Earn money by doing what you love, look for like-minded people, declare yourself - everything is possible on the Internet if you have a website
Building a website takes time and knowledge. Professional developers have the knowledge, so they will do it quickly, but they will charge money for it. If you decide to do it yourself, you will have to spend time, but there will be money left for promotion and optimization.
Below is an overview of how to create a site and detailed instructions. Let's start with the goals, look at the components, explore popular engines and site builders, go through the technical details and end with a list of free services to support the site after it is created.
Straight to the point
The most affordable way to make a website without the help of developers is to use the free "engine" WordPress. To do this, you first need to buy a domain and hosting. Read more in the section Hosting and CMS as a universal solution.
Content
Website: when it is needed and to whom to entrust it.
What is important to know before development.
Ways to create a website.
Hosting and CMS as a universal solution.
What to do after creating a site.
Website: when it is needed and to whom to entrust it
When is a website needed?
In Russia, more than 80 million people go online every day. On the web, they read the news and learn about the weather, watch movies and listen to music, communicate with friends and pay taxes, but also look for dentist contacts, choose a nanny for a child and order food.
If you need an audience, you need the internet. Your page is one of the ways to present yourself on the Internet: to show works to an artist, to find clients for businesses, to raise money for a good cause for public organizations.
A website can be a business in itself. When the author creates interesting content and receives money for advertising that is broadcast while watching it.
When the site is not needed
You can reach Internet users in many ways, not only through the site. There are social networks, instant messengers and other platforms where the audience has already been gathered and there are tools for communicating with it.
When the entire audience is concentrated within one social network or messenger, it is enough to create a group in them. It's free and easy to find an outlet for the right people:
a small fitness room - a group in the messenger,
handmade things shop - VKontakte account,
hairdresser or stylist - Instagram account.
A group on a social network is not suitable if you want to get traffic from search, set up ads outside of one social network, or make money on your site.
If you want to create a portfolio or a blog, pay attention to specialized services.
When You Shouldn't Do Your Own Website
Sometimes it is better to trust a web studio or a private web developer.
If it is an online store with a catalog of more than 1 thousand items. Navigation, filters, payment modules - all this is best done by professionals.
If this is an important image project. In addition to designing and layout of the site, web studios create a corporate identity and logo, help with texts and illustrations.
If this is a web application: there are interactive elements, a personal account. Such sites are difficult to develop and optimize. The web studio will make sure that the project is adapted to different devices, loads and works quickly.
What is important to know before development
Everyone who has ever been on the Internet has a basic understanding of how websites work: you enter the address in the browser, the browser opens the page - nothing complicated. But for development, you need to know more.
Why know the theory
Agencies and freelance web developers take advantage of ignorance: they charge dearly for a simple task, because no one knows that it is simple. It is difficult to make a client who understands the principles and components of the site work overpay. After reading this section, you will be able to estimate the cost of the work and take some of them (or even all) for yourself.
To put it very simply, a website is a file with content and code. In our case, the content is a description of the company and services, illustrations and screenshots of products, customer reviews. Content is organized on the page: description in one place, illustrations in another, testimonials in a third.
In order for the content to be beautifully displayed on the page (and generally displayed), it is wrapped in code (HTML, PHP, etc.). The code is not visible on the site, but it is there. The more complex the layout, the more code. The ISPsystem home page contains 46,000 characters, and the Facebook code is over 670,000 characters (the same as in the three volumes of "War and Peace"). No code whatsoever.
Files with content and code are stored on a computer (server) in the data center. The server is constantly turned on and special software is installed on it so that any Internet user can access it. Usually servers are rented, and this service is called hosting.
To access the server, you need an address. The server has a real IP address and it looks something like this: 10.0.0.0/8, and there is a "human-readable" one, and it looks like this: ispsystem.com. The human-readable address of the place where the site is located is a domain name.
Let's say we want to go to the ISPsystem website. We enter the domain in the address bar, the browser finds the real address of the server where the content is located, accesses it, takes the files and shows us. If we type something on the page, the browser sends it to the server. That's all.
Without which the site cannot exist
Domain name. Without it, your project cannot be found.
