Website Construction: A Complete Guide

If you have the money, I would really appreciate a donation of any amount. I try to put my
tutorials on HackForums for the benefit of the community rather than selling them on websites
like constant content, so please consider donating if this guide is helpful to you.

Thanks to Champloo11 for his large contribution to this tutorial. The tutorial would not be the
same without your ideas.
Please read the whole tutorial before taking any actions, you may miss something if you try and
follow the guide at the same time as reading it. Read it once then read it again while you
complete the tasks within it.

This guide is currently undergoing major editorial changes as of 21/11/2010, there is no date set
for completion of this process. All the information in this guide is still valid today however some
may be slightly dated. Thanks for reading my guide and good luck.

Part 1: Starting Web Construction and my story.

How I started my Website Construction Journey

When I was 7 I learned HTML, yes 7, it is a really easy language but it provides you with the
skills to create the foundations of a great website, I don't really know any programming
languages (maybe a little VB) because I focused on web design. Then I decided that I would
rather play video games than learn how to create websites, which is not a surprise. So 13 years
old I decided I would like to create a nice looking website, but I only knew HTML and I knew
that HTML alone was not enough to create a good looking website. So what did I do? You hear
it all the time, I checked Google, I found a really nice website called W3Schools, it is the one
that you are going to be using although it has been updated since I used it, anyway I am getting
ahead of myself. So, I am 13 and I decide to learn JavaScript because my friend knew it and he
showed me a few tricks on his website that I really liked, for example he created a script where
you enter your name, and hit submit and it would display "Hi, Your name. Good
morning/afternoon/evening" depending on the time on your PCs clock. Which I though, and still
think is a nice feature and this can be used in businesses, your customer will feel more welcome
and therefore hopefully will buy a product from your website rather than someone else. Yet
again I am getting ahead of myself. From the age of 13-14 I got hooked on web design, I learned
CSS, Advanced JavaScript, AJAX and Flash. Now, I am older and I have a good understanding
of PHP and I own my own web design business, I have 3 employee's and I make a nice income,
not life changing money but it’s better than working at the local McDonald's.

Do you really want to learn?

Web design languages are easier to learn than programming languages but that does not mean
that they are easy. They are fun to learn but some get confusing, if you really want to learn make
sure you follow the below guide.

 Don't give up, if you don't understand ask for help

 Learn 1 language at a time
 Getting users on your site takes time
 Your website will get better as time goes on

Ok, if you are prepared to follow the above bullet points, I have created you an action plan,
follow this and you will have a good website within a year.

Action Plan
1. Learn HTML - Use http://www.w3schools.com/html/DEFAULT.asp
1.5 Learn XHTML - Use w3schools again, it should take a day maximum to learn XHTML if
you know HTML.
2. Learn CSS - Use http://hackforums.net/showthread.php?tid=58412

Ok now you should have the skills to create a GOOD, PROFESSIONAL looking website. So,
now you should create a website.

3. Learn JavaScript and add some nice interactive features to your website - Use
http://www.w3schools.com/JS/default.asp

Now you should have a really nice looking website, with some nice interactive features, once
you get some users you will want to think about learning the following.

4. Learn AJAX to create some nice web applications - Use

http://www.w3schools.com/ajax/default.asp
5. Learn PHP and create a forum for your website - Use
http://www.w3schools.com/PHP/DEfaULT.asP

Now you have a successful website, congrats. You will be able to sell ad space, sell products or
whatever on your website and you will be able to make a nice income.

6. (Optional) Learn Flash to add some REAL nice effects to your website - Use
http://www.w3schools.com/flash/default.asp FIRST and then use
http://www.newgrounds.com/collection/fla...rials.html when you get better.

Note: It is nearly impossible to memorise an entire language, and as a web designer you are not
expected to. You are expected to be able to create a good-looking, functional site without any
trouble. However, this does not mean that you cannot use a reference to look up code that you
need clarification on, and in my opinion it shows initiative. WH Encryption has shared a great
reference for (X)HTML and CSS at http://htmldog.com/ - I would recommend taking a look.
Achievements
Ok a year on let’s see what you have achieved:-

*A website with active users

*The ability to create great websites
*A good income from ads
*You know 5/6 languages

That is quite a lot to achieve in a year.

