Most of you are here to find out how to get a free website. We’ve prepared a basic guide to share some tips for anyone who is a complete novice to hosting and web design.

Here’s a Step-by-step guide of how to create a free website:

1. Planning for your Site: Understand what you want to achieve and have a plan for your new website.
2. Understand the Basics of Websites: Hosting, Free Web Hosting, Website Builders and Domain Names.
3. Find a Free Hosting & Website Company: Identify the best service provider offering free websites and free web hosting. All of them will provide you with a free website builder to create your site and a free web address for your website.
4. Sign-Up for an Account: Sign Up with your preferred free website provider by completing their application form.
5. Complete your Account Registration: Check your email for the Registration Confirmation Email and click on the link to confirm your account.
6. Start Creating Your Site: Start to design your site using the Site Builder offered by your provider.
7. Confirm Your Site’s Address: Decide on whether to use the free web address (eg. http://YourSite.free-websites.com) OR purchase a unique domain name for your site (eg. http://www.YourSite.com.
8. Unique Domain Name: If you decide on the unique domain (recommended), register your chosen domain at a domain registrar offering cheap domain name registration and follow the instructions to forward the domain to your site at the free website provider.

It’s really quite easy.

If you have any questions, please post them in the comments section below.

Further Reading: 10 Website Design Planning Tips for Beginners

A common mistake by first timers and people new to creating websites, is to rush into the available options which the free hosting and web design companies are pushing at you.

As with most other things, it’s all in the planning.

Ideally, you should have a reasonable idea about what you’re trying to achieve for your site before assessing the design and hosting packages. If you’ve already gone through the numerous choices to create a free site, chances are, you’re overloaded with technical jargon and are slightly confused.

Here’s a list of 10 Planning Tips which you can do without spending any money, so that you can create your free website supported by a well thought-out plan.

(1) Know What You Want – before looking for a free website service, sit back and reflect on what you WANT in your website and what’s your ultimate goal of having it.

(2) Know What You Need - after listing the things that you want, go through it again and analyze more deeply about your site’s objectives and what you really NEED to achieve it.

(3) Examples & Comparisons – one of the best ways to visualize your website before it’s made, is to reference 10 to 20 similar sites in the same category where you can get more IDEAS to refine your own site.

(4) Plan the Structure – using pencil and paper, Excel or whatever suits you, PLAN out the structure of your site, the number of individual web pages and how they link to each other to create a website.

(5) Design your Homepage – before diving into the website builder from your free website provider, have a rough idea of what you would like to achieve so that you can make clearer decisions for templates and other creative elements in the site creator.

(6) Plan your Templates - Similar to your homepage, try to have a plan for what you want in each page and how it will look together with the content

(7) Start Writing Content – If possible, write at least 10 to 20 pages of content for your new site. The site maker and hosting may be free, but you still have to do the work for the content.

(8) Write More Content – After completing the static pages such as your About Us page, move on to write more articles, reviews and posts on the main topics in your site.

(9) Plan the Graphics & Visuals – Once you’ve got your content, homepage design, web page templates and the general structure for your site, incorporate your visual elements (such as icons, photos, images, graphics) to match the text content and overall page layout.

(10) Compare with your Reference Sites – With everything in place, compare your website design and content with your reference sites to get a better picture of your end-product.

Please ask any questions or share your comments & personal experiences in creating websites below.

After a promising start, AEIOU.com closed down from offering website design and development services to domain name owners and other customers looking for mini-sites.

In a post from his blog, AEIOU founder Rick Latona says that “There’s No Money in Web Design. AEIOU is getting out of the outsourcing business“:

We were the first company to sell mini-sites so we might as well be the first company to stop selling them.

The reality is there is no money in web design. It’s hard. The customers are hard to please. The margins are slim and frankly, there are bigger fish to fry.

Others would disagree with this statement, as they continue to provide web design services profitably.

Looking deeper into the post, it appears that in comparison to his company’s booming auction and brokerage businesses, there’s not much point in providing low budget mini web site development.

Fair enough.

Currently in limited Beta, DevHub.com is one of the new domain development companies which have been founded to help domain owners in developing their domains into websites.

Based in Seattle, DevHub is owned and operated by the EVO Media Group (evomediagroup.com), the same people who managed the EvoLanding.com domain parking service.

DevHub / EvoMediaGroup Team

• CEO / Co-founder: Geoffrey Allen Bautista Nuval
• CTO / Co-founder: Daniel Lee Rust
• SVP Sales & Strategic Marketing / Co-founder: Mark A. Michael
• VP of Engineering: Alan Steele
• Executive Chairman: Jeff Schrock

Site Info

From their About Us, it states that “DevHub is the web hosted publishing platform and content editor created by EVO Media Group….. DevHub’s technology reduces the complexity of publishing to the web, enabling the creation of useful, engaging and user-focused niche websites.”