Hosting. Without it, the site is anywhere, but not on the Internet.
The code. Without it, browsers cannot render content.
Content. Without it, it is not clear what you want to say.
What should and should not be paid for
To create a website, you need to prepare the content, wrap it in code, upload it all to the server and bind a domain name to it. You can do most of the actions yourself, but it is important to understand what this is fraught with and what you still have to pay for.
Content - absolutely free
You can prepare a story about yourself or the company, photos and descriptions of services, customer reviews yourself for free. For example, if you have a car repair shop, you can easily describe your services, take photos of the workplace and take feedback from customers, or if you are a designer, then say a few words about yourself and show examples of work. You don't have to pay for it.
If the content is especially important—you want to generate leads for free from search, or you have a huge product catalog—it will take time to create. If you have no time to do it yourself, you can pay for it, if you have time, you can do without.
Code - free
If you are not a web developer, writing code from scratch will not work. But this is not necessary, you can use ready-made templates. It's like building a house not from clay, but from bricks or larger blocks. It's quite easy to use constructors, it's a little more difficult to deal with "engines" (CMS), and developers use frameworks like Angular and React. We talk in detail about website builders and engines in the second part of the guide.
When using designers or CMS, all that remains is to customize the template for yourself and add content. The resulting site may not be unique and not ideally suited to the needs, so for fine-tuning, you will need to study special literature. If the task is difficult, you can seek the services of professional web developers. But this is not necessary either.
Hosting - better pay
Every website needs hosting. The larger the project, the more space it needs. Hosting can be organized at home on your computer, but we do not recommend (if you decide, there are instructions on the Internet). You can also get free hosting if you use the constructor. Conditionally, because with growth you still have to pay, more details in the section Constructor or CMS: which is better.
When using templates and CMS, you will need to buy hosting. It is not difficult to do this and it is inexpensive, from 200 rubles per month for several gigabytes of space. More about this in the "Buy Hosting" section.
Domain - you have to pay
When search engines, users and partners learn about the site, they save a link to it in bookmarks and databases. Any change to the domain leads to a decrease in traffic. Therefore, it is better to buy a domain immediately and not change it. Typically, a domain is rented for a year.
You can get a third-level domain like site.sitebuilder.ru for free. They are received by sites created on constructors. A third-level domain works, but it is less remembered and looks frivolous; monetization cannot be connected to sites with such a domain. So it's best not to rely on it.
What You Shouldn't Pay For
If you need a business card page, you should not pay for its creation. Freelancers on exchanges take from five thousand rubles for installing a CMS and filling it with content. But you can create a website in this way yourself for free. All you need to do is rent a hosting, install a CMS and fill it with content. How to do this, read in the section Hosting and CMS as a universal solution.
m design or corporate portal.
Ways to create a website
Define goals
Above, we have already talked about situations where the site is not needed and you should not do it yourself. If you still decide, then the first thing you need is to decide on the goals. What is it for you?
It depends on the goals what type of site suits you and what tools it is better to make.
Types of sites depending on the goals.
Sell — landings, online stores.
Submit - business card site.
Show - portfolio, blog.
Below you will find a description of the designers of different types of sites, as well as a description of the "engines" of sites. Choose the right tool for your goals.
Website builders: what is it and what are
Sitebuilders replace both the web developer and hosting
The easiest way to get your page online is to use a page builder or site builder. This is a site where you can create a site. You don’t need to know programming languages, you don’t need to buy hosting and a domain, it’s enough to be able to use a mouse. Registered, selected a template, configured its content, added content - you're done. Easier nowhere.
Website builders are paid services, but most of them have shareware plans. There are two problems with them. First: on a free plan, it is almost always impossible to link a domain to a site. If you gain an audience and then connect a domain, the project will lose traffic, because it will be new for search engines. The second problem: if you want to transfer the site to another hosting or add your own elements to the code, you won’t be able to do it for free. So:
The free plan of the designer is suitable for portfolios, business card sites, portals of small companies and non-profit organizations.
The free builder plan is not suitable for online stores, blog sites, and media sites with growth potential.
For more on the pros and cons of website builders, see the “Builders and CMS: which is better” section. Below we consider the most popular services with free tariffs.
