Create your own website using Strato's WebStarter service

Nowadays it’s easy to set yourself up with a home on the internet - and it’s often free. Blogs and personal home pages have been around for a long time, and more recently sites such as Twitter and Facebook have appeared, giving both people and businesses a way to say hello and engage the world wide web.

But sometimes we need more than those sites can offer - Twitter, for instance, is fine for status messages but if you want to communicate anything longer than that it’s no good.

Facebook is fine for promoting events, and some businesses even conduct their online affairs entirely through this site, but that gives up a large amount of control to a faceless corporation - thus giving up individuality.

That’s when web hosting comes in. Web hosting means setting up your own website through a hosting company such as Strato, which then gives you a place on the web to call your own, over which you have complete control and with which you can do what you like.

 

What’s included on the website is up to you. You may want a simple website that shows off your family photographs, promotes a business or local society, or you may want to set up a cottage industry site. The important thing is to choose a hosting company that provides the flexibility and range of tools needed for all these types of task and more.

Choosing a name
Using Strato’s WebStarter service, you can easily register a domain name - that way you can have your own personalised ‘.co.uk’ web address. It’s not limited to this type - you can choose from other domain name types, such as ‘.org.uk’ and ‘.me.uk’.

If you’d like to use another type of address (such as ‘.com’ or ‘.info’) you can register it as an optional extra and link it to your website. Strato’s WebStarter account includes one domain name and registering it is as simple as choosing the name and ticking a couple of boxes.

 

Once a domain name has been chosen it’s time to begin creating your site. Strato’s site builder takes you through the process step by step so it’s straightforward, even if you have no experience in the area.

The Strato package allows users to choose the level that suits them, so it’s great for beginners and advanced users.

Different packages are available but Strato’s WebStarter service, which costs £3.90 a month, is most suitable for people who are new to creating websites. It includes 20 pages for your site and there is no limit on the amount of traffic your website can take - even if it becomes very popular you won’t be charged any extra for the number of people visiting your site.

Learn how to create your own website using Strato WebStarter by following this step-by-step workshop

The WebStarter package also includes email: you can have up to 25 email addresses at your domain name (such as ‘name1@example.co.uk’, ‘name2@example.co.uk’ and so on). Each comes with 1GB of space to store plenty of messages and attachments, and can be easily accessed using Strato’s webmail service. You can set up auto-responders so if someone emails one of your addresses they receive an instant reply with further information.

 

Adding photos and video
Two special tools make it easy to make your website more interesting: EasyVideo quickly converts videos into the Flash format that’s common online so your visitors can see them easily, and PhotoAlbum makes it simple to create albums of your pictures so that your visitors can flick through them without having to visit another site, and without you having to upload them to an external site such as Facebook or Flickr.

 

The package also includes up to five sub-domains so you can have separate sites within the main one, such as http://blog.example.co.uk/, and other handy features, such as access to web statistics and log files. These enable you to see who is visiting your site and how they got there, with the statistics presented in easy-to-understand graphs.

 

There’s free technical support by telephone and email, and there’s an extensive collection of frequently asked questions so you can find solutions to common errors quickly.

Strato’s WebStarter comes with a 30-day money back guarantee so if you’re not satisfied you won’t be charged, and there are five months free for all new customers - after that period has ended you’ll pay £3.90 a month, with a contract period of 12 months. If it sounds tempting, read on to see how easy it is to make your own website.