How to Create a Free Website in South Africa

You’ve registered your .co.za domain, you’ve got hosting which you can use for a professional business email address, but now you want a website uploaded to that hosting package too. So you start looking for a web designer in South Africa and you get some quotes… oops, costs quite a bit, doesn’t it? – well, not through us as we’re pretty affordable South African web designers, but still, you’d rather not pay for a website even though you want one, so you think about getting a free website, or creating your own free website.

Then you notice that getting or creating a free website in South Africa usually means that you’re either going to have ads appearing on your site that you don’t want on your site, or that you may as well not have bothered with a domain name and website hosting (other than for the professional sounding email address) because getting or creating a free website also generally means that your website will just be part of a larger website owned by somebody else, and you don’t get your own unique domain name or need website hosting – yes, you can call your site what you want to call it, but the address will either start or end in the same address as very many other site owners who choose this method of getting or creating a free website in South Africa.

So, what can you do to create a free website in South Africa that doesn’t mean you have to learn how to do html/CSS coding to still have your own unique domain name?

You can get a WordPress site! Over 1 000 free themes to choose from!

No, not the wordpress.com kind of sites, as those types would have your website address ending in .wordpress.com

Get a wordpress.org site where your domain name will bewhateveryouwant.co.za

So, how do you get a free WordPress site?

1 )
You need to check that your host supports PHP/MySQL, and if not, you need to upgrade or change your hosting package

2 )
use the control panel access details you got from your host when you first ordered and paid for your hosting, to log into your contol panel

3 )
Now look for something that says “install scripts” or “fantastico” and select “wordpress” and click “install”

4 )
follow basic instructions like selecting “at top level” and filling in your username and password, and you’re done – log in and you’ll be in your WordPress dashboard – you can also open another tab and view your website by typing your website address into the browser bar and clicking “Go” (just like typing the address of any website you want to visit into the browser bar of your computer screen)

5 )
if you do not like the default free template that the WordPress system comes with, then choose another

- down the left hand side of your dashboard look for “appearance” and beneath that find “themes” – click it and on that page click “install themes” (at the top next to “manage themes”)

select a few check boxes and then click “search” (“search” found at the bottom beneath the checkbox areas)

Note: for beginners it’s easiest and best to just select perhaps one colour in the colour section, and then go to the bottom to click “search” so that you can see all the themes that come up (for eg over 130 free themes will come up to browse through if you checked off “brown” in the colour section) – if you don’t like any, go back and choose another colour, and again click search

Once you have decided on a free WordPress theme you like, install it, (takes just a few seconds) and it will replace the default theme the site came with

6 )
Next, do your settings (find them under the heading “settings” on the left in your WordPress dashboard) – work your way through the different settings of general, writing, reading, discussion etc, and set your preferences – for the “permalinks” one the default structure is not very attractive or very Search Engine friendly so set it differently – we use /%postname%/ on our WordPress sites

7 )
Next visit “plugins” in your dashboard and activate Akismet – Akismet helps keep any spam comments you get in a separate folder all ready for you to delete – that’s if you are going to be accepting comments on your site, otherwise it is not needed

8 )
next visit your widgets (the sections that appear in the sidebar of your site – or sometimes also near the top or bottom of your site) and decide which ones you want to have in your widget areas – you slide over the widgets into the widget areas by clicking, holding, dragging and then dropping them into the area in which you would like them to appear on your site

9 )
Your free WordPress theme usually comes with a “sample page” which you can then edit to make that page for example your “about” page – do not just change the name, but also edit the “permalink” (found just beneath the title of your page, which in this case you changed to “about”) – next to the permalink it says “edit” – click that and then change “sample-page” to “about” and click “ok” to save it – if your page name is “about us” then when editing the permalink, insert a hypen between the two words like this about-us. If you name your page perhaps “products and services” then your permalink should read yoursitesname.co.za/products-and-services. The permalink appears automatically after you type in your title and then click in the big space all ready to type your content, but when you change the existing sample page title that the site comes with, edit the permalink

10 )
You also don’t want a sample post that says “hello world” – edit that title and permalink too – replacing it with a title of an article you are going to add there, or with some news or whatever one of the posts on your site is going to be about

Note: your pages are static – just like in a usual site, perhaps home, about, services, contact etc etc while your posts are where you will write things like specials, news, articles, etc etc!

11 )
It may take you some time getting used to working with your free theme WordPress site, but what you have is a free website you are creating yourself instead of having a web designer design one for you!

Spend quite a bit of time getting used to all there is to do and know on your site, which may include:

working with the menus (under the “appearance” heading in your dashboard sidebar)

as well as other items or criteria or desires like:

getting used to working with the media library (where you upload images you want to use in your posts or pages);

or exploring the very many different widgets you can add to your site (under plugins “add new”);

or using categories and tags (on the right hand side when you are on a posts page adding a page of writing);

or changing the background colour or image, or changing the header banner that the site comes with for your own one or your logo

Just working through everything slowly, the left hand sidebar when you’re in your WordPress dashboard, and the options at the top of the area in which you write, will eventually get you having the site you want – perhaps even 30 pages or more – all for free!

How much would you pay a web designer to design a 30 page site for you? – certainly not nothing! – but this is what you can get for nothing when you use WordPress – a free site, of pehaps 30 or more pages, looking like you make it look!

ps, if the basic initial set up still sounds a bit much for you to bother with, we can add WordPress and integrate your chosen free theme and do some of the basic settings for you, all for only R120 once off – we do however need you to definitely check with your host that they support PHP/MySQL and we would need the ftp and log in details to access the host server and get your site set up for you to use – then we just send you your WordPress site log in details, and you log in and continue yourself. Email us

pps, if you do not yet have a domain registered or have hosting, we can do that for you too – just R420 per year includes the WordPress site upload and basic settings as described in the previous paragraph, as well as .co.za domain registration and hosting. Email us

ppps, we can do even more than just the basics for you, but of course we’ll charge you for the extra work we do, and as much as the money you pay us for the work that we do to assist you would come in handy, now that you know how to create a free website in South Africa why not take the time and trouble, and just do it all yourself? For free!

Some of our clients who we have assisted with initial WordPress set up, some of whom we have helped a bit more with extra customization etc – most of these also registered their domains through us and got hosting through us too:

auctionone.co.za
alienstation.co.za
servicer8d.co.za
elsy.co.za
q4action.co.za
eastlondonanimalwelfare.co.za
dgnsouthafrica.org
injuryrisks.com
pvmarketing.co.za
frikfoto.co.za
housebymouse.co.za

Further Reading and Resources:

BROWSE THROUGH OVER 1 000 FREE WORDPRESS THEMES!

WordPress help and support forums

New to WordPress – where to start

Getting and using your very own website

Online advertising forever for just R140 once-off

List of 42 free ways to advertise your website

Some free theme WordPress sites of our own:

onlinefleamarket.co.za
dogbed.co.za
inandoutthegarden.co.za
ineastlondon.co.za
freewebsitetemplates.co.za
aftermatric.co.za
lawyermarketingfreelancers.com

© copyright Teresa Schultz 2011