How to Build a Free Website (2) Building with Blogger More on Free and Paid Domains Free: The type of domain name you will get when you follow the methods in this guide will be of the form www.mywebsitename.blogspot.com . This type of address is known as a subdomain. It is free and is like a subset of www.blogspot.com. To be able to view your website, you must add .blogspot.com after the name that you chose else you will not be able to access it. Most free domain names are actually in the form of subdomains. Paid: To get a website that is just a straight .com without the .blogspot, just like www.latestnigerianjobs.com, you will need to first register the domain name through a hosting company and then buy a hosting package for the name. In this case, you will need to pay yearly for the name and the hosting. Paid domain with free hosting: One very good thing with Blogspot is that it is also possible to convert your .blogspot website to use a paid domain name after you have built it, thereby removing the .blogspot.com from the URL. But the website will still be hosted for free on Blogspot so you will not need to be paying for hosting. I will also not go into much detail about how to do this in this guide because it’s a bit complex, but later in the next section I will tell you how you can get it done if you need to do it. Free or Paid, Which is Better? The table on the next page outlines some of the more important similarities and differences/ pros and cons of both types. The free domain used here refers to Blogger (.blogspot.com) and may be different from other free hosts. Depending on your preferences, you may chose to first start with the free name and hosting from blogspot as described in this guide and later convert it to the paid type. On the other hand, you may chose not to wait till later and just go ahead and convert it to the paid type immediately after you have finished creating the blog. Mind you, this does not mean that you cannot run a successful blog with the free .blogspot name and free hosting. You can have a successful website using a free name. In fact there are a lot of big popular websites today who are still using the free domain name with .blogspot and they are still making thousands every month from using it through online business. So converting to a paid domain is not a must for success. However, if you want a website address that is easy to pronounce and more professional, you should consider upgrading to the paid domain after you have built your website. This guide does not cover how to obtain and configure a paid domain because our focus is on how you can get everything set up for free without spending money. For details on how to obtain a paid domain for your blog, please visit www.ng44.com/services/blogger/customdomain Types of Websites There are many various categories and types of websites. Some websites are dedicated to one category while others comprise of a combination of various types all merged into one. The most common types/categories of websites are listed below: Corporate: This is the normal company website without too many extra functions, just mainly information about the company. Portal: Portals are like gateways to large varieties of information, services, resources, news and sometimes directories. A good example is www.yahoo.com. E-Commerce: An e-commerce website is a site that is primarily meant for selling things and making various transactions online. It is commonly set up in the form of a store or catalogue where clients can select a product, view the details, purchase and then pay for it online. Social Network: A social network allows you to make friends, share videos and photos and connect with people. Popular examples of social network websites are Facebook.com and Twitter.com . Dating and Chat Sites: These are types of websites targeted specifically at matchmaking. Many of their features are similar to those of social networks in that they allow people to create personalized profiles and interact with other members. Some of these websites also allow members to chat with each other in public or private chat rooms. Forum: An example of a forum website is www.nairaland.com and www.naijahotjobs.com. In a forum website, people can register and then start discussions by posting something on the forum. Other members can then comment on what that person has written and it continues on and on like that. A forum can also be called a message board. Blog: A blog (or weblog) is a type of website that is updated regularly if not every day. Most job and career websites in Nigeria are blog websites. After following the steps in this book, you are going to end up with a blog website with a free address like www.myjobwebsite.blogspot.com Search Engine: A search engine is a website that you can use to search for information online. The most popular example of a search engine is www.google.com which is also the biggest search engine in the world. The Structure of Websites A website is comprised of web pages. Every information that you post is stored and shown on pages so when people view a link on your website, what they will actually be looking at is one of the pages of your website. A blog can have different pages for different purposes. One type of page is the home page which is the first page that people see when they come to your website by typing your web address Decide on a name Before building your free blog, it is wise to first decide on a name for it. The name that you chose is used to generate your domain name and it is a very important factor in the long term growth of your website. If you try to use a name that someone has already used, it will not be accepted and you will be required to use a different name. Imagine the name as your website identity, just like your email address which is also unique. While selecting a name, take note that many of the common names have already been taken because there are millions of other people who have used blogger to create their blogs. Also note that ideally your name must be easy to recall and must not be too long so that when people see it repeatedly, the name will stick. For example, if you are building a job related blog then you can use a name like 774jobs or for a news blog, something like Naijanews234 so your URL will now be 774jobs.blogspot.com or naijanews234.blogspot.com Building a Website with Blogger And now the moment has finally come. In the next section I shall take you through the steps on how you can create your own free blog website with Blogger (www.blogspot.com). It is really very simple and once you get used to it, you will be able to create a free blog in just 10 minutes. Before you can use Blogger, you must first have a Google account. This is not a difficult thing to get and it’s free. In fact some people already have a Google account but they may not realize it. For example, if your email address ends with @gmail.com or @googlemail.com it means you already have a Google account so you will not need to create a new one if you want to use this email address to register. To register your new blog, go to www.blogspot.com Following is what the website looks like:
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