Good Web Design Practices and Tips

1.Sense of Flow or Openness

One of the biggest challenges that many web designers have is to make their website attractive to
the eye, so potential users don't leave as soon as they enter the website because the design is
horrible.

Tips for good website flow and feel

• Don't make a thousand different pages that your user has to click through before finding
what he/she wants to find.
• Don't use JavaScript alert messages.... they are annoying.
• Avoid using flashy ad's they can draw attention away from your site and be a nuisance to
users.
• Make your content easy to read, don't make your users squint in the same regard don't make
your text to big.
• Use professional looking images (transparent PNG images give a nice feel)*
• Remove broken links (W3school has 2 broken links on their website here)
• Add a customized Error404 page (more information here)

*Thanks to Etheryte for indicating the following:

Actually, using transparent .png-s is a bad habit, it's much better to slice up your webpage right
and have every image have a full background. The reason for this is that some browsers (mostly
that means outdated ones) have trouble showing transparency correctly. A potential customer is a
potential customer, no matter how old the software they use.

But despite this I still think that it is a good idea to use these PNG images, because 99% of users
out there are using a newer browser and perhaps it is better for the 99% of people using newer
browsers to benefit than for the 1% of people to benefit. He does make a valid point though and
you may want to take in to consideration what he said when you are designing your website.
-Holyjoely.

2. Optimizing Pages for Smaller load time

When designing a web site it is very important that your user doesn't have to wait long periods of
time for a page to load or they may eventually leave.

Ways To decrease load time

A few ways you can decrease your web sites overall load is by

• Compressing Images before uploading to server with programs like these for Windows:
HVS GifCruncher and JPEG Wizard and for Macintosh: GraphicConverter.
• Compressing your files before uploading to server this will decrease the overall disk space
used by your file
• Avoiding cumbersome background images(this also usually gives a more professional look)
• Optimize your PHP/ASP/JavaScript so that it will take up less space while still
accomplishing the same task
• Using CSS when mass code is needed (such as large tables)
If you need to insert a large navbar/body image you can avoid excess loading by.

• Breaking up the images into several smaller ones this decreases load time because it allows
multi-threading.
• Removing any Flash(Flash is a no-no when trying to avoid large loading times).
3. Secure and Test your website always

Tips To Testing your website

• Ask Friends, split up the work (especially if the websites large).
• Make sure to test your website more than once you may have accidently done something to
cause the page to stop functioning correctly.
• Follow links that lead out of your site, the website's owner or host may have brought down
the site. (Useful Tool for checking links)
Why Secure your website?

Securing you site's documents, images and database is extremely important because of 3 major
reasons
• User's will not trust you enough to give information about them.
• This stops Hot linking, Rogue Bots and users from stealing your bandwidth.
• If you have private information on your server/database it is important you keep it private

How do I secure my website?

There are Several articles on this forum and below are a few other ways.

• Stop Users from getting a directory listing

• Stop Hot linking
• How SSL works and whether you need it
• What is XSS and how do I protect my website?
• 'Secure' File Uploading
• Ways to be secure with PHP
• How to ban with HTACCESS
• Help Prevent Spammers
• Prevent MYSQL injections

Features that will Improve your Website even further

Improving your website is extremely important, it doesn’t matter if you get 10 or 10,000
views a day, the better your website is and looks the more people will want to use it. For
example, why do people use Google? Well, it is an effective, fast search engine that does exactly
what it says on the tin. It is also nice and simple so people who are new to computers (or the
internet) can use it easily. The following few tips are sure to improve your website and therefore
gain more traffic.

Quicker Page loading time

If you are using CSS that can be properly organized without putting too much effort, use an
internal style sheet(s) they are faster. Also, they it’s easier to edit with php if you need to
make multi-browser compatible WebPages.
If you have extra time to spare working on your site, and several images you can increase your
website load time by pre-loading images with JavaScript. This allows the website to load the
images during the HTTP request instead of after.

More Ways to Increase Website Flow

If you are a skilled coder, a way to increase website flow is by adding an in-sight search engine.
This allows users to access information they are looking for without having to search the entire
site. If you do not have the programming skills required to build and structure a website search
engine you can make a site map.
Sometimes users get lost within the content of your website and they want to start over, give
them that ability by putting links on everyone of your web-pages that leads back to the main
page or the site-map.

