How to Make a Website for Kids Part 1

Part 1 – Finding Your Domain

Ok, so you have decided to make your own website for kids? Good news, it’s pretty easy. Lets get started with the basics. Firstly you are going to need to get yourself a domain. A domain is the name you type in to your internet browser to arrive at the site you are looking for. We explain the main concepts of hosting your domain here.

Your domain name should relevant to what your site is going to be about. I know a lot of the big names on the internet have names unrelated to what they offer like Google and Amazon. But unless you plan on having a household name you would be better off naming your site something relevant. This will help people find it easier and start getting your site noticed. So if your site is going to be about sports start thinking about a name like sporttime.com or allaboutsports.com.

Now you have the name you want it’s time to go out there and make it your own. If you choose to go the free route you can make an account at sites like wordpress.com or blogger.com. These sites will let you choose your own name and provide you all the tools you need to get your personalised site online for free. Your site will have a name like allboutsports.wordpress.com which will make it easy enough to remember and find.

As we discuss in this post we think you are better off getting paid hosting if you are serious about your site. There are many great advantages and with some of the great discounts being offered you can have your own domain name for $5 or less a year. allaboutsports.com sounds better and will be easier for people to find than allaboutsports.wordpress.com.

So have you thought what name your kid would like for their site? Lets get started. A quick google search for “domain registrars” will turn up pages of sites you can use to register your domain name. For the convenience of doing naming and hosting at reasonable prices we recommend Hostgator. Once you have chosen a site type in the domain name you would like for your site.

Now you may find the exact name you want is not available. Not to worry there are plenty of options. Most sites will display a list of alternate similar names you can use. Most often you will be able to get the name you want just with .net or .org instead of .com. If that is not available then you can try putting in hyphens for example all-about-sports.com. With a bit of simple creativity you will soon find a name you like that is available and relevant to what your site is going to be about.

As an example, .com not available but any of these options will be fine for us

Ok, so go ahead and get your name locked in so we can start getting into the fun stuff and have your first site up where the world can see it!

We’ll see you in Part 2 – Hosting your own Website

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