Your First Website

Build a sensible plan for a small business website before spending money or sharing access. This written course explains the separate jobs of a domain, hosting, DNS and HTTPS, then turns those ideas into a compact website brief. You will learn what belongs on a first site and what can wait until you have a clear business reason for adding it.

The lessons use a fictional local repair business to demonstrate practical decisions without assuming a particular hosting company, design service or software subscription is available. You will sketch a customer journey, compare the responsibilities behind a hosting offer, draft useful page content and work through a launch checklist. The emphasis is on ownership, clear information, accessible pages and safe testing rather than expensive features.

Allow approximately 40 minutes for reading and initial practice. Building and thoroughly testing a live site will take longer. You do not need to purchase anything during the course. By the end you will have a reusable one-page brief, an account ownership checklist and a small acceptance test that you can use yourself or discuss with a website professional.