A guide to starting your own web site.

Publishing your very own web site sounds like a daunting project but in fact it can be broken down into these 4 relatively simple steps.

1. Design your web pages.
2. Register your own domain name.
3. Host your site.
4. Promote your site.

Design your web pages

It is also certainly possible to design your own pages. With a little computer experience and the help of a free or commercial program called a HTML Editor it is not much harder than making a power point presentation. Here is a good article about HTML editors [Wikipedia]. The key is to know how you want your site to look and not to get carried away with too many flashy colours and features that can end up making your web site look a little tacky.

Register your domain name

This is your unique www name. The two popular choices for domain ending are either your local country's domain or the global .com name. The hardest thing here is finding a name that has not already been taken. Including a combination of business name and location can often provide a good unique name. The hosting companies listed below have search facilities to easily find available domain names.

Host your site

The easiest way to get your site on the web is to register and host your site with a specialist web hosting company. In the global internet community it need not be a local company, it is worth shopping around. Once you have a name and hosting plan it is simply a matter of copying the HTML page files to your host. The following companies offer plans suitable for small business web sites for a few dollars a month.

$3.95 per month including 1 free domain. Host up to 2 domains on this account. 2000 GB of transfer and 200GB of hosting space. Includes 2500 email accounts.

Domain names for $8.95 per year and hosting for $3.99 per month, cheaper if paid yearly. No setup fees or annual commitment. 250 GB transfer, 5 GB of hosting space and 500 email accounts.

$4.95 per month for hosting including 1 free domain name. Host up to 6 domains on this account. 2000 GB of transfer and 200 GB of hosting space. Includes 5000 email accounts.

$5.95 per month including 1 domain name. Host up to 10 domains, extra domain names only $6.95 per year. 2000 GB of transfer, 200 GB of hosting space and unlimited email accounts.

Host unlimited domain names for $5.95 per month, 1 domain name included free. 2000 GB of transfer, 200 GB of hosting space and unlimited email accounts.

Promote your site

The two best ways to get visitors to your site are through search engines and via advertising.

Search engines deliver visitors for free when they search for information similar to your content. Most search engines will determine the importance and hence number of visitors they send to you by among other things the number of links from other web sites to yours. If you are running a privately owned or family run accommodation business make sure you have a link to your web site on your privatestay.com page.

is a very cost effective way to get visitors to your site. You only pay when people searching for a key word you specify actually visit your site. This gives you a very targeted way to reach potential customers.