Universal
For e-commerce
With a focus on design
Universal
Google Sites is a completely free website builder from Google. The interface resembles the Google Slides app. You can add text, illustrations, buttons, maps, documents, tables. There are few themes and templates, the functionality is limited, but sufficient to create a simple adaptive site. You can also link a domain for free.
Examples:
bus station,
the property.
WIX is the most popular website builder in the world. Suitable for companies and private users.
Free: subdomain on wix.com, five hundred design templates, adaptability, integration with payment services, artificial intelligence for automatic site creation. There is a download speed limit.
What to pay for: second-level domain, connecting your own domain, removing Wix ads, adding performance and storage space. A subscription to the services costs between $4 and $24 per month.
Examples:
photographer,
pasta bar,
vintage shop.
Ucoz is suitable for companies and organizations for which design is not as important as the ability to quickly and free of charge present themselves on the web. There are more than a million sites on RuNet on Ucoz, but there are a lot of negative reviews in the reviews of this constructor. Study before use.
Free: subdomain and hosting, templates, modules. Responsiveness and SEO optimization is not supported.
What to pay for: for domains, PHP, templates on uTemplate - from 8 to 20 dollars. The company has another constructor - uKit. This is a paid project with design templates, responsiveness and SEO optimization support. It costs from 4 to 12 dollars a month.
Examples:
community of teachers,
sports analytics,
blog about tilda dolls.
Jimdo - a site in three minutes using a questionnaire or using a standard constructor. Promise optimization for Google and adaptability. Interface in English.
Free: jimdofree.com subdomain, 500MB storage, 2GB bandwidth, HTTPS encryption. Plus advertising service.
What to pay for: domain, extended memory and bandwidth, mobile optimization, SEO optimization, online store module, expert help. It costs 5 euros per month for personal projects, and 15 euros per month for companies and entrepreneurs.
Examples:
coffee house,
clothing store,
artist page.
For e-commerce
Weebly is an e-commerce builder. There are design themes for portfolio and blog, but specialization is online stores.
Free: weebly.com subdomain, design themes, 500MB storage, SEO.
What to pay for: for connecting your domain, advanced statistics, site search, online trading modules, etc. It costs from 3 to 19 euros per month.
Examples:
Handmade soap,
designer clothing,
yoga supplies.
Bitrix 24 is a customer management system (CRM). Services are paid, but there is one free plan and it includes a constructor. Sites on Bitrix 24 include tools for sales and communication with customers, contacts are immediately entered into CRM.
Free: templates, modules, integration with CRM, 12 users, 5 GB in the cloud, the ability to create a store, connect chat and calendar. You can connect your own domain or place the project on the bitrix24.site subdomain. The site is adapted for mobile devices, but is deleted after 50 days of inactivity.
What you pay for: More users, more disk space, better customer and team experience. The cost is from 990 to 9990 rubles.
Examples:
hardware store,
illustrator,
fence shop.
Ecwid is an online store builder. You can create a website, or you can create a showcase, and integrate it into social networks or other platforms (Wix, WordPress, Weebly, Joomla).
Free: 10 products, adaptability, subdomain and the ability to link your domain.
What to pay for: support, more products, enhanced SEO, cost calculation, social media store, mobile app, and more.
Examples:
jerky,
socks,
clothes with prints.
Nethouse is a shareware website builder for selling services. Does not provide a subdomain, you must either buy a domain from them or from another registrar. Adaptive templates, product catalog, uploading orders to Excel and Yandex.Market.
Free: unlimited hosting, own domain, adaptability, 10 products in the catalog and 100 photos, accepting online payments and statistics. Website with Nethouse advertising strip.
What to pay for: for increasing the number of products in the catalog and photos, for sharing access rights, managing Yandex.Advisor. The cost of paid tariffs: 299 and 499 rubles / month.
Examples:
Handicraft,
pizzeria,
photographer.
With a focus on design
Tilda Publishing is a design-focused builder. An important difference: the code of the site created on Tilda can be downloaded, but you have to pay for it.
Free: subdomain on tilda.ws, up to 50 pages and 50 MB on the server, "made on Tilda" label.