Search Engine’s
Search Engine's are possibly some of the most used tools on the internet, they are extremely
useful tools they allow you to search for answers to a question, find restaurants, look up
YouTube videos and many other things. Therefore having your website put onto as many search
engines as possible is essential for bringing in traffic to your website and potentially making
money of these users.

Getting Listed
Google has a FREE service that allows you to sign up your web site called Google Analytics
when you have registered it will give you a code to put at the end of your WebPages code, this
will allow Google to Track the amount of hits you have received. It will allow you to watch the
amount of users who have used your website ext...
After Signing up for this service invite friends from other websites or in real life to visit your
website, not only may you receive new users but you will receive more individual IP's (boosting
your Google Rank).
Find ways to advertise your website via other website (ads, links), make sure these websites have
a good rank. This will mean everyone from Google looking at the other site will also see your
site.
Protecting your websites files/stats from Search Engines

Search engines are great.. but without specifying what links you do or don't want the search
engine to follow you can potentially lead traffic away from your site. Also, if you forget to tell
search engines not to list a directory of files from your website it will and this can lead a
potential security risk to hot linkers/download bots/hackers.
Learn how you can limit search engines searches by reading this.

SEO – Search Engine Optimization

“According to a recent study, more than 60% of websites lack the proper web programming to be
ranked properly by Internet search engines.”
The following steps aim to take your site out of that 60% and bring it into the 40% of websites that do
have the proper web programming to be ranked properly by Internet search engines. The sites in this
40% are the successful websites like MySpace, Facebook, YouTube, Hackforums.

1. Know your target audience

This is an essential step to optimizing your website, I cannot stress enough how important this is. A
quote from http://textlinkbrokers.com will confirm this:
“...Your target may be a 30-45 year old female, in middle management, who drives a mini-van and
takes her 3 kids to school before she goes to work. She makes $45,000 per year and has a bachelor’s
degree in finance. This is the type of detail you need...”
Your target may not be customers, you may be targeting businesses to sell your stock to, for example
my mother owns a florist in my hometown and she gets her flowers shipped from Holland every
morning but when she first started off their were over 15 of these suppliers offering their services. She
did some research and found a suppliers website from a search engine, the content appealed to her so
she decided that she would use this supplier. They didn’t have the lowest prices (although they are
very good) but their website made her feel welcome and when I talked to her recently about what made
her choose that supplier she said that she felt like she knew the person who was writing to her. Anyway,
enough ramble, time for step 2.

2. Keywords
Your keywords are so important to your website; they are the foundations for the search engines finding
your website, because of the importance of this I find that it is more effective to use some tools to find
your keywords instead of thinking of them off the top of your head. A great tool to use is Google’s
Keyword Suggest Tool (found here: https://adwords.google.co.uk/select/Keyw...External). I recommend
using the first option, enter a word or phrase and let Google generate keywords for you. Do this and
wait a few seconds for the results to appear. When they have appeared click on “Local Search
Volume: [month]” now your list is in order of the most searched words to do with your phrase that
were searched in your county last month. (Try saying that without breathing.)
The following was written by Rob Sullivan on Sep 19, 2005. I take no credit for the following.
Once you have a huge list of words, the next place to go is a site like Wordtracker,
(http://www.wordtracker.com/) which has a keyword analysis tool. This tool can be used for a one time
fee, or if it’s something you might want to return to you can purchase a subscription. It is a fairly
simple tool to use and will give you a good idea of just how likely your site will be able to compete for a
phrase.
A warning about Wordtracker: The software uses search volumes from some fairly minor sites such as
Dogpile, so the estimates could be a little skewed. But again, unless you deal with an SEO firm that has
their own proprietary software, this is about your best alternative.
Also remember as you are culling your words, don’t just focus on the competitive factors. These
won’t account for your target audience. Therefore you need to have that picture in your mind of the
target as you are selecting phrases that they might use. If you are unsure, you could always ask for help
from friends and family that fit the target profile.
End of Rob Sullivan’s article.

