Introduction
In this article we use real life providers and software to detail each step. The aim is to give you a realistic understanding on how to setup a site from start to finish. We are not affiliated with any 3rd parties and therefore are in a position to offer you unbiased advice for each step. We do not get paid in any shape or form, our only objective is to help you get your website up and running.

Register Domain Name
If you don't already own a domain name you'll need to register one. This is the address people type in the address bar to get directly to your site, crackme.co.uk is ours.
We used simply.com which is competitively priced and has an excellent panel for DNS configuration and other administration tasks. All you need to do is visit simply.com, check your desired domain name is not already registered and place the order.

Register Webspace
You have your domain name and now we must register some webspace.
What's the difference between domain name registration and webspace registration?

Think of the domain name as your home address and the webspace as your living room. You're selling all your furniture and advertise it in the local paper.
Your home address is your domain name and your front room which holds the furniture is your webspace. stick with me
They come to your home address (www.crackme.co.uk) and take a look at your furniture (the actual webpage, this article for example)
To reiterate, domain name = address
webspace = the actual content

We suggest Plugsocket as they are competitively priced, have an excellent control panel and you can always get through to their support easily.

Acquire Web Design Software
You need web design software to build your site. We recommend dreamweaver as it has a lot of flexibility and excellent online documentation. It will take some time getting used to, as do most things, but in the long run is well worth it. Buy it and bookmark this page to help you in the future.

Setup DNS
While designing your site you'll no doubt want to review the look and feel online, a real time preview. Dreamweaver allows you to setup a test site to achieve this. First we must configure our domain names, login to simply.com and navigate to 'DNS Settings' Setup an 'A' record for 'www' and 'dev' and point them at the IP address you received when registering your webspace.

We'll use dev for development testing. Login to Plugsocket and add a new sub domain dev.yourdomain.com and create a folder /var/www/dev

Configure Dreamweaver
Now we have our domains and webspace setup it's time to configure dreamweaver. When you start dreamweaver for the first time you are prompted with the site manager, here we setup the connection to our webspace. To get here manually click Site > New Site... after launching dreamweaver. I will only talk about sections that I believe you may require help with. 'Remote Info' Type in the credentials you received from plugsocket, this will be where the live version of the site exists. For the 'Host Directory' type in /var/www/html/

Under 'Testing Server' Choose PHP MySQL, type in your credentials and use /var/www/dev/ as your 'Host Directory'. For your URL Prefix type http://dev.yourdomain.com/. Make sure you test both these connections and if you experience any difficulties download a free FTP client, login and check you are being sent to the expect home directory. Remember if you're unsure how to configure any other options, visit the Dreamweaver Developer Center and have a look under the 'Getting Started' tab.

It's time to test and learn. Create a page in DW (dreamweaver) and click "File > Preview in browser" if all is well, it will upload the file to your development site for review. Once complete, click "Site > Put" and publish the page to your live location, browse over to http://www.yourdomain.com and check it out. Congratulations, you have your test domain, and live domain ready for content!

There is a lot to take in and it will take time. I spent weeks trying to figure out the basics but you only learn to ride a bike once. Take your time, things will get tough and there will be parts of this guide that don't make sense because I've not written it clearly enough or maybe because it's a typo. Don't follow this guide word for word or line for line, use it as a guide and then search the internet for help on specific areas. Enjoy

Ryan Partington