Rapid Website Setup in Only a Few Hours

In this guide I will teach you how to get an online business started so fast it will make your head spin. Oh, and this will cost you no more than 20 dollars.

You might think I’m crazy.

But I’ll show you how anyone with the passion and desire to make money online or even run a none-for-profit can have the foundation of their business established in ONE DAY.

Now I’m not about to give you some vague BS. I will give precise instructions and even files and scripts to download and use. I will tell you where to go and what to buy.

I must warn you that this is not a how to make money guide. Rather, this is a production blueprint to get your site built and published. I will not discuss things like taxes, or how to incorporate. Those are formalities that can be dealt with before or after production is done.

What is the bare bones of websites.

Websites can seem like complex things. And to most people they are . But, you should not be concerned about a website’s deeper technical specifications. Because what you will have to deal with is absolutely easy as a child’s toy to understand.

There are millions of plug and play software available that can handle most types of website models. Limit your quest for knowledge only to the most important things that drive foot, phone or click traffic. That means leads. This will cut your setup work down to just a day.

What technology to use and how will this affect the deadline.

You will need the usual things…like hosting, domain and the actual software that runs the site. Because acquiring these things is relatively easy and usually takes only a few minuets to install, this makes it dramatically faster than setting up a brick and mortar business. It’s also much faster than the conventional way of setting up a website.

It’s important that a software package is used for your site because it’s free to get and more advanced than 90% of websites.

What I’m talking about is free and Open Source Content Management Systems. These are Drupal, Joomla, WordPress and hundreds more.

For this guide I will use WordPress and recommend you do also. Although other CMS software are relatively easy to setup and have similar features, I feel WP is the most versatile, has a very large community of developers and users and have thousands of plugins and themes available for free.

The actual work…step by step

Setting up the server.

Go to Godaddy.com, check for that domain you’ve had your eye on and register it. They might be offering a first year discount on the domain if you take hosting. Go ahead and do that, take the plan costing around 6 bucks and add nothing else to the order.

When you check out the total cost should not be more than 11 dollars. Only notable option during this process is choosing your server type and configuration. I would pick Linux with PHP5+ and MySQL 5+.

Accessing server.

Check the email you used at checkout, grab your username and password info and login to the hosting control panel. In case you have to create new login info, login directly to Godaddy, click on the hosting link on the left menu.

Then click manage account to the right of the domain name. Once inside the hosting panel, click the big button close to the top that says Your Applications. This will take you to the Godaddy Hosting Connection.

Installing WordPress.

On the left menu of the hosting connection, click the link that says Blog. Then click on WordPress. Now go ahead and install WordPress here. Document any username or passwords you choose for future reference.

This will take a few hours. Only notable option here is choosing to install the software in a sub folder instead of the main root folder. Select the main root folder.

Setting up File Access.

You will need to access the raw files of the website. You will need to upload some files and the most efficient way is to use an FTP Client. Download a free and popular one called FileZilla. When it’s installed and opened, click the File option at the top left and select Site Manager. In the site manager click New Site, give it a name, and make the host www.yoursite.com. Select logontype as normal and enter the username and password you just created for your hosting account.

Then hit connect. You should be logged in to the root of the site if all goes fine. If authentication fails, then go back to the hosting panel, click Settings and then Manage Ftp Users. There you can create a new user. Assign rights to the user for the root folder.

Configuring WordPress.

Go to the login page by typing into the address bar www.yoursite.com/wp-login.php. If the page shows a login form, then enter the login details you created during installation. And you should be taken to the Administration area of your website. If the form is not there or you get an error, then installation is not complete.

The first thing you want to do here is go to the Settings menu on the bottom left. Select General from the drop down options. Give your site a Title, and a Tagline which usually appears below the logo. You might want to also adjust your time zone and date settings. Save Changes at the bottom of the page.

Next you will go back to Settings menu and select Permalinks. Change the setting to Month and Name or just select custom and enter /%postname%/. Save Changes at bottom.

And that’s it…your website is now configured on a basic level and ready for content and advance configuration. Up to this point all of this should have taken you less than 3 hours.

With other hosting companies, it should take no more than 5 hours. And that’s stretching it. Now you can visit your website at www.yoursite.com and see your new site in action.

Advanced Configuration of WordPress.

I could leave you high and dry here with your new website, but it would be cruel. So I will tell you how to do some upper level configuration to bring your website up to professional standards.

The first thing you will notice after the initial setup is that your site is an ugly standard looking thing. You have to bring it alive. One way of doing this is by selecting a different Theme. You can build one your self or hire a professional, but that’s not the point here. We want it quick and cheap.

So you can Google “free wordpress themes” and there will be thousands to choose from. Find something you like and download it. Unzip and upload the entire theme folder.

To do this use the FTP Program mentioned above and simply drag the theme folder to sub folder wp-content/themes. After the theme is uploaded, login to the admin system where you did the basic configuration. Here you will go to Appearance menu on the left side, and select Themes. Select the theme you just uploaded and activate it.

Now go to the site and see the new theme in effect. Don’t worry if it might be used by others, after your site matures a little, the theme will take on a look of its own. Also a little bit of styling down the line will completely set it apart from other sites.

You will also need a few plugins to enhance the system. These are commonly used and can make a big difference to the optimization of your site. Get the plugins here. Unzip and upload them individually (in their respective folders) to wp-content/plugins using FileZilla or other FTP program.

Configuring Plugins.

To configure the plugins, the first thing to do is activate them. Do this by going back to the admin page, go to Plugins menu and select Installed. This will give you a list of plugins in the system, Activate the plugins you installed. You can leave Hello Dolly and Askemit disabled for now.

Once activated you will get a warning for the All In One SEO Pack. Click the link it gives and this will take you to the configuration page. Enable the plugin, fill in Title, Description, and Keywords then save changes.

Now go to Settings menu on left and select Google XML Sitemap and check if the sitemap was built. This will be displayed right at the top of the page.

If all seems well, go back to Settings and select Privacy Policy, this will build your privacy page and allows you to make edits as needed.

There are lots of plugins besides these you can install. Feel free to add whatever you need as your site grows. You can find additional plugins by selecting add new from the Plugins menu on the left.

Running tests and basic SEO.

Try to test the system by creating pages and posts and checking the site itself to make sure updates are working. Also test the comment forms and move through the system to verify there are no unusual errors.

If you do encounter an error, not to worry, there are plenty of free resources available online to help. WordPress it self has a wiki called codex, that provides solutions to most questions.

Each page you edit will have the SEO fields at the bottom of the edit page. Just enter title, description and keywords as needed. This will go a long way towards optimizing the site for search engines. You will want to enter a max of 120 characters for title, 160 for description and at least 3 keywords.

Recap.
Setting up a website is no longer a highly technical issue. Most hosts offer one click install of many Content Management Systems, and other useful software. Setting up the domain, hosting and CMS is a very quick process. Adding plugins and themes is also a very easy and quick process.

If you follow this guide, the only problem you might run into is the ftp access. In which case you can bypass this and use the internal FTP client offered by Godaddy. To access this, simply go to the hosting control panel, select Content and then FTP Client. Other hosting companies probably have a similar feature.

Now go ahead and spend the next 5-10 hours creating content. Please note: Newly registered sites will take a few days to display in the web browser. To view your site use the ip address provided by the hosting company in substitution for www.yoursite.com. This is usually in the welcome emails or it can be accessed from the hosting control panel.

Also, if the Google XML plugin failed to build the sitemap, there are plenty of sites that will build one for you. Simply upload it to the root of the site.