3. Your Content
If you have already written your content, do not attempt to re-write you whole website, just make sure
that you add key phrases to each page.
It is recommended that you keep the content on each of your web pages from 400-600 words. Obviously
going 50-60 words over or under this range is not a problem but if there is too little content on a page it
looks bare, blank and bad. If there is too much writing a lot of people will look at the page, say to
themselves “I’m not reading all that† and find another website. So it is recommended to stick
to these guidelines unless the page requires a lot of text (EG a tutorial like this, a terms and conditions
page ect.)
When writing your pages make sure that you include a key phrase 2-4 times, don’t make your page
sound weird by repeating the same phrase 10 times, people will think that you are trying to gain more
customers (which to be fair, you are) but they will not feel valued and again find a different website.
Also, make sure the content on each page is appropriate for the target audience, for example:
“Wassup Homies.
Check da new shizzle on da product pages for some fresh t-shirt.
Fresh t-shirts.
Fresh t-shirts.
Fresh t-shirts.”
This would not be appropriate for any audience, apart from maybe some “E-Thugs†. I know this is
an exaggeration but I think you understand what I am talking about.

4. Optimize your META

Before I start, if you don’t know what a meta tag is then you need to go over the HTML tutorial at the
start of this tutorial again. Meta tags are important to your website being found in search engines. The
first and second-most important meta tag to fill in is the meta description tag. This should be a few
hundred characters (200-400), maybe just a couple of sentences that explain your website. Make sure
this includes your keywords and phrases.
You can also choose to fill in the meta keywords tag. None of the major search engines use this anymore
but some smaller search engines do, and as mentioned before a customer is a customer no matter what
services/software they use. You can add as many of these as you like, they should be in the following
format:
“red green blue cheese virtual dj software”
It’s just like adding tags to a YouTube video, if you have ever done that.

5. Meta Title
This is left separate because it is the most important step in SEO, this is the title seen on the results
page of search engines, for example on http://www.google.co.uk/search?q=flowers we see a page of
results. Look at them and which one jumps out at you, for me it was “Flowers UK – Flower Delivery
by Flowers Direct UK – Buy Flowers Online.† This is a very optimized title, perhaps optimized too
much, but you can begin to see my point. The word “flower† is repeated 4 times in the title. You
should aim to repeat a key word in your title too, if you are stuck for a title, below is a good structure.
“Cheap Keyword Online – Buy keyword at Low Prices”
I came up with that in seconds, so it would be a good idea for you to try and be a bit more creative, but
if you are stuck you are welcome to use that structure.

Summary

“...In the end, the more you know who your customer is, the better you will be in all your online
ventures, from introduction of your product or service, to closing the sale. It is up to you to cater to
them, and not force them into a more generic mold. This is because today’s web searchers are much
more savvy and willing to browse more if a site doesn’t appeal to them...† - Rob Sullivan

What do we have now?

Take your fingers of your keyboard and look at your website. You have achieved something amazing,
you have a perfect website that in a few years may be contending with the big sites like MySpace,
Facebook, YouTube, eBay. This may sound like an exaggeration but I guarantee that it is not, every site
has to start somewhere and you have now started your journey.

What if my website doesn’t take off? What else can I use my skills for?

You have learned some valuable skills that can only help your career, if your website didn’t work for
whatever reason, don’t worry. It takes a lot of time for a website to get popular unless it is very
unique, the chances are you just had too much competition from larger companies. For example, if you
started a social networking site you would have to compete with quite a lot of big companies that are
already out there – like MySpace, Facebook , Bebo ect. So it would be very hard for your website to
succeed. Anyway, if you don’t want to change the topic of your website, or make a new one you can
off-load your website by selling it (there are some websites that will buy it off you, they can be found by
searching Google (As I am writing this I don’t have internet access so I cannot give you an exact link))
or giving it away to a friend who also has good web design skills. Now you may want to become a
“freelancer”.
This means that you will be paid by people to do jobs based around web design, construction, article
writing, scripting and more. Don’t worry if you are not good at all of these, the chances are you will
find something that you are good at especially if you followed the action plan in the first section of this
tutorial.
It is completely free to be a freelancer, all you need is the skills and the drive to do something different,
and so I suppose you are wondering how to get started. There are many
services that offer you that change to become a freelancer, below are just a few:

Code:
http://scriptlance.com
http://elance.com
http://getacoder.com
http://getafreelancer.com
http://guru.com
http://ifreelance.com

But personally, I would recommend you use http://scriptlance.com, at least since you don’t yet have
any experience as a freelancer. This website is simple to use, instead of registration fee’s like some
other freelance websites they make their profit by taking a small percentage of your earnings, this is
hardly noticeable unless you are dealing on a scale of thousands of dollars, in which case you won’t
mind anyway.