DevHub currently has 4 primary features:

1. Hosting
2. Site creation & Publishing
3. Integrated Tools
4. Reporting

From its website, DevHub claims to “make useful websites that make you money” by using their platform to:

• Build unique sites without any programming skills
• Monetize with exclusive products, listings, ads
• Analyze traffic and revenues with detailed reports
• Grow your own Online Media Network

Comments

DevHub appears to offer a total solution for developing, hosting and managing your domain and website.

There is an easy to use drag and drop site editor which allows users to customize the site’s background, logo, style and more. On top of normal web publishing tools, DevHub’s platform also allows users to integrate content from partnering sites to enhance the developed domains.

Although their service has evolved from EvoLanding which is targeted at domainers, there is no mention about domain owners or domainers on their list of ‘Who is Using DevHub’ (on their homepage) which is surprising. Instead it lists Bloggers, Internet Entrepreneurs and Affiliate Marketers as the users of DevHub.

Signing up is free which allows users to enter up to 10 domains into their DevHub account.

Company Info

• Website: DevHub.com
• Features: http://www.devhub.com/features
• Signup: http://www.devhub.com/signup
• Sites Developed on devHub: http://www.devhub.com/gallery
• In the News: Dev Hub Interview on DNJournal

• Phone: 206-441-4399
• Email: info (at) evolanding.com
• Address: 2101 4th Ave., Suite 1050, Seattle, WA 98121
• Media inquiries: Mark Michael at michaelm (at) evolanding.com

Co-founded by Rick Latona, one of the most prominent domainers, AEIOU is one of the first companies to specialize in offering domain development services to domain name owners.

UPDATE (2010): There is No Money in Mini Web Design – AEIOU Closes Shop

In contrast to development solutions which offer a free publishing platform to develop domains, AEIOU actually develops the domain’s website for customers for a fee.

AEIOU is basically a website design company which is targeted at domainers with quality keyword domains which may be developed into a website in order to gain high search engine rankings and more traffic. In its website, it is clearly stated that “We develop domain names” and that AEIOU provides “Domain Development by Domainers”.

Products

For a few hundred bucks or less, this domain development company will create a unique website and logo for clients together with custom written articles to complement the domain name. There are presently 2 products offered by AEIOU:

(1) The 1 Pager- a single custom designed landing page with unique content and targeted advertising

What You Get

1. 1 Pager Design & Optimization
2. 100% Unique Content
3. Search Marketing Campaign

Pricing

• 1+ sites, $135
• 3+ sites, $125
• 10+ sites, $105
• 20+ sites, $90

(2) The Rapid Mini Site- a custom designed website with 5 pages of unique content and targeted advertising

What you get

1. Website Design & Optimization
2. 5 Pages of Unique Content
3. Search Engine Marketing Campaign
4. Hosting Included

Pricing

• 1+ sites, $250 each
• 3+ sites, $225 each
• 10+ sites, $205 each
• 25+ sites, $175 each

Services

In addition to the 2 domain development products, AEIOU also offers 4 related services:

• Content Writing: Custom written articles at US$0.05 per word or below.
• Search Engine Optimization: Keyword research, Basic layout optimization, Keyword optimization
• Link Building: US$125 per day or less which includes Social Bookmarking, Article Marketing, Blog Commenting, Forum Posting, Directory Posting
• Website Development: Custom development of sites larger than the 5 page Rapid Minisite.

Comments

The interesting feature from AEIOU’s packages is that they provide a Search Engine Marketing Campaign as well to assist client domains and websites in gaining search engine traffic. Depending on what is actually offered here, this may be a key differentiator for this company.

Regardless of their site design qualities, if they are able to produce meaningful results from their Search Marketing activities for customer sites, then the cost will certainly be worth it.

Effective Search Engine Marketing (SEM) will make a significant impact on the success of any site. AEIOU appreciates this fact and includes a SEM campaign as part of its product packages but it is not clear what is provided exactly. If we refer to their ‘Services’ section, one day of link building will already cost US$125, so it’s unlikely that the $135 1-Pager or the $250 Raid Mini site will have a full day of link building priced in.

The best way of assessing the effectiveness of the sites they build, will be to take a look at some of their portfolio and analyze their respective search engine rankings. Alternatively, just jump in and try a few domains with them and let the results speak for themselves.

Company Info

• Company: AEIOU.com
• Founders: Rick Latona (Veteran Domainer) and Ryan Steel (SEO Expert)
• URL: http://www.aeiou.com
• Case Studies: http://aeiou.com/category/case-studies/
• In the News: DNJournal AEIOU Interview
• Contact: http://aeiou.com/contact-us/

UPDATE (2010): There is No Money in Mini Web Design – AEIOU Closes Shop