If you’re interested in starting a website, but you’ve never done it before, there are a few things you’re going to want to know before you get started. You need a few essential tools and services before you can really get your site off the ground.

Hosting

You’re going to need a place to house the files for your new website. There are a number of hosting options available to you, some of which are free, some of which are extremely expensive. It’s important to know your needs before you pick a hosting provider. The free, and cheap providers tend to be lacking in functionality, so it’s important to know what features you intend to put on your site before picking a hosting provider. If you don’t plan on developing the site yourself, ask the developer you have hired what sort of features you’ll need, and whether or not they have any hosting recommendations.

Domain Name

Your domain name should be representative of the content on your site, and if possible it should include a keyword relevant to any searches your target audience might do. Your domain name should be short, and easy to remember. If you can get a .com name rather than a .net, .org, or any of the other suffixes, that’s best. Most people try to go to the .com version of a site first, and then think about the others. As with hosting, there are a number of companies you can register a domain with. In fact, the hosting company you’re using probably offers domain registrations.

Content

You’ll also need a website full of content. If you’re not comfortable designing your own site, you can always hire a firm or a freelance contractor to do it for you. There are also a number of freely available content management systems like WordPress that make developing a website much easier. No matter what your budget, there’s a way to get a site up and running. Once your site is up and running, you’ll want to add content on a regular basis. By updating a site frequently, you are actually boosting your search rank, as search engines look at how frequently a site is updated when determining search rank.

There are a number of ways to get a new site up and running, and no matter what your budget, you can get started in a short amount of time.

If you’ve ever thought about starting a new website, chances are you have looked into hiring a professional designer. A lot of design firms charge extremely high rates for simple websites, and in many cases there are additional costs for different types of functionality. With design firms charging such high rates, it’s hard to imagine getting a website off the ground on a budget, but it can definitely be done.

Setting up a site using WordPress is actually fairly simple. If you’re comfortable with some light HTML, chances are you could do it yourself, as long as you’re not looking for anything too complicated. Most hosting providers offer an automatic install of WordPress, and once it’s installed, all you really need to do is make a few simple tweaks to the theme to get it looking the way you want it to. If you’d like to add a little bit of additional functionality to your site, there are many plugins and widgets available for WordPress that allow you to do a wide variety of things. There are some plugins to help with SEO optimization, some to add things like polls to your site, and some to allow you to embed a podcast right into a post. Some of them require a little more effort to set up than others, but if you’re on a tight budget it might be worth the time.

If design firm prices don’t fit in your budget, and you don’t feel like you could learn to set up a site on your own, there’s a third option. Sites like elance.com let you connect with many freelance designers. Freelancers can often product the same quality work that a large firm would deliver, but given that their operating cost is significantly lower, you’ll get a much better price out of them. It’s important to go through a site like elance rather than just searching Craigslist for a freelancer. Elance, and other sites like it let you see a designer’s profile, along with reviews of their work. That way, you can be sure you’re getting a designer that can handle your site, and won’t leave you high and dry if there’s a problem.

Don’t be discouraged by the prices big design firms offer. If you take the time to do a little work with your site yourself, or if you can find a freelancer that suits your budget, your site can become a reality, even if your budget is tight.