Once you get to the site register for free and look at some job offers! You bid the price that you want to
be paid for the job – but people prefer people with more experience than people with no experience
and just the lowest bid, so keep that in mind.

When your first start on these websites it is hard to get jobs, as I mentioned above because people
prefer to use people with more experience as a Freelancer. I would recommend that you do some article
writing jobs to start off with, just so that you can gain a reputation before moving on to larger jobs like
coding and web design.

Protecting your Website via Copyright

One of the worst things that can happen to you in the web design business is somebody else copying
your website and claiming it as their own. This is unfair and the people who do this obviously have no
skill in web design. This also includes people making phishing copies of your website, if people are
scammed by these phishers they may think that it was your website that took their details and then you
could gain a bad reputation and possibly lose a lot of money.

To protect against this you should try to put a copyright licence on your website. I know of two websites
that allow you to do this for free, http://myfreecopyright.com/ and http://creativecommons.org/,
personally I prefer http://creativecommons.org/ but you can use any. I will give you a brief description
on how to use http://creativecommons.org/ to get a free copyright licence for your website.

First go to http://creativecommons.org/license/

Then select the options for your licence, these are completely up to you.

When you are asked the type of content you are copyrighting, I recommend using “text†, but if
you would like to use another content type this is fine.
You will now be given the HTML code to paste into your website, once you have done this you are
protected by copyright.

Getting Web Hosting and a Domain

Now - this can be a very simple process or it can be a very compliated process, hopefully reading this
section of the tutorial will make it a simple process and your website will be up and running with a
professional looking domain for a cheap price in a matter of days, if not overnight. I strongly
recommend that you pay for your web hosting - it is faster, more reliable and you get a lot more
features.

So, Which host is best?

Well, there are a lot of good hosts out there but I will post my recommendation.
http://www.hosting24.com/ offers the following features:

Unlimited Disk Space

Unlimited Data Transfer
Free Domain For Life (.com, .net, .co.uk ect.)
Domain Privacy
30 Day Money Back Guarantee
Pay Monthly / Yearly
No Setup Fee
99.9% Uptime guarentee
Support by Live Chat
Unlimited MySQL Databases
Remote MySQL
phpMyAdmin
PHP 5 with PHP 4
Perl / CGI Support
Ruby On Rails
Simple Site Builder (Although I wouldn't recommend using it)
Ready GuestBook
Visitors Counter
Banners Rotator
Forum Auto-installer for 2 Different types of forum
Blog Auto-installer for 3 Different blogs
Portal Auto-installer for 12 Different types of portal
Gallery Auto-installer for 3 Different types of galleries
Over 50 other scripts
Unlimited POP3 Email Boxes
SMTP/IMAP/Webmail
Auto Responders
Mailing Lists
Spam Protection
Mail Forwarding
Latest cPanel
Fantastico Installer
Subdomains
Parked Domains
Unlimited FTP Accounts
Anonymous FTP
Protected Directories
File Manager
Redirects
Custom 404 Pages
AWStats
Cron Jobs
Instant Backups
FrontPage Extensions
Manage MIME Types
IP Deny Manager
SSL/TLS Manager
HotLink Protection
Leech Protection
Perl Module Installer
Pear Module Installer
24/7 User Support

Wow! Awesome hosting, and a free domain?! But I bet it costs a bomb. Nope, It costs - Get ready for it...
$4.48/month. That truley is insane hosting for that price and I can cut the price even more for you - with
this coupon code you will get a $2 discount every month! Just use the coupon code "WHTop" when
purchasing your hosting. (Apparently this expired in June but it is still working today - but it may become
invalid soon)

If you really can't afford to pay for web hosting there is an alternate way - it is possible to get free web
hosting but it is not as good as the paid hosting. I would recommend one of these two hosts if you are
going to use a free host, http://000webhost.com which is owned by Hosting24 (the company above) or
http://byethost.com which is equally a good free host. One problem with free hosts is that you do not
get a domain with them, you get a sub-domain but to be honest they look unprofessional and tacky.

There is a way to get free domains but these domains are not the popular domains such as .com, .net,
.org etc these are domains like .tk, .co.cc, .co.nr, they don't look too bad but I'm sure that you will agree
with me when I say that they don't look anywhere near as good as the popular domains. You can get
these free domains from a lot of places on the internet, below are just a few:

.co.nr - http://www.freedomain.co.nr
.co.cc - http://www.co.cc
.su.pr - http://www.su.pr
.tk - http://www.dot.tk

There are many more than can be found with a google search - I won't list them all here.

