It was not long ago when website developers had to code everything from A to Z regarding building a website. Website development was so time-consuming that one website requires one technical team of at least 3 people. Nowadays, you can create a new website like you create a new social media account. The emergence of website builders like Strikingly has helped massively because these website builders make it easy how to publish a website.
When you create a new website, “publish” shouldn’t be the first thing that comes to your mind. You have to focus into creating and organizing your website content. However, all that effort counts for nothing because if you don’t know how to publish a new website, it won’t be accessible to the target audience. The best thing to do in this case is to create a checklist. You can tick every box on that checklist as you go through the sequential plan of website development.
What is Website Building?
Website building is the process of building your desired website and pushing it live for your audience. An online presence is crucial because everything is online these days. DIY Website builders like Strikingly opened the door of website building to everyone, not just website developers.
Thanks to website builders, it’s easier than ever to create and understand how to publish a website on your own website without having any coding knowledge. There are even site builders meant for specific uses, such as e-commerce stores and blogs. The best website builders are easy to use, affordable and allow room for growth.
The most popular options include templates or themes, so you have a design starting point. This makes it much easier for you to add your own images or content and then publish quickly. Most of the website builders that made our list are platforms that include web hosting, domain and custom registration and a built-in editor.
Guidelines on How to Publish a Website
1) Organize Your Website Content
If you think you need to create a website design or a layout before developing your website content, you are correct. Before you publish a website, you must first create your content. Once you have completed your content, you can start thinking about your design. You can start with identifying the best website template with all the features you need to build your content.
Image taken from Strikingly User’s Website
If you are wondering how to publish a website, you must build a quality design initially. If you are unable to finalize your website design, you can do competitor analysis and look at other websites for inspiration. A quick research within your respective niche will help you enlist the website features that your platform should have. Most importantly, it will also help you remove the unnecessary elements from your website. You can check out the Strikingly-powered websites for ideas of getting the best out of your platform.
2) Choose Website Design
If you are part of a web designing organization or working on a website builder, you can choose ready-to-use website templates that fit your brand and personality. For finding the right website design, you should consider the following three criteria:
- Content Width Design
- Home Page Header Design
- Menu Bar Design
Most website templates have two types of content width i.e. full width and box width. Full-width content stretches to the entirety of your computer screen, which gives an idea that your website content has no boundaries. Box width makes sure that your content is “boxed” into a specific area.
When you choose the homepage header, it is more of a strategic decision rather than a design decision. It usually depends on your business ideas. The menu bar may not be as important as the first two points, but it showcases how your visitors perceive your brand. It includes menu bar types, position, and layout. The menu is the primary tool of your website because it helps your visitors to navigate your website.
Image taken from Strikingly
For example, let’s say you want to create a portfolio website and have several images to add to your website. You can use this template because this allows for huge images and you can add images to almost every section.If most of your content will be about products for your online store, select an eCommerce template for your website platform.
3) Choose Web Hosting Service Provider
You need to invest time in your website design, and you must also take your time to identify the best web hosting provider. When you identify the website host for your platform, you must consider the following factors:
- Security
- Reliability
- Scalability
strikingly website host
Image taken from Strikingly
You must accommodate all of the above-mentioned factors to ensure the long-term growth of your business and website traffic. Your website must be secure from all the potential hackers that are ready to do malicious activities with your critical data. Security is important for those individuals who open an online store and use payment features, such as credit cards and online payment procedures.
If your website is not on Strikingly, you can transfer it to our platform without any problems. As a result, you don’t need to worry about building your website from scratch.
Although you don’t need to have expertise in web hosting, you must have basic information while learning how to publish a website. Strikingly removes all the web hosting problems for our customers as we want to make the website building process as easy as possible. We will be responsible for conducting the technical side of things related to your website, which means you can focus on your content solely.
4) Register Your Domain
When you are understanding how to publish a website, you must choose the right website domain. Many website builders, such as Strikingly, provide their users with a Strikingly-branded domain under a free plan. But if you want to have a personalized domain, you need to register and purchase your own. Website builders like Strikingly give you a free domain name for the first year if you subscribe to any of their yearly plans and above.
Image taken from Strikingly
When choosing the right domain, you must consider the following factors:
- Domain names have to be short..
- Domain names should have your brand name on it, or your name if it's a personal site
- Choose the right domain extension. if you're a business, go for .com. if it's for your organization, use .org. you can also choose country domain extensions like .eu or .fr if you're from Europe or France
5) Create a Checklist
Before you publish your website you can create a checklist of all the fundamental things that you should be doing.
1. Set up Google Analytics. It is a free service offered by Google that provides users with comprehensive website traffic reports. This handy tool will allow you to analyze your website traffic and see how your website performs.
2. Your chosen website templates must be responsive. If they are not optimized for mobile phones or devices, you will lose out on a large chunk of traffic potentially coming to your website.
3. Make sure you have CTA buttons. The clear call to action buttons will give your audience an understanding about what action they should take after landing on your website.
4. Secure your website with SSL. Apart from a great user experience, you must secure your website from potential hackers and this is where SSL is important. This is important if you have an online store and Strikingly provides its users with a free SSL solution.
One important thing to note is that when you have completed the process of how to publish a website, you can still make changes to your platform. The customers always have an eye on the website’s performance. People have their way of identifying areas for improvement, and you must respect their viewpoints equally.
6) Look for Bugs Before Publishing Your Website
The next step in your target of how to publish a website is to look for any bugs or deficiencies within your website. When you look for the website deficiencies, you can highlight the following factors:
- Proofread your website content
- Check out all the web buttons and hyperlinks
- Working of navigation menu
- No broken images
- Loading speed
Don’t forget to test your website using Google pagespeed insight score. If we look at the numbers, Strikingly websites average a Google pagespeed insight score of 90 or above. 90 and above is great because that means your website loads fast, regardless of device.
Strikingly allows you to have a proactive approach through our Preview function. When previewed, your website will load on a different tab and show you exactly how it will look when it is accessible to the audience. You can bug test even if it’s not yet live. However, it’s still best to publish your website first, before you do actual bug testing
7) Ask For Feedback from Peers
The last step in our guidelines for how to publish a website is to take the opinions of your peers. If you are unable to decide whether your website is attractive or not, you can ask for feedback from your peers. It is a good thing to be your own best critic in building a website, but the feedback from your peers is what makes your website awesome. You can ask your peers the following questions:
- Which parts of the website are loading slowly?
- Are there any missing elements on the homepage?
- Does the background image go well with the website content?
- Is the text readable?
How to Publish a Website on Strikingly
1) Create a New Site
Strikingly is a free website builder that will help you develop a well-crafted website with hardly breaking a sweat. Once you are registered on Strikingly, you can go to the dashboard and click on “Create New Site”.
2) Website Templates
Strikingly will provide you with a collection of mobile-friendly website templates you can personalize according to your niche idea or business plans. You can check the different templates and their features before deciding your preference.
After choosing your template, start adding your content (text and images).
Image taken from Strikingly
3) Publish Website
Once you have clicked on the “Publish” button, you are successful in your pursuit of how to publish a website. Strikingly will make your website accessible to the public right away.
Conclusion
If you want to create and publish your site today, make sure that you register yourself on Strikingly. If you are undergoing any issues in the development process, you can contact our Happiness Officers anytime. Building a website in Strikingly is ridiculously easy.
