How to Build a Killer Website in a Week

[Zekecamusio]

WARNING: Do not follow the following steps if you want your website to take forever to get built or if you want to spend a lot of money on a new site.

Now that I have your attention, let me say that there's more than one way to build a site. This is just one way. One that I found extremely useful.

    Register a domain name and get a hosting account. I use GoDaddy for most of my sites.
    Install the WordPress app from GoDaddy's control panel. Here's a tutorial for this.
    Find a theme that you like. Browse some themes here: WordPress Themes, Woo Themes, ThemeForest, TemplateSold, ElegantThemes, StudioPress and iThemes. Some of these are free and the paid ones are usually below $50.
    Install the theme. This tutorial explains how.
    Customize the theme. Add your pictures, text and videos.
    Install and configure the plugins (see list of plugins below). Check out this tutorial.
    Change your permalink to /%category%/%postname%/ Here's a tutorial.
    If it's your first time doing this or if you're not a techie, there might be things you won't be able to figure out. Don't panic. Just make a list of all the things that you want done but can't figure out.
    Go to oDesk and post a new project. You're going to get anywhere from 20 to 100 bids. I highly suggest working with vendors who have ratings above 4.5 on a scale from 1 to 5 and more than 100 hours worked on oDesk. They also need to speak very good English. Read their cover letters to verify this. Hire one and get that person to take care of the things you couldn't figure out on your own.

Estimated Cost

    Domain: $10/year
    Hosting: $4/month
    WordPress: free
    Theme: $0-$70
    Payment to web designer to do the things you couldn't do yourself: $50-$200

WordPress Plugins You Need to Install

    All In One SEO Pack (to make your site Google-friendly)
    Google Analytics for WordPress (a plugin that automatically installs Analytics on every page of your site)
    Google XML Sitemaps (it helps you get as many of your pages as possible indexed on Google)
    PingPressFM (it automatically posts your blog updates to Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn)
    PubSubHubbub (it automatically lets Google know every time you create a new page or post)
    SEO No Duplicate (it fixes the duplicate content issues that WordPress has)
    ShareThis (it allows your visitors to share your content by email, Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn)
    Subscribe to Comments (when someone comments on a blog post, they get email notifications when other people respond to their comments)
    Target Blank in Posts and Comments (it ensures that your visitors don't leave your site when they click on an external link by opening this link in a new window or tab)
    WPTouch (it creates a mobile version of your site for visitors who browse it from their iPhones, iPads and Androids)
    Yet Another Related Posts Plugin (it shows related posts below each one of your posts)

Five Benefits of Building a Website this Way

    It's fast
    It's affordable
    Because it's a WordPress site, you can manage it yourself. You're not at your designer's mercy anymore to make changes to your site.
    It's search engine-friendly
    It's social media-friendly

Did this help? Do you have any questions?