Website 4 FreeCreate websites for little or no money

The site you’re reading was created in under half an hour, cost £91 for the hosting and £0 for everything else, and I videoed the entire process, from buying the domain name to blogging my first post. Read on to watch the videos.

In this first video, I buy a domain name (www.website4free.org). I use Heart Internet as my preferred hosting and domain name company (sadly I don’t get any money for telling you that!)

• Create an account with them and sign in with the username and password they email to you.
• Click on Domain names and search for your desired website name until you find one which is available. I chose ‘website4free.org’
• Add to basket and buy for 1 year.
• Next, click on ‘add web hosting’. I made a mistake on the video and only bought the Starter package – you actually need the Home package if you want to have a Wordpress blog, which I do. (I sneakily upgraded off-video.)
• Click on Checkout and make your purchases – one domain name and one hosting package
• Click on Manage Web Hosting. You might have to wait a while for the hosting account to be set up – only a couple of minutes, though. On the video I click around for a bit until it’s set up.
• Assign the hosting account to the domain name. There’s a button on the site which says ‘assign now’ (5.23 on the video).
• Acess eXtend to continue on.

In the next video, I install a Wordpress blog to my new hosting. Give it half an hour or so between the previous and this step so the system has a chance to get set up by Heart.

• Go to eXtend
• Delete the placeholder index file: go to File Manager on eXtend, go to the public html directory, select Index.html, right mouse and delete.
• Go back to eXtend and click on Wordpress
• Click on Install
• Wordpress is installed! Lovely.

Video 3 is configuring the Wordpress blog. I go very quiet in this so as not to wake my son!

• Go to temporary web address, from the link at the top right of eXtend.
• The Wordpress installer is waiting for you.
• Click the install button, then log in.
• That’s it!  

In the next video, we configure a theme for the blog. As I mention, there are thousands of free wordpress themes available on the internet – google ‘wordpress themes’.

• Go to wordpress.org/extend/themes
• Find a theme you like the look of and download it 

In the next video, I upload the theme I’ve downloaded to my new website.

• Access eXtend
• go to File Manager
• Navigate to Themes as per the video
• Click on upload files, and browse to the zip file you’ve just downloaded which contains your theme.
• Once it’s uploaded, right mouse click on it and select unzip
• Go back to the website (by clicking on Temp Web Address on the eXtend control panel)
• add ‘wp-admin’ to the end of your url and you’re back in the Wordpress management system
• Go to Appearance, themes
• Click on your new theme which you’ll see.
• CLick on Activate
• Visit site, and you’ll see that your new theme has been activated.

Finally, here’s how you add content to your new website.

• Go to your url and put /wp-admin at the end.
• Click on Pages, Add New
• Add a contact page, for instance. You’ll see where you put the header and the body of the page.
• Visit the site and you’ll see your new page.
• Do the same for post: go back, click on Posts> Add New
• Add a title and some text
• Click Publish, and then view your site.
• Again, you’ll see your content appear immediately.
• You’re now ready to fill in your whole site!