Building a Free Website From Scratch
Nowadays, you don’t need to hire someone and spend an arm and a leg to build a website. There are several platforms where you can do that yourself. Wix and WordPress – just to name a few – offer great tools and make the process easy and straightforward.
The platform I used to build my free website was SiteRubix. I found that it offered me everything I needed and it was easy to navigate.
Who Needs a Website?
For anyone who is serious about having a business, whether you’re an author, poet, blogger (read this guide on how to start a blog), affiliate marketer, or any other online (and offline) entrepreneur, a website is your calling card.
Over a decade ago, you’d usually hire someone to set up the website for you, which often turned out to be a huge investment. I remembered when I started asking about prices … That was where I basically stopped. I couldn’t afford to hire someone.
The Difference between WordPress and SiteRubix
Then I learned how to do it myself, and it isn’t even that hard. Nowadays you don’t need to learn how to write script to start a website. The reason I chose SiteRubix over WordPress is that SiteRubix allows you to monetize your website, WordPress doesn’t. SiteRubix runs on WordPress.org whereas WordPress runs on WordPress.com.
WordPress is great, but I think that Siterubix has more features and functionalities.
Since every website needs good hosting, SiteRubix is hosted by WealthyAffiliate, which also includes extensive training.
How to Build a Website
- On the SiteRubix platform type the name you want for your website and then click on the button below “build my free website”.
- Join Wealthy Affiliate (it’s a necessary step, because they host the platform. As I mentioned before, you can join for free).
- You will be taken to the Site Builder and prompted to choose what type of website you want to build (free or a domain you own)
- Select “free website”
- You may be asked to name your website again – Note that since this is a free domain, the URL will have siterubix at the end.
- After that you can choose a theme for your website. There are nearly 2500 themes to choose from.
- Click on the theme you like.
- Then comes the exciting part: click on “I’m ready, build my website now”.
- And you’re done! On the next screen you can log in to your brand new website, change the layout and colors if you like, add widgets, and you can start writing content.
Pros and Cons
So, let’s look at the pros and cons of SiteRubix
Pros
- Free
- Allows monetization of your website
- Easy to use
- Excellent hosting (needs a free account at host Wealthy Affiliate)
- 2500 themes to choose from
- 30 searches with the Jaaxy keyword research tool
- Free SSL
- SiteSpeed
- Daily website backups
- Bandwidth and 5 Gm disk space
Cons
The free website is limited to 6 months. After that, you need to either buy the domain or upgrade your free membership at Wealthy Affiliate.
Additional Comments
I would recommend buying the domain anyway, so I don’t consider that a con. I did the same for my website. Having your own domain is like having internet real estate. Its value only increases with time. The yearly cost of a domain varies between $10 and $15 us approximately.
I highly recommend that you get your website hosted, for added security. Other good website hosting platforms, besides Wealthy Affiliate, are BlueHost and GoDaddy.
Final Thoughts
Having your own website nowadays has become much more accessible, thanks to platforms like WordPress, SiteRubix, Wix, Weebly, Bubble, and others. The process has been made simple and hosting ensures that our websites are secure and have excellent site speed.
Only two years ago I had no idea how to build a website, and now I am managing four. If I can learn it, you can too 🙂
Photo by Brooke Cagle on Unsplash