Promoting Your Website

To be added soon...

Contact Info
Contact me with any questions, problems or if you have made a site with this guide and want to show
me, you can also contact me via:
PM: Here
Email: [email protected]
MSN: [email protected]
But as much as I appreciate your kind comments and feedback, please post them as replies to this
thread instead of contacting me about them, I assure you I read all comments left and even if I don’t
reply to them I have read them and I am grateful that you have taken your time to comment.

If for some reason you cannot contact me, the following may help you:
1. Use a Search engine.
2. Find a Community of programmers/developers (example HackForums) .
3. Ask friends.
4. Find a book.

Summary

Thanks for reading my tutorial, once again I would like to thank Champloo11 of DaemonF Studios LTD
for their really helpful contribution.
 Website Building Guide -
From Zero to Hero!
Introducion
Everyone wants to have successful site without working on it. You can forget about that right now,
there's no such thing. All of us started somewhere. As a newbie in website developing I recommend you
to learn HTML and PHP for start. At least learn their basic codes and functions and later if needed
upgrade your knowledge. Here are few questions which I want you answer:

1. How badly you want to have good site?

2. Are you willing to do basically anything to get it working?
3. Do you think money is important when starting website?

I guess now, with your motivation and devotion we can start.

Gets things you need!

It's your choice what tools you need to make your first website. I'll show you everything I know in order
to get it. At its start, you need to decide what type of website you want to make, either its gonna be
blog, forums, sales website or miscellaneous website type. You can't go anywhere without proper
domain (What is domain?) and hosting (What is hosting?). Getting a good domain is very important. It
helps search engines like Google, Yahoo and others to find your site. Having domain related to your
content will help search engines to find it easier and it imporves your site Search Engine Optimization
also known as SEO. You can get free or paid domain. I'd recommend a paid also known as TLD (Top Level
Domain). Here are few good sites from you can get TLD:

 GoDaddy
 NameCheap
 NetFirms

or usually when you're buying hosting you have option to buy a TLD, too. Sometimes its for free and
sometimes you pay few bucks. If you still want to have free domain then you can visit Co.Cc and get one.
Now our next part is hosting. Getting a good host is 2nd important thing. Your site needs to be visible on
internet and hosting does that. Hosting which I strongly recommend is HostGator. Here are their list of
features for shared hosting:

- Unlimited Disk Space and Bandwidth

- Flexible, Easy to Use Control Panel
- Unlimited Sub Domains, FTP Accounts, and Email Accounts
- 99.9% Uptime Guarantee
- No Contract with a 45 Day Money Back Guarantee
- Safe Harbor Certified (Details)

And many more which you can see on clicking to compare all hosting plans. If you want to use free
hosting (which I don't recommend from many reasons):

 FreeHosting
 000WebHost
 FreeHostia
 ByeHost
 x10Hosting
 110mb - Only for very small blogs/sites because disk space is only 110mb.

You can find more of them from Google. Now we have domain and hosting ready for our site. Next thing
we need to what you want to use on our site.

Basic Site
If you're going to create site from scratch use Kompozer as your tool. It's very good for starters with
enough options. That is only to create a basic site but wait, we can make your site even better with few
bucks extra bucks. For achieving that, lets head to DreamTemplates.com. Choose template you want to
use and pay for it. After you paid, you have unlimited access to templates in certain period which you
paid (1/2/3 years or lifetime). To edit template how you want, you need DreamWeaver which you can
pay for or download from torrents for free. When you're done, just upload to your ftp with FileZilla
(recommended, instead of using cP uploader). You can get sites from free from WordPress or
Drupal.That was the story for basic site.

Blogs
These are easiest type of site to manage and handle. For making one, you don't need hosting and you
can choose subdomain when you're making blog but it is recommended to use TLD. You can get your
free blog from Blogger or from Wordpress.

