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Personal/Family Websites -How to Build Them

Personal websites come in all sorts of flavours, however there are two main types that I've noticed.


Both types of website have, in the last few years, been replaced by Blogs and popular social networking platforms like Facebook.

Free blogging platforms and social network sites offer a great way of creating a free personal site but I consider them to be temporary sites only.

Currently (2009) Facebook is incredibly popular, but a few years ago so was MySpace.

Many years ago many people and small businesses put their faith in Geocities, Yahoo even paid several billion dollars to buy it in 1999 , and yet in 2009 they closed it.

The type of site we are creating here is a site that you intend to keep, and that you have full control over.

Any site that you host on someone else's domain name is not under your control, and therefore for complete control you will need to register your own domain name.  Personal domain names are becoming more common, and one day we may all have one and don't forget they can also be used for email.

Website Building Options

There are several different ways to build a website. You can Use:

For a personal websites that will have more than 5 pages and especially if they will be edited by more than one person then I recommend using WordPress but it does require some work on your part.

The  option that appears the easiest is probably the Flash/online site builder option, but it is not as flexible and ties you normally to the provider and so I don't recommend it.

Standard HTML template sites require that you master a few website building technologies like HTML and Cascading style sheets, and was the main option several years ago.

However I don't recommended this option as it is much more difficult than the WordPress Option.

Using WordPress

WordPress is my favourite choice for building almost all types of website.

The reason is that it is:

Wordpress can be configured as a blog, standard website or both. If your new to website building then the main distinction is in how they arrange the web pages (content):

A standard website arranges content in hierarchical fashion whereas a blog arranges content by date/time (like a diary).

You can learn how to use WordPress for blogging and about blogging in general in the blogging with WordPress section.

 Building websites and blogs with WordPress covers how to use WordPress as a standard site.

Warning --Personal Information

Although you may be placing personal information on the site you should be careful when sharing details like birthdays, mother name, pets names etc.

Your personal Information can be used for identity theft and you would be surprised at how little is required see putting personal information on your site.

Personal Website Costs

If you use paid hosting then approximately $8-$16 per month. Most hosts include a free domain name so I recommend you purchase/get the domain name from the hosting provider.

I use :

Blue Host Web Hosting - $6.95/mo! - USA based website hosting . Incredible feature rich package including Wordpress, Joomla, Cpanel admin and Fantastico and simple scripts. Supports multiple domains. Includes free domain name.

and

One and one -UK- various package levels supports multiple domains. Free UK domain names depending on package.

Because with a personal site you don't need to worry about where in the world your host is located Blue Host offers the best hosting solution unless you want a UK or eu domain name, in which case you need a UK based provider.

Personal Email Addresses

The hosting providers above (and most others) provide free email addresses and email hosting as part of your web hosting package . See Website Hosting and Email


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By Steve Cope