How to Make Your Own Website

You want to create a resume website to help you in your job search? Or you just started your freelance activity, and you want to promote yourself via a website? You can have your website created by an agency or a freelance developer, but it can be expensive. So, you decide to do it yourself. You have read about the steps of website creation, you have imagined the design, and now you want to create it. You have heard about WordPress, HTML, PHP and you are a bit lost. Where to start and how to do it? There are two ways to create a website: with a CMS or by coding from scratch.

Creating a website with a CMS

If you don’t know anything about coding, and you don’t have the time or the courage to learn the many programming languages: you can use a CMS (content management system). A CMS is a web application that allows you to create a website without coding. There are free and paid ones. You choose a theme (design) that you like. Then you can create your pages, integrate your content, you install plugins that interest you (contact form, cookie management, translation …), and there you go! Your website is ready. If you want to customize it, in terms of design for example, you will have to touch the code. But you can already have a good site without writing a line of code. It really depends on your project.

Some of the most popular CMS are WordPress, Drupal and Joomla.

• WordPress is the most popular open-source CMS (43% of websites in the world are created with WordPress). It is easy to use. There are many free themes and plugins are available, and a large community to help you if you have a problem. It is mostly used to create blogs and static websites, but it can also be used to make an e-commerce website.
• Drupal is also an open-source CMS used to create medium to large scale websites. It is more difficult to learn than WordPress, but it has a reinforced security and allows creating pages with complex contents.
• Joomla! It is a multipurpose open-source CMS, allowing to create all types of websites (blog, e-commerce, static website…). It is easy to use and offers many templates and plugins. Its community is very active.

Other popular CMS exist, like PrestaShop or Magento, but they are more e-commerce oriented.

Creating a website from scratch

If you want a challenge, and you like to learn new things, you can create your website from scratch, i.e., code it entirely. It will be more difficult than using a CMS, but you will really be able to do what you want. You will only be limited by your skills and your imagination.

To do this, you will need to know at least HTML, CSS, JavaScript, and PHP. These are the basic languages in the creation of a website. HTML is used to structure the pages and integrate the content.
CSS is used to manage the appearance of the website (color, size, positioning…). These two languages are quite simple.
JavaScript and PHP are more complex, and are used to add a dynamic side to your website (navigate from one page to another, create animations, …).

You can learn these languages on your own for free on sites like OpenClassrooms, W3Schools, MDN Web Docs, or even on YouTube.

Now you know where to start to create your own website. If you want to go deeper into this subject and discover other web domains (design, SEO, digital marketing…), and maybe make it your job: join the CAWEB Master!