Forums
Forums are great for a website which has/need discussion in it or it can just be forum-website. This is
handy for support websites of products and other things which need support. There are many forum
software's which you can use but here are 5 which are best of the best:

 MyBB
 PhpBB
 Ivision Power Board
 vBulletin
 SMF

The best forum software ever made is MyBB because of many features. On 2nd place I'd say IPB. 3rd
places goes to SMF. 4th place is vB because of being boring. 5th place is Phpbb. Those are my
recommendations and I'm telling you this from my personal experience. I worked with many of them
and I lined them up by their ease of use for newcomers. How to setup a forum, you ask me now? Well
that's very easy and everybody can do it. Get FileZilla, connect to your hosting by taking server name
(usually http://ftp.mydomain.com or some name server), login details (username/password), port is
always 21. Now you're logged in your hosting ftp (What is FTP?) and you can upload your forum to your
public_html or create new directory named forums or however you like. Please notice that when you
create new direcotry and upload your forum files to it, location of your forum is then
mydomain.com/forums or however you named that folder. That's useful for sites which has other
content and forums are used for chatting or whatever. Every forum is easy to install. When uploading of
all forum files is finished go to your domain and you'll see installation window. Just click next and next
until you get to part which asks you to rename your file permissions. See the files which needs to be
renamed in installation. After that, go to FileZilla and click on file/folder and write 777 or tick all boxes.
Refresh page when you're done with all of them and proceed to next step. Next step is to connect it to
your hosting and MySQL database (What is MySQL Database?). Your mysql host is usually localhost
unless your hosting specifies different. Go to your cPanel and make new database and new user.
Copy/paste info to boxes in installation and let it create tables and install forum software. After its
finished, you'll be asked to make administrator account, which is head admin of the forum. When you

made it, go to your domain and login to your new forum.

Custom Sites
These sites require coding or modifications. They can be about anything and they can include everything
every type of site shown above or something totally custom. For those you must know HTML and PHP.
Good place to learn web developing languages is W3Schools. If you're lazy to do this, then pay someone
to make it for you.

Okay, we done that "technical" part of making your site #1. If you're tired so far, this is only beginning
and easiest part of your way. Pay attention what is next.

Advertising!
This is the biggest, hardest, time consuming part which most of webmasters fail to complete. Getting
your site known to people is most difficult part. Here is the thing you need to complete, that's of course,
SEO.

Content
This is very important. When you're making site, you must know content of it. Making site about
something which you don't have a clue won't get you far. When having a site, try to make as much
content as you can so site has more content which can be SEO-ed.

Search Engine Optimization (SEO)

Ah this one is hard for me, too. If you don't know what is SEO see this. So the thing is you need to make
your site SEO-ed good enough to appear high on google. What are the methods? Well, your best
resource for that is Wikipedia. If you don't like/avoid to read much, you will fail at this point which is
most important. First you need to know what are SEO methods and then to find out how to work on
them. Look, understand and implement these:

 Getting indexed
 Cross Linking
 PageRank
 Link Farming
 Comment Spamming
 Keyword stiffing
 URL Normalization
 Meta Tags
 BackLinks
 SEO Trending

There are more, but those are enough. Good thing is when doing SEO purchasing SEO tools. They can be
expensive but they are great things if you know how to use them. Again I'm saying, inform yourself good
about SEO methods or you won't know how to use SEO tools. You can search on Google for SEO tools.

Using another sites like Facebook, YouTube and Twitter will help you advertise your site and give few
backlinks.
For Facebook: Make fan page/group and get people to join it somehow. Use something interesting to
attract people. After that advertise your site in your fan page/group.
For YouTube: Make a video about your site and what you offer. YouTube videos boosting will get you
extra traffic and your videos will be popular and have enough numbers of views.
For Twitter: Add many people to follow you and after that, announce your site. It won't help much but
it's better than nothing.
Once you get your site popular enough, you're in good way. You're on good way becoming number 1.
Keep in mind that making good site won't come over the night. It takes months, even years to make it
great place to be.

Getting back invested money

If you invested in your website that's great. If not, that's ok, too. Now I'm going to show you how to get
your money back and gain more of it when your site is popular (At least 200 unique visitors per day,
that's minimum and it's good rate for now). The thing is to put ads from Google or some partners. If you
have forums, you can charge for paid sticky or something like that. There are no limits with possibilities,
try new things. If you have good content site, you can make CPA gateways on it. Same goes for blog. You
can use no matter what money making method if your site has traffic and good content. I'll give one
example. Lets say you have video downloading site. People who want to download videos from YouTube
or somewhere else are going to come to your site. To be able to download video, they need to fill survey
or something like that. Having in mind that guy/gal who wants to have that video badly is going to do
anything to get it which means profit for you.

