Build your own website
Tom Green introduces some free online tools that make building your own website easier than you think.
Building websites used to be the preserve of specialists. Sure, with a bit of effort you could knock something up on Microsoft Front Page but the results would be the online equivalent of early desk top publishing – messy, scrappy and anything but professional. If you wanted the job done right you needed to pay someone at least £500 and often more.
Blogging started to change all that. Millions of people, including many Guild members, have discovered in recent years that having a website can be as easy as visiting Blogger.com, creating an account and pressing a few buttons. All the coding is done for you. Designs can be chosen from templates. There isn’t even a fee for the site to be hosted.
Still, a blog, though excellent for diary-style entries, does have a few drawbacks. The newest post goes at the top, so it’s hard to create a homepage introducing yourself and setting out your credits. And, though you can tag entries to create a menu of categories, it’s not quite the same as a conventional website with a small number of main sections.
Fortunately, if you don’t want to pay someone to build a website for you, it’s increasingly easy to do it yourself for free. As well as saving money, this means that you should be able to develop and update the site yourself rather than having to pay the expert every time you want to add a new section.
Of course, some will find these tools easier to use than others. If you have a tech-savvy friend it might be worth enlisting their help you get you started. But, for most people, with a modest investment of time, there shouldn’t be too many problems in reaching at least a basic level.
A word about blogging. The two tools I’m outlining here both have optional blogging elements (in fact, Wordpress is known primarily as a blogging tool). If you’ve not blogged before, it’s worth thinking seriously about having a go. It’s the easiest way to publish new content online – whether it’s news of your latest commission or your opinion about the new Spielberg film.
Weebly.com
Weebly.com is designed specifically to be a web-build tool for those without much online experience. It’s had quite a lot of coverage in the tech press, and has attracted some decent venture capital funding.
However, as with any of these tools, there’s always the chance that it will go out of business tomorrow, taking your website with it. Fortunately you can back your site up, so, if necessary, you can move it to another host.
Weebly has a quick sign-in and, once you're registered, the interface is very simple. The idea is that you ‘drag and drop’ elements (text, title, photo, video etc) onto the page and then edit them. It’s easy to create new pages and organise the navigation and there’s a blog tool that can be integrated into your site (although you can't, yet, import an existing blog).
It's also very straightforward to buy your own domain if you don’t want one ending weebly.com – or you can transfer an existing domain.
I created a site using Weebly at tomgreen-uk.com. Nothing flash, but it gave me everything I need. (You create your own header by choosing one of the designs with a photo at the top, and then replacing it with an image of your own.)
Weebly still has a few teething problems but, if you’re thinking of getting a site, it’s certainly worth taking a look. They seem to be innovating more quickly than any of their competitors and they recently passed a million users. The fact that there are numerous other similar free tools available will hopefully mean that they are forced to maintain a free service in addition to the pro accounts that offer some more functionality.
Wordpress.com
Created in 2003, Wordpress is primarily a blogging tool, but it can easily be used to create conventional websites – with or without a blogging element.
To get started, simply go to Wordpress.com and create a free account. (NB Wordpress.org is slightly different, so make sure you go to the .com site.) Next, you choose the blog domain – e.g. tomswggbtest.wordpress.com (it has to be .wordpress.com unless you set up your own paid-for domain) – and then a title. That’s it. Hit the ‘create blog’ button and you’re done.
The set up and use will be familiar to anyone who has used Blogger. It might look confusing at first but take your time, try things out (posts can always be deleted later) and you’ll soon get the hang of it. (NB, a test page and post are automatically created for you – you need to go into ‘Manage’ in order to edit or delete them.)
Unlike Blogger, Wordpress allows you to create pages as well as blog posts. Simply click on “Write a new page” and enter text and photos as you wish. To make that the homepage, you need to go to Settings > Reading and select ‘A static page’ under ‘Front page display’. New pages then appear in the right hand navigation, and there’s no need to have blog posts at all if you don’t want to.
The site's design can be controlled under the ‘Design’ tab. Choose one of the given layouts or customise them following the simple instructions.
Wordpress is a powerful and well-established tool with masses of functionality. It is intended for blogging but can be adapted without too much difficulty for a conventional website. The biggest drawback for a beginner is probably that it can seem a little daunting. There is almost too much choice and too many options.
Other web-build tools
You might also want to consider:
Other useful free tools
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Google Analytics – install the code on your site (Weebly makes this easy to do) and then monitor your traffic. Tells you where people come from, what terms they’ve searched and which pages they visit.
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The Gimp – a free photo editing tool to rival Photoshop.
A version of this article first appeared in the Guild's magazine, UK Writer (Winter 2008).
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