If you are wanting to build a website for yourself or your organization, but have a strict budget to follow, there are some really great options for building a legitimate website. Someone who has zero web design/development experience and a tiny budget can still come up with a professional website that they are proud of. And by tiny budget I mean $100 – $500
First thing you are going to need to purchase is domain and hosting. It is highly recommended to have your own domain name and your own hosting account. This will run you about $85 per year with services such as our MyWants Web Products.
WordPress is one of the most widely used blogging and website platform on the internet. What this means is that all it takes is a couple Google and YouTube searches and you can learn EVERYTHING about WordPress and how to operate it. Our recommendation is to install the WordPress application, which is FREE, to your hosting account. You can actually install the WordPress application right from your hosting account. So, there is no need to download it to your computer, then install it, and blah blah. Just follow the simple steps at Media Wants.
Then you are going to want to search for a “premium wordpress theme” to install. Premium themes cost about $20 – $100. A good place to start would be Themeforest.net because I find these themes have some of the best documentation of how to actually setup and use the themes you purchase. Without any knowledge of WordPress, a premium theme and its documentation can have you up and running in no time.
Learn how to add content to your website, back it up, and maintain plugins. This is not the place for me to teach you how to do all of those things. Do a quick Google search for each of these and you will find what is needed. However, I will start you off with this video on how to back-up and update your WordPress website, because I made the video :).
This is all that is needed and you should be able to do it all for under $100 and not even come close to the $500 mark I mentioned earlier. Hiring a designer is still a good rule of thumb when it comes to doing a little extra tweaking and design work. Also, if you don’t have the time, you can get someone to install different plugins and/or setup the theme you purchased. These little extra things will get you closer to the $500 mark. Either way, individuals and organizations can create a very professional website on their own if they are the “Do It Yourself” kind of people.
Good luck with it and let me know if you need any help building your first website.