What to pay for: connecting your domain, inserting html code, accepting payments, uploading your fonts, adding data collection forms. Paid plans cost $10 and $20 per month.
Examples:
fruit shop,
digital agency,
the festival.
Readymag - websites, magazines, photo stories, portfolios, presentations. If you need a bold design. Suitable for designers and editors.
Free: Unlimited projects, but 10 pages per project with Readymag ads.
What to pay for: adding a domain, unlimited number of pages for projects, collaboration, Google Analytics connection, custom fonts download, advanced SEO, etc.
Examples:
portfolio,
photo guide,
story about animals.
If you do not want to pay for development, then CMS is the best solution
CMS ("engine", "admin panel") is a content management system. In fact, this is software with which you can make the site itself and sections inside, add text and photos, a product catalog and payment systems. Such software is free and paid, and free ones may have add-ons that you need to pay for.
Working with a CMS is more difficult than with a constructor: before setting up the appearance, you will have to buy hosting and a domain, install the engine itself. In addition, you may need the help of a professional developer already in the process. But you can immediately bind the domain and transfer the site to another hosting without any problems. Read more about the advantages and disadvantages in the section Constructor or CMS: what is the best way to create a website.
CMS is suitable for creating any sites - from personal blogs to corporate portals. It's just a matter of whether you're willing to put in the effort to work with it. You will have to pay for the help of professional developers or spend time to figure it out yourself. Depending on the value of your time, this could be a good or bad investment.
WordPress is the most popular content management system in the world. It has 26 million websites. Suitable for both blogs and other projects. The network has a lot of educational content, including in Russian. There is a separate plugin for e-commerce. Some companies offer hosting with WordPress pre-installed. The main disadvantage: due to its popularity, it is often tried to be hacked.
Examples:
bbc america,
time,
The Rolling Stones.
Important! WordPress is available as free software that can be installed on a server (it was discussed above). And there is a SaaS solution, in fact, a paid constructor.
Joomla is the second most popular CMS in the world. Working with it is not much, but more difficult than with WordPress. There are also a lot of templates, training content, plugins and extensions, some of the plugins are paid. Mainly used for e-commerce sites and social networks. Less SEO friendly.
Examples:
Holiday Inn Express,
U.K National Crime Agency,
Open VPN.
Drupal is another popular CMS. Web designers say that it is more complicated than WordPress, but also more powerful. A beginner is unlikely to figure it out, but a professional will be able to write his own modules. It is believed that Drupal is safer, so Drupal is usually used to create corporate websites and online stores. There is an e-commerce plugin.
Examples:
ispsystem,
linux,
Forbes.ru
PrestaShop is a free CMS for an online store. You can not only choose a logo and theme from design templates, but also manage products, orders, users, and track statistics.
Examples:
Antic Boutique,
Chapon Chocolate,
planet sushi.
Constructor or CMS: which is better to create a website
Both tools help build a website, and each has its own benefits.
It all depends on your goals. It's easier with a builder, and a CMS gives you more options at a lower cost.
It's easier to work with the constructor
If you choose a CMS, you will first have to pay for hosting and a domain name, then install the CMS on the hosting and link the domain. This can be done without special knowledge, but it will take time.
When using the constructor, you don’t need to do all this, you just need to register in the selected service - a second-level domain and hosting will be provided to you for free (at first).
The constructor is less flexible
Making a website on the constructor is like renting a ready-made house or room and furnishing it with your own furniture. On CMS, it's like building a house from ready-made blocks. Depending on the goals, one or the other option may be suitable.
One site can be done and forgotten. For example, an artist's page. Another site cannot be made and forgotten. For example, an online store. Over time, it will be necessary to add content and features: forms for collecting contacts, a blog, support. Then you want to attract an audience from the search, you will have to optimize the site for search engines. Then the site will grow and you will need to transfer it to another hosting or even to a dedicated server.
In the case of a CMS, you can do all this without problems, but with a constructor there can be difficulties. You have to pay for expanding its capabilities. You can’t get into the code - it is closed. You also have to pay for SEO optimization, and the possibilities are limited. And you can’t transfer a site created on the constructor somewhere (on rare services you can, but for money).
