Setup your website in 4 easy steps - Gameplan Financial Independence

To setup your website is a very straight forward process.

Now, in this guide we will focus on the key components to start your website and get your money making website up and running.

After completing the four steps below you will have setup your website and you are online with your very own website.

But first, let’s look at how it all fits together.

Understanding what makes a website work

To setup your website and get it up and running you need a

domain name
website hosting company
content management system
design

The domain name is your address on the World wide web. After all, how else will your customers be able to find you. Our domain name or address — URL — is gameplanfi.com. You will need to think of and register your own domain name.

Think of your domain name as the name of your shop.

Next step in the setup of your website is to find a website hosting company. This is the company where we host or store all the pages that make up our website. When someone types in gameplanfi.com the website hosting company receives the request and proceeds to show the visitor our website.

Think of your website hosting company as the shopping mall where your shop (domain name) is located.

A web hosting company gives your website a virtual presence the same way a shopping mall gives a shop a physical presence.

There is one more minor detail that is important to know when it comes to website hosting and that is SSL – Secure Socket Layer. Please note that I did say know as in know about – you do not need to understand how it works.

Just know that SSL allows the communication between the website and the website visitor to stay safe and secure from anyone trying to listen to the information being transmitted.

It used to be that only payment pages were secure with SSL as payment details like card data were being transmitted. But today websites use SSL for all pages and the word on the street is that the search engines prefer SSL – that is https is better than http.

Next we need a content management system that will give us a non-techie and user friendly interface to create and manage our website pages.

Think of your content management system as the tool that helps you create the layout of your physical shop. Where do you want the windows, the doors and changing rooms?

And finally to setup your website we need a design.

Think of the design as the look and feel of your physical shop and shop front window. Think color, style, furnishings and lighting.

There you have it – and if you are ready, let’s move on to make it happen.

To setup your website the quick and easy way

To setup your website and get up and running you need to complete the following steps.

Register a domain name
Set up your website hosting company
Set up the content management system
Select your design

The good news is that we will complete step 1 through 3 in one easy transaction.

Your domain name

But first you need to decide on and choose a domain name.

Believe me when I say that most people spend way too much time choosing the “perfect name”. It is of course important that you like your name but also keep in mind that nobody knew what a Google or Twitter was before Google and Twitter so to speak.

My advice in choosing a domain name: make 3 lists of words per below.

1. Niche specific words

tulip, rose, lawn, dew, dandelion, plant, pot, blossom, lavender

2. Colors and descriptive words

pink, strong, hungry, northern, fast, slow, crimson, southern

3. Short, strong unusual words

go, sherpa, lion, north, south, ice

These lists would generate candidates such as:

- crimsonrose.com/net/info/de/co.uk/etc..
- northerndew.com/net/info/de/co.uk/etc..
- southernblossom.com/net/info/de/co.uk/etc..
- pinkdandellion.com/net/info/de/co.uk/etc..
- golavender.com/net/info/de/co.uk/etc.

When you have a list of at least 10 candidates it is time to register our domain name and sign up for website hosting – and we do this in one and the same step to take advantage of available discounts.

Website hosting company

I recommend that you start with Bluehost. They have plans starting from as low as USD 2.95 per month and features include:

free Domain Name for 1st Year
free SSL Certificate Included
1-Click WordPress Install
24/7 Support

It is a really good deal and you can always change to a different hosting company later but Bluehost is a good starting point and offers great value.

To register your domain name and sign up for hosting you click the link below: https://www.bluehost.com/

Basic Plan is usually enough and you can choose whether you want to sign up for 12, 24 or 48 months.

If you ask me I would recommend 12 months as it is impossible to know your wants and needs regarding website hosting a year from now.

After selecting the Basic Plan we move on to the page where we will use our list of potential domain names.

Register your domain name

I recommend that you register the domain name straight away even if Bluehost invites you to come back later. After all, we do not need to wait. We did the work and we have our list.

Use the potential domain names on your list and do not get discouraged if some of them are not available. This is the reason we wrote down a minimum of 10 alternatives.

When one of our potential domain names is accepted we are taken to the signup page where we enter personal and/or company information, suffer through a myriad of up-sells and enter card / billing details.

SSL is included and I only select the Domain Privacy + Protection for about USD 1 per month. This protects us from receiving all kinds of irrelevant sales offers by post, mail and even phone. Well worth it in my opinion.

When payment is accepted we are taken through to the Bluehost admin panel where we receive login details and are presented with the option for 1-Click WordPress Install.

Content management system

The content management system WordPress will give you a point-and-click interface to manage your website. You do not need to know how to program or write code to write and format your articles.

Even better, you take advantage of Bluehost’s 1-Click WordPress Install and then you wait for a couple of minutes and there you have it. Your content management system is installed.

You are now set-up and ready to go!

Design

To finalise setting up our website we move on to step 4 to choose a design.

It is actually not urgent at this stage but it is a good introduction to WordPress as a content management system.

WordPress was installed as a part of our signup with Bluehost. And in this process WordPress was linked to our newly chosen and registered domain name.

With this standard installation we were also, by default, given the standard design template. You can see the design chosen by logging into WordPress using your URL and adding /wp-admin.

You then use the login details from your Bluehost signup to sign in.

When inside you choose Appearance > Themes.

When you click the Add New Theme icon you are taken to a page where you can Install and Activate a number of new and free (as in included) Themes or Designs.

If you hover over any listed Theme the Install and Preview buttons appear.

Here I decided to Install the new Twenty Twenty-One Theme and as you can see I now have the Activate and Live Preview options. To change your design theme to Twenty Twenty-One you simply click Activate.

So there you have it, we have now completed the 4 necessary steps to start your website.