Make Your Own Website

There are plenty of options to make your own website. I will cover a few no cost, easy to set up sites. I will also discuss registering a domain name and choosing a hosting service.

A blog is essentially a website but with more functionality and there are quite a few sites that will allow you to set up a blog for free. Make your own website for free, it sounds to good to be true.

The trade off with free sites is they will usually display ads on your site unless you upgrade to their paid account option. You can try out a blog host for a couple of weeks and if you like the service you can either live with the ads or pay to upgrade your account.

Blogger is one exception they have done away with their ads and it is easy to use with a robust feature set for users of all levels. Another popular option is Wordpress it has a clear interface and powerful features and best of all it is free. Xanga which is also free is one of the most popular blog host providers for teenagers and young adults.

Another interesting feature than you can use in conjunction with your Blogger or Wordpress account is Audio Blogger, you can find it at audioblog.com.

It allows you to create an audio blog by either recording with your web browser or by calling in on a telephone. You can call from your cell phone from anywhere in the world and even interview someone on a conference call.

A few years ago who would have have thought you could make your own website and call in audio from your cell phone, to create a podcast that could be heard by millions of people.

Audio Blog also allows you to to upload videos to your blog. You can record digital video on your cell phone or webcam and upload it. The only drawback is it is 4.95 a month.

If you would like to have more control over your blog you can chose your own domain name and web hosting service. I personally use business hosting from Yahoo! Web Hosting.

I chose Yahoo because it is reliable and comes with a free domain name, all you have to do is pay the low monthly hosting fee. It also has one click installation of Wordpress. Hostgator is another affordable service and it is also easy to install Wordpress on their server as well. It has never been easier to make your own website.

The reason I think blogs are better than a traditional website is that they have an RSS feed which stands for Really Simple Syndication. It allows readers to subscribe to your blog and easily keep track of new and updated content.

Well there you go, I have given you a few options to make your own website. You should have one up and running in no time at all. Drop me a line and let me know how it works out for you.

Craig Beckta resides in Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada.
http://www.craigsreality.com