If you’ve got a strong vision of what you want to achieve, and eagerness to learn, and a healthy dose of patience, then building a beautiful, functional, fully-customisable and user-friendly website is well within your grasp.

Website design has traditionally been a time-consuming and expensive exercise, with high-end sites costing tens of thousands of dollars and taking months to deliver. But for the vast majority of businesses and people, a simple, elegant and functional website that satisfies all of their needs can be put together for a fraction of the time and cost.  We can get you up and running in less than a week for under $2000 if you’d like.  Or, if you’re willing to put in the hard yards and hours required, you can build a beautiful site yourself.

Here’s a  layperson’s guide that runs through the process step by step – including all the information I wish I had known when I was starting out.

In part 1 of this series, before we even get started with the design process, we set up all the infrastructure we’ll need to host our website: we choose and register a domain name, find a good web host, and make sure that our domain and host are communicating properly with each other.

Setting up the Infrastructure

There are a number of different ways you could go about designing your own site, but regardless of the path you choose, there will be two non-negotiables you’ll have to take care of before you get started: you’ll need to register a domain name, and you’ll need to find a good web host. Even if you’re planning to outsource the development of your site to professionals, it’s financially sound to organise your domain name and web host first, since these should be your only recurring annual expenses, and it will be much cheaper if you take care of it yourself.

Anyhow, if you’re a newcomer to the web design world, it probably pays to know exactly what the domain name and the web host are.

Domain Names

Your domain name is the address of your website – the thing people will type into Chrome or Firefox or (God forbid) Internet Explorer to get to your page. The domain name for this site, for instance, is www.renderr.com.au – entering this domain into your browser takes you to our homepage. Your domain name is crucially important