When building a website, the standard procedure for most people is to find web hosting first and then to use that host’s online service to build the website. However, there is another way to build a website – a way that actually offers several advantages over the traditional method. Here are some of the benefits to building your website before finding your web host.
Increased Website Flexibility
The first advantage of building your website beforehand is that this method will give you a better idea of what your needs for web hosting will be. Even if you have a good idea up front of what you’re looking for in a hosting provider, your needs might change as you go through the process of building the site. If you’re locked into a hosting provider and you find out that they can’t accommodate your changing needs, your website won’t be able to function at its best.
Don’t Pay For Time You Don’t Need
A great reason to build your website first is that it saves you money, as noted by the experts at http://www.webhostingreviews.ca. Once you sign up for a hosting service, you have to start paying for it, even if your website isn’t ready to go live. It could take you months to get your website to the point where you’re ready to launch it, so why pay for hosting time you don’t actually need?
Don’t Lose Your Work
Building a website using an online service is like writing a lengthy email straight into your online mail service, rather than typing it up in a Word document first. In other words, if you’re not backing up your online work very often, you could be at risk of losing it. When you’re building your site without a host, you don’t run the risk of losing pages if you lose your Internet connection, or miss a monthly payment and have your service temporarily cut off.
How To Build a Website Without a Host
If you want to build your website without paying for web hosting, you will have to download some sort of site building software onto your desktop or laptop. There will be different options available for this, depending on whether you are building your site with WordPress, Drupal, Joomla or HTML. You will also need to ensure that you have the capability to transfer the site you build over to the hosting service once you eventually get a host. This could include finding a web server with PHP and MySQL, as well as installing some sort of FTP program.
With all the advantages of building your website first, you might want to think about this option before you even start looking for a web hosting provider. Building your website this way can be just as easy as building it online, and it also gives you way more options – not to mention the fact that you save money by not paying for hosting time you don’t need. But before you do, just make sure you’ll be able to fully transfer your site over to the hosting service when the time comes.