Create your own website: Checklist

Step 1: Domain name

Costs ~ $2 a year.

• Why is this needed?
  Domain name is the name of your site like opengenus.org. There are 3 main parts:
  

  • Sub-domain: (optional) default is www. Example: iq
  • Second level domain: This is the main part of the domain like opengenus.
  • Top level domain: This is the highest level in the domain. These can be generic TLDs like .com, .org, .tech, .edu or country code TLD like .in, .us.
• Choose your domain name
  Choose your domain. It could be like "your_name.org" Check if it available by searching in this domain registrar.
• Register your domain name
  For this, you need to register the domain name using a domain registrar.
  Use this registrar to get your domain ranging from INR 100 to INR 2000 depending on the top level domain (TLD).
  Once done, go to next step. We will need use this again later.

Step 2: Hosting server

Costs ~ $5 a month

• Why is it needed?
  On opening a website, it connects to a server on the internet which returns a web page to the user. Creating this server on your home computer is possible but not easy and reliable so we will do this at an advanced step.
  We will start by getting a reliable hosting server first.
• Get a hosting server
  Get one of these reliable hosting servers:
  

  • Get this DigitalOcean basic droplet server: State of the art, good developer experience, starts from $4 per month. There are various options to choose from.

  Once done, go to next step to use this server.

Step 3: Create your website

• Create your site locally
  This may seem to be a challenging coding task but this is easy. You just need to follow the steps. There are templates which you can use to create your first site. Try these:

  • Try this: Simple site made using Flask framework in Python and is super fast and light-weight. Update the details to make it your portfolio site.

  Once you have created your website and able to run it locally on your system, majority of the task is done.

Step 4: Setup your site

This is the main step connecting all the 3 steps above.

• Get IP of your server
  Get the IP address of the hosting server you registered for. It will be mentioned in the dashboard of the hosting site. It will be like xx.xx.xx.xx where xx are numbers.
• Upload your site
  Upload the site you created to the hosting server. Use this guide to deploy the flask app on DigitalOcean
  Once done, type the IP address in a browser like Google Chrome and this should load your site. As people cannot remember the IP address, we need to connect it to this domain name.
• Connect domain name
  Go to the domain registrar site and map the domain name to the IP address of your hosting server. This may take 30 minutes to make changes.
  Once done, type your domain name in your browser and the site should load.

Step 5: Setup email

• Steps to setup your email
  Follow this guide to setup your email with your custom domain. No need to use gmail.com emails.

Step 6: Keep track

• Add Google Analytics
  Signup for Google Analytics and link your site. This will enable you to see useful statistics like number of users from a particular country, number of users currently on your site and so on.
• Register for Search Console
  Signup for Google Search Console and see how users find your site on Google Search. This will help you see statistics of your site appearance on Google Search. Google Search owns 91% of the search market today. You can register for similar service of other search engines like Bing and Yandex.

Step 7: Next step

• Try system design
  Try different system design features that will improve your site performance:

  • Try load balancing: Check the hosting server dashboard as it will provide enabling this feature.
  • Enable weekly backups for your server. This will save your site from accidents and will enable you to recover site.
• Develop your site
  Develop your site further. Add more features. Even, try building a web service and upload it in your server.