In the future, the sitebuilder will cost more
When choosing a CMS, you immediately need to pay for hosting and a domain. When choosing a constructor - nothing. But if the site grows, then in the first case you will not have to pay (there is a reserve of space on the hosting, templates and modules for the CMS are free), and in the second case you will have to.
In the most popular site builders, the free plan includes up to 500 MB of hosting space. You have to pay for the extension, as well as for the domain. In the case of CMS, you choose where to buy hosting and domain. A monthly subscription to the constructor starts at $4 per month, an average subscription containing all the necessary features starts from $12. The cost of hosting starts from 200 rubles for 20-30 GB, a domain - from 200 rubles a year.
If we compare real rates, the cost of hosting with WordPress is almost half as much as the cost of a website builder. But if you are willing to pay, but are not ready to spend time on development, the constructor is the best solution.
Total
Free constructor rates are suitable for portfolio or business card sites. If you are willing to pay, then using a website builder is quite justified for both online stores and large portals.
If you want to create a website for free, then choose CMS. This tool gives more flexibility at a lower cost, but takes time.
If you decide to abandon the site builder, then here is a complete instruction on how to create a site from scratch on a CMS. First you need to buy a domain and hosting, and then install a CMS. We will be using WordPress as the most versatile website builder.
Buy a domain
You can buy a domain from one of the certified registrars, or you can from a hosting provider. Sometimes it is more convenient to buy from hosting providers, because you do not have to look for other services, additionally register and enter payment data. Once you have registered and linked a card, you buy both hosting and a domain.
Choose a suitable domain from Reg.ru, Ru-Center, GoDaddy, NameCheap, another registrar or your hosting provider.
Website hosting software
Pay. Domains cost from 200 rubles, some may be more expensive due to demand, but on average prices do not exceed 1000 rubles. In the .RU and .COM zones, many domains are already occupied, freer in the .РФ zone and thematic zones like .SITE, .STORE, .EDU, etc. A domain is bought for one year, then it can be renewed.
To purchase, you will need to specify your first and last name, email address, phone number. Passport details, physical and postal address are required.
After buying a domain, you need to set up a name server (Name server, NS). They are needed so that browsers can find the IP address of your site by the domain name and the site is available on the network. Without configuring nameservers, the site will not be accessible. Setup instructions are available from registrars or providers.
Now you have a domain! Then it will need to be tied to the server on which the site files will be stored, more on that below.
Buy hosting
When choosing hosting, keep in mind that the availability of the site will depend on it. So check the reviews first. Pay attention to what they write about the quality of support and the frequency of “falls”. Reviews can be found both on prefabricated platforms and in hosting groups in social networks.
List of hosting providers
Hosting provider rating
When choosing hosting, look at the characteristics. There are two options: buy hosting with pre-installed CMS or regular hosting and install CMS on it.
Hosting with a pre-installed CMS is offered by many providers. By choosing this option, you will actually get a constructor, only on your own hosting and with your own domain. It's comfortable.
If you decide to buy regular hosting and install CMS on it, pay attention to the characteristics of the service:
disk space from 1 GB,
RAM from 128 MB,
PHP version 7.2 or higher,
MySQL version 5.6 or higher / MariaDB version 10.0 or higher,
https,
ISPmanager control panel.
Large providers provide hosting of such characteristics at the very initial rates costing from 200 rubles.
If the tariff you have chosen has different characteristics, ask the support of the hosting provider to change them or change them yourself.
Regular hosting or VPS
Hosting is different. In addition to the usual (it is also called shared hosting), there is VPS hosting. If we omit the technical details and generalize, then they differ in reliability and price. VPS is more reliable, but also more expensive than regular hosting. And one more important detail: shared hosting does not have a dedicated IP address. Without a dedicated IP address, you cannot connect an SSL certificate. It is desirable to have SSL for all sites, and for those that are visited by many users or where they accept payment by cards, it is a must.
So if you immediately have big plans for the site, buy a VPS. If SSL is not needed in the near future, take shared hosting. If anything, then buy an IP address or transfer the site to a VPS. Read more about SSL in the section What to do after creating a site.