How to Build a website in 2023 – A Step by Step Beginner’s Guide

Building a website in 2023 is very simple, there are two easy options available for novices to build a website from scratch. If it's your first time looking to build your own website then there are two easy ways to follow and build a professional website, the first one is using a website builder like Wix, Squarespace, or Weebly and the second option is to use WordPress CMS (Content Management System).

There are plenty more options available for building a website but the mentioned two are the easiest and simplest methods to build a website and doesn't require alot of technical skills.

This guide will teach you both methods of building a website, but before that, you need a few required steps, so let's start from the beginning.

• A Domain Name
• A Webhosting (for self-hosted WordPress)
• Website Builder or CMS
• Contents (images + text)

Selecting a perfect domain for your website is crucial, your domain name is your website identity, and choosing an easy-to-memorize, beautiful-sounding domain is perfect but hard to find. To choose your perfect domain you can ask your friends, and family members, think about yourself, and brainstorm, which will help you find the perfect domain for your next website.

You can also use your social media circle and post to your friends or in groups to help you find a domain name for your website, people will suggest your different names, along with that you can also use different online tools which will help you find the domain name for your website.

when choosing a domain name for your website, you must keep a few rules in mind before proceeding.

• If you want to set up a business website, then your domain name must match your business name.
• If you want to set up a personal website, then your domain name can be your name with TLD like yourname.com or yourname.net, etc.
• Don't dwell too much, most of the popular names are already taken ages ago, so choose wisely from all the available domains.
• You can use online tools which can help you find a good domain name for your website.
• Choose the correct TLD for your domain name (.com, .net, .co, .us, etc).

Some of the online tools which will help you find a domain name are:

• Instant Domain Search
• Shopify Domain Name Generator
• Domain Wheel
• Business Name Generator
  
  You can read this article: How to Find a perfect domain name for Your Website or Business and get a detailed guide.

After finding your domain name, you then need to purchase it before someone else does. so now it depends on your choice, of where you want to purchase the domain name, some of the popular domain name providers are Godaddy, Namecheap, Domain.com, Hostinger, Hostgator, etc.

Also, it depends on your website too, either you are going to use website builders like Wix, Godaddy builder, Squarespace, etc because these builders also offer domain names when your signup with their paid plan. if you want to use a Self-hosted website like WordPress CMS, then you will need to purchase Domain and hosting from any of the above-mentioned companies.

A TLD is the ending part of any domain name like .com, .org, .net, .us, etc. There are hundreds of TLDs available at the moment, google itself provides more than 200+ domain TLDs, so which one is best and most suitable for you to purchase?

The answer is simple, if you want to purchase the domain name for your business then you can use .com or .org TLD. If you want to build a website for yourself or a portfolio, you can use .com, .net, etc. so it depends on your website to choose TLD for, if you are going to use .me TLD for your business then it's not good and search engine is serious about Tlds which you choose.

Also, you can purchase country base TLDs for better local SEO (Search engine optimization), For example, if you are providing service only in the USA, then you can purchase a domain with a TLD of .us, like yourwebsite.us. so be careful to choose the right TLD when purchasing a domain name.

sometimes domain is not available in .com TLD and is available in .net or any other TLD. While choosing a domain name you should consider TLD prior to the purchase.

some of the popular TLDs of 2022 according to the Statista survey

Read More: What is Domain and what is TLD and its type

If you are going to build a website without using any builder then you will need a web hosting.

so what is web hosting?

Webhosting is an online service that enables you to publish your website on the internet by providing space and resources of a computer.

Web hosting will allow you to connect your purchased domain to it using DNS and then host your website files inside that web hosting. There are several 100 companies that provide web hosting services to their customers depending on their needs.

It depends on your website type and your budget. The best web hosting provides quality services, quality services mean guaranteed website availability, fast loading speed, better server-side application, good security, and better support.

After finalizing your budget for web hosting, you need to purchase one. some of the popular hosting providers are Godaddy, Hostgator, Siteground, and Hostinger, which I recommend, but their prices are high compared to other companies which provide the same services.

Check out this guide on how to choose web hosting.

After finalizing the hosting, it's time to connect it with a domain name, so when someone types your domain name in the browser, he/she is able to access your web hosting where all your website files exist.

To connect your domain name with your purchased web hosting, you will need a little bit of technical knowledge. To do so first of all open your domain name DNS record and change the Nameserver of the domain to the one provided by your web hosting.

Another method is to point A record of your domain name to the IP of the web hosting.

I prefer the first method so that you don't get any issues while using your web hosting services like emails etc. After changing the A record or updating the Nameserver it can take from a few minutes to 48 hours to propagate it on the internet so that both web hosting and domain name connect with each other, so the next thing is to wait for both to connect to each other.

Sometimes it's hard to choose between a website builder or using a CMS (content management system). But it all depends on your flavor to choose what you are flexible with, basically, website builders are limited in features compared to CMS like WordPress, and on the other hand website builders like Wix, and Squarespace is easy to work with and doesn't require a lot of knowledge but are limited in functionality.

I will leave this to you, to choose what you are happy with because we are going to cover both of the methods of building a website. we are going to provide you two options.

option 01: Website builder to build a website.

option 02: WordPress CMS to build a website.

Choosing the right builder is crucial, there are multiple website builders like Wix, Weebly, GoDaddy website builder, site123, and the list goes on, but the most popular among all of them is Wix which has millions of users who use it and built their websites. For this specific guide, we are going to use Wix website builder to build our first website.

You are free to choose one of the builders which suit you and your requirements. Choosing a popular builder like Wix mean you have plenty of options on your table, you can also choose other builders like Squarespace which is also getting popular and implementing modern and easy techniques for building websites.

After finalizing and choosing the website builder it is time to see the plans they offer, Wix provides multiple plans depending on your requirements, you can start building a website using Wix for free but you will get a subdomain from Wix like yourwebsite.wix.com which is not counted as professional and you can see the website is built using Wix because you are using Wix domain in your website URL along with that your website will show Wix branding.

For this reason, Wix is offering multiple plans depending on your requirements, here are the two major plans with sub-plans to consider offering by Wix at the moment of writing this guide.

The lowest plan starts from $4.50, In which you will be able to use your custom domain like yourwebsite.com, so starting from the lowest plan is better if you are not sure about the other services/features offered by Wix.

As we discussed above, a domain name is the representation of your business or your website, so choose it wisely with proper TLD. Basically, website builders like Wix, Squarespace, etc offer custom domain names in the paid packages.

if you want to keep upper-level TLD for your domain name then you need to purchase the paid membership which will allow you to connect your chosen domain to your website.

you can check the above comparison of different builder websites and choose the perfect plan by visiting them, we have compared them and their packages, the best among them is Wix for the moment, but Squarespace is also a powerful builder with plenty of options and templates to use for your website.

Upon signup, at Wix.com you will be prompted to create your first website by choosing the premade template, which gives you the primary look of how your website can look alike.

There are hundreds of templates available to choose from the Wix templates library, This template will be the primary look of your website and later on, you can customize this template according to your content to build your website.

Here is step by step guide, on how to choose and customize the Wix template to build a website. Depending on your site niche, you can filter out all the templates available to you and choose the right one which suits your website niche.