You can literally have your own site up in 10 minutes.

There are lots of ways of setting up free websites.  For example, if you want to name your site JohnSmith.com, the free option will be JohnSmith.SomeOtherName.com.  Also, these sorts of sites offer you little freedom and make you pay expensive fees for upgraded features.

If you want your site to be JohnSmith.com and have all the freedom of your own website this is the guide for you.

Let’s get started.

Step One: Where is Your Site Going to Live?

In order for your site to be on the internet it needs a place to “live,” that’s a webhost.

Choosing a good webhost is crucial because the right host has services that will help you set up the site quickly and keep easy to manage.

The webhost that has made my life the easiest is Bluehost.

It is extremely friendly for inexperienced website owners and only $5.95 a month.

I strongly recommend them for one main reason: Customer Service.  They have free 24/7 customer service by phone and by a live chat service that is right on their front page.   Click this link to see it on the bottom left of the page.

Their customer service reps have helped incredibly fast countless times.

In addition to choosing a host you have to register your domain name which is just a fancy way of saying the name of your site, for example: JohnDoe.com.

Normally, this costs $10.00 a year.  Bluehost registers a name for you for free if you have them as your webhost.

So, step one is to go to Bluehost.com and click on “sign up now.”

It will take you to this screen.

Fill out the box on the left with the name you want for your website. If you want a different ending like .org, or .net you can click on the down arrow next to the “.com” and select it.

Generally sticking to a “.com” is best so that’s what I recommend you use.

If the website name, or domain name as we will call it from now on, is available then the next page will congratulate you and you can sign up by filling out a form.  If the domain name is not available you will have to reenter a different one or choose from one of their suggestions.

Step Two: One Click to Glory

There’s a reason I suggested Bluehost.  Here is where the magic happens.  You can literally set up your website with a click.

Once you sign-up and log in to what Bluehost calls the “c-panel” you will see a toolbar like the one below on the right side of the page.

 This toolbar allows you to access a lot of tools and promotions that Bluehost has available but what you are looking for is WordPress. WordPress is a cms (content management system).  Don’t let the name scare you. It just means that it is a program that makes it easy to run a website without actually knowing any programming.  It is also the most popular, feature rich and easiest program out there.  Best of all, this program is completely free.  Look for the logo which looks this:

Once you click on the logo you will be prompted to install wordpress.  Don’t worry about anything on the next page and click the green  ”Install” button near the bottom of the page.  The next page will look like this:

This may look scary but all you have to do is go to Step 4 and click the box on the left then click on complete on the bottom.

After you click the next page may take some time to load.  When it does you will see a progress bar that will go slowly fill up until it reaches 100%.  When it does you will see some important information pop up below the progress bar.  It should look like this:

At this point your website it up and running.  All you have to do is add the text or pictures or whatever you want to it.

In order to do that you need to be able to log into your website’s administration area.  For that you will need the information that you see above after you do the installation.

The site URL is where your website is located.

The login URL is what you type into your browser to get to the administration area.  This is where you manage the website.

Make sure you write the username and password down.

After you type in the Login URL in your browser use the Username and Password to log in to the administration area.  The login screen should look like this:

One you login you will see the administration area of the website.  It should look like this:

Once you are in then using the administration area is very intuitive and easy.  I am not technologically gifted in any way and I figured out how to use it in 15 minutes.  Using this dashboard you can write posts and customize pages as well as add pictures and videos with ease.

You can download and install different themes for your website if you want something different from the default look.

The best part is because wordpress is so free and popular there is a lot of help on the internet for it.  Google any problem you have and you will have pages of answers and tutorials on how to do things.  Search youtube and you will find a lot of information.

If you get stuck anywhere you can always call up bluehost customer service and they will do the installation for you!  I remember they did it for me the first time around.

To get started just sign up to bluehost.com.  If you still need more convincing that bluehost is the webhost for you then click here to  check  out their full list of features.

Otherwise you can sign up now and follow this tutorial.