Gone are the days when anyone who needed a website would contact a web developer to do the whole job from A to Z for them. These days, many people and organizations learn how to publish a website, and build their website on their own, and publish it without the help of a full-time programmer or web developer. This is because several website building tools and platforms are available in the market these days, which allow any layman or non-tech person to create and publish their own website or landing page.
There are certain steps involved in creating and publishing a site. If you familiarize yourself with these, it won’t be challenging to build a website to showcase your skills and services in almost no time. Whichever website building platform you use, these steps could serve as your basic blueprint to complete the process of publishing your website.
For you to publish a new website, you need to build it up first. The pages that you publish need to have some content on them. The site has to be hosted somewhere. The domain to publish your website on has to come from somewhere. Although not difficult to go through, there are quite a few steps involved to publish a website that is a bit confusing. You might get stuck wondering which step to do first. You might even feel overwhelmed thinking if you’ll need to write a code or do any programming during the process.
If you want to learn how to publish a new website, you have chosen the right place. In this post, we will discuss the step-by-step process of getting your website up and running successfully.
Steps to Publish a New Website
Here is how to publish a website. Just follow these simple steps, and you’ll be on your way.
1. Prepare Your Website Content
It is typically assumed that you need to create the website, or at least its layout first, before writing your website content. But this is not true. Now that you are learning how to publish a website, we would like to tell you that you really need to prepare the content first and then select a template for which to key it in.
Once your content is ready, you will better identify which templates are the most suitable to use for your site. You’d become aware of the kind of features you need when you build your content. For instance, if you want to create a portfolio website and have too many pictures in your portfolio, you would select a template to insert the maximum number of images. If you need to build an online store because most of your web content is product photos, prices, and product descriptions, you will select an eCommerce template.
Preparing your content could potentially take longer than you expect. Many people who are getting a website built by a web developer for the first time get stuck at the stage where the developer asks them for the content to insert into the web pages. That’s because they leave out this task for the end. Little do they know that preparing content is actually the most time-consuming task to publish a website.
Once your content is ready, you might want to review it before publishing it to make sure it is optimized for SEO. It shouldn’t have plagiarism, grammar or spelling mistakes, typing errors, or low-quality images in it. If you take data or information from another source, make sure you link it back to its original source. Doing this early on would save you a lot of time and effort at the later stage when you finally publish your website. That’s why we are particularly mentioning this in this guide on how to publish a website.
2. Select Your Website Template and Layout
Whether you are working with a web designing company or using a website building platform, you need to select a ready-to-use template for your site. This is where you need to be a bit creative. Look for templates that serve the primary purpose that your website has. For instance, if you are building a blog, select a template to make as many posts as you want. If you want a simple landing page to introduce your business, select a basic template with the main components, such as a header, footer, different types of sections for different types of information, images if required, and a basic social media integration tool.
Image taken from Strikingly user’s website
Suppose you are looking to build a more comprehensive website such as an eCommerce store. In that case, you need a template that offers membership to your users, allows you to receive payments through suitable payment gateways, and provides a good search feature for your customers to find the products that they want.
This step is often overlooked, but it is critical to know how to publish a website.
3. Find a Reasonable Web Hosting Service Provider
Just like you need to put in some time and effort into choosing a suitable web design, you also need to research the most suitable web hosting service provider. You need to consider certain factors before choosing your web hosting, such as speed, level of security, reliability, and scalability, to accommodate your business’s future growth and site traffic.
You do not need to become a master in web hosting, though. But since you are learning how to publish a website, you need to have some basic information about the web hosting options you have to purchase the most suitable one.
4. Register a Domain
You might be able to skip this step if you plan to publish your website on a website builder. Most website-building platforms provide a domain for all their users in their free plan. You will still need to think of a brand name, though, if you don’t have one already.
If you want to use a custom domain, you would need to register it first. For this, you would need to select a good domain registrar. In some cases, the website builder could also offer to register your custom domain with them. It depends on the platform you use. Either way, registering or choosing a domain name is crucial because it forms your website URL.
Those who know how to publish a website are usually familiar with the different popular domain name registrars.
5. Publish Your Website
At this point, you are all set to publish your website. Needless to say, after selecting your template, you would create your web pages on it by inserting your website content. You would also point your domain to your website and activate the web hosting.
When you build your web pages, you can keep publishing them one by one to make them go live. This is done by clicking the ‘Publish’ button, available in the page editor for almost all website builders. The moment you hit ‘Publish’, the respective web page will go live!
Image taken from Strikingly user’s website
There you go. Now you know how to publish a website. Now let’s look at the process of publishing your website on Strikingly.
How to Publish a Website on Strikingly
Follow the steps given below to publish your website on our platform.
1. Sign up for a Free Strikingly Account on our Landing Page
Our signup form is quite simple and straightforward. All you have to do is key in your name and email address. Once your email address is verified, you will be able to log in. There you will get access to the dashboard. Click ‘Create New Site’.
Image taken from Strikingly
2. Select a Website Template From the Options Given
Choose one that suits the purpose of your website and business. We have a lot of templates, divided into different categories. If you want to build a blog, choose a blog template. If you need to create an eCommerce site, choose an online store template. If you wish to showcase your services, choose a template under the ‘Services’ category. You can view the templates to check their features and design before deciding on the one to use for your website. This is actually an exciting step in learning how to publish a website.
Image taken from Strikingly
3. Insert Your Website Content
Use our easy-to-use drag-and-drop editor interface to key in all your website content. Don’t forget to use a combination of different types of content elements, such as text, images, videos, links, CTA, and social media icons. For search engine optimized content, you would need to include a precise and clear site description. Insert your logo and adjust the template’s color palette to go with your brand colors.
Image taken from Strikingly
Once you have keyed in all your content, our editor allows you to edit it anytime you want. You simply need to click on where you want to make changes and edit the text there. You can also drag different sections of your content to change the arrangement or rearrange it entirely.
4. Click ‘Publish’
As soon as you hit the ‘Publish’ button, your website will go live on the spot.
Strikingly is a growing website creation platform that offers most of the tools required for a basic website in its free version. You can create any type of website with us by following a simple process as described above. We have hundreds of users all over the world, and we are growing our user base further.
If you would like to become a part of our community, we would love for you to join our Idea Forum and participate in the interesting conversations that our members have there.