Also, there are other ways. Since now, you should be experienced webmaster. You are good with SEO
and know to program 2 languages. Guess what? That can make you money, too. You can sell your
services and do SEO for people or code for them. If you're good with graphic, you can learn CSS and
design custom themes for forums, blogs and others which is very big profit if they are made
professionally. Remember that practice makes perfect.

Website security
As some people be jealous of your success, they will try to hijack your website or its content. To prevent
all of that, you need to protect your content with copyright law. Copyright is a set of rights which belong
to author or creator of some work. By work, it can be almost anything. With those rights he can copy,
distribute and adapt the work. There are exceptions like fair use (What is Fair Use?) doesn't require
permissions to be given from author/creator. All other uses must be approved by its original author.
Now we're going to move on how to protect the website itself.

Firewall on web servers

Using a firewall is very good option. It will prevent almost anything to get to your site. What online
firewall do is same as firewall on your home pc, blocks inputs which can harm you computer. In this case
it's your website. They can stop Ddos attacks (What is Ddos attack?) or if you use paid hosting like
Hostgator (which I again strongly recommend) you have ddos protected site and I think you get some
firewall and other features to deny IP's and members from your site. If you're purchasing a firewall, that
can be very expensive but if your site is poplar, large and takes attacks everyday, you should have it.

Enforce strong security policy

This is mostly for forums. In ACP you can put as a must to have strong password. Also you should make a
privacy policy which will help your members understand, what information you collect from and how it's
going to be used. Here you can read more about internet privacy if you're a member of website which
collects your personal information.

Apply patches and software updates

This is very important step. Updating your forum/blog software will help in security of your website.
Here's how: when software is updating it's usually new features add and extra security measures. Old
version had either small bugs or vulnerability was found in it so it's very important to update your
website software. Run check once a week and don't run on old version(s).

Backuping

This is very important, too. Always backup (What is backup?) your site if you're installing something
new, like updating software of website. In case something goes wrong, you won't be able to fix it.
Backups are done via phpMyadmin (What is phpMyadmin?) and/or downloading your files from ftp.
Backups should be done after 2 weeks or a month, in case you get hacked or hosting dies, etc.

Limiting resources on your website

Limiting what people (guests) can see on your website will help against leeching your content over the
internet (this is violating of copyright law if person didn't ask you for permissions if he/she can take that
content or doesn't give credits to original creator/author). There are many ways to do this. Lets say you
have forums with PHP scripts which are finished and totally working. You can limit that guests can't see
threads, boards or they need certain amount of posts to enter it. If you have blog or something like that,
you can put CPA widget in order to download it. For picture sharing sites, you can disable right click (may
not help much) or add site credits on all pictures. I'm leaving you many more possibilities to work on.

Ddos attack

To prevent this, you should use paid ddos (What is Ddos attack?) protected hosting. In that way your site
will remain up even if some Ip is flooding its bandwidth. If you have a firewall, you can block certain
countires, vpns, ip's to access your site and that will stop ddos attack in its tracks. Having this with a free
host will only get you big trouble because you're loosing traffic (if it has 200 visitors per day) and
potentially money.

Conclusion
As a reminder to you, nothing will grow up in one day, for everything it takes time (What is time?). Don't
be crushed if you don't succeed first time. With time you will get better and have more experience.
Don't be afraid to ask question on support websites. Everyone started from zero's and some of them
became hero's. Use Google and YouTube as your best resources before asking for support on support
websites. Remember, lots of sites developed SEO and they are easy to find on Google, do same with
yours. Be careful who you give permissions and make sure they earn that (this isn't for support, it's for
mods/staff/admins on your site/forum). I hope this will be helpful to newcomers in web developing
business. Remember to update yourself constantly with new knowledge, tips and tricks, use your brain
(What is brain?).
If you would like to help me in some way because I wrote this guide, then please register on
TechBoost.org and remain active member. We are still in new faze but we're running good for now.

Thanks for taking time to read and understand this.

Regards,
Eagle 95

Disclaimer: I'm not responsible with any use of this information as illegal or abusive forms. This is for educational purposes only. You do not have
permissions to copy/paste/rip/leech this anywhere without my permission. Disobeying this rule will result in a ban.