions. With WordPress, you can install plugins into your WordPress site quickly (within 1 minute).

I personally use WordPress for building a website and use Codeigniter and Yii2 for building web applications. I am able to say that WordPress is probably the best choice for building your website. CraftCMS is another choice for building the website if you plan to build the mobile app and share the data from the website.

Web Hosting – Kinsta / SiteGround / InterServer

Web hosting is like a virtual house. It is a server that is partly a remote hard drive. All your files, photos, media, and website will be stored on web hosting, and this server will make your files available on the internet.

Since the server stores your website, it’s important to choose a reliable hosting provider to ensure your content is safe from hackers and stays live on the internet with as little downtime as possible.

Kinsta

Kinsta is the best-managed WordPress hosting solution. I use Kinsta hosting for my premium clients who are serious about their websites. Kinsta focuses on speed and high-security networks. Kinsta is always backup and provides a Free hack fix which means if Kinsta finds out that your WordPress site is hacked, Kinsta guarantees they will fix it with immediate priority. Moreover, Kinsta’s support is awesome. They respond to the issue quickly and give the right solution fast.

SiteGround

SiteGround is one of the best web hosting providers in the market. I personally use SiteGround web hosting for my clients. I’m impressed with the support, website performance, and security. The backend interface is a modern design and easy to use. Every WordPress website that is hosted on SiteGroud can use the SG Optimizer plugin which is a cache plugin. This plugin improves the performance of the WordPress site that hosts on the SiteGround server.

The StartUp hosting plan starts as low as $3.95 per month. Below are the SiteGround links that you can look at and buy the hosting plan to fit your needs.

InterServer – affordable hosting plan

InterServer is another web hosting provider that I have been using. This server is great for those on a budget. It is $4 per month. Renewal is still $4 per month. What I like about InterServer are:

  • 99.9% Uptime
  • Ultra-Fast Speeds
  • 24/7 Support
  • Cost

For InterServer, I host WordPress sites, Web applications built with PHP frameworks, and email accounts. I have no issues with them at all. I sometimes have some questions for their support, and they answer me quickly. I live in Thailand and InterServer operates in the USA but I still get the support anytime I need it. Below are InterServer links that you can look at and buy the hosting plan to fit your needs.

Digital Ocean

Digital Ocean is popular among web developers. Digital Ocean focuses only on the needs of the developers. Developers can set up the new droplets by choosing the stack technologies they want. It is straightforward to set up several applications on their droplets. Digital Ocean‘s pricing is affordable. It starts at $5/month which is good enough for a small website. Moreover, the Digital Ocean provides high-performance servers. If you are a developer and comfortable with the command line, Digital Ocean may be your choice.

Infographic

Here is an infographic for a short explanation.

Many clients and friends ask me “What do I need to build a website” often. Hope this article will be useful.