There are millions of articles with tutorials on how to build a website, purchase a name, yadda-yadda-yadda but I’ve yet to come across an article that cuts right the point and details where to get the best value for your money and maybe even save planet Earth.

More on saving Earth in a minute.

These days there’s a lot of options for your average Joe to get a website up and running. In a future article, I’ll detail a BBFYB (Best Bang for your Buck) method with a hands-off approach but today’s article is for the person who wants to build, create, and maintain their own website for a sweet price.

The Requirements – 3 point checklist

1. Website Hosting
   Your webhost is a service provider that actually makes your site’s content available to (hopefully) all it’s intended visitors 24/7. There are lots of things that go into website hosting like backups, security, file storage space, and speed. There are a lot of webhosts to choose from that will all promise essentially the same thing, but majority come with many limitations, charge crazy prices, or are just plain crummy. This is the biggest key to having your website available and loading quickly.
2. Domain Name
   I’m willing to bet you already know what this is by now, but just in case. Your domain name is your websites given name, for example, this site’s Domain Name is devendelarco.com
   You can punch in that name on any web browser connected to the internet and it’ll show you this site and all the goodies that magically come with it are hosted on it.

   *If you are looking to purchase a domain name first and foremost with all the goodies included – Click Here for all the info!

3. Content Management System / Site Builder
   A good CMS – Content Management System should offer a way for you to organize your site’s files including images, text, videos, cat memes, and blog posts (like this ?). A lot of techy magic happens when you decide to create a dynamic website that gives the ability to accept comments from strangers, sell them stuff, search through your content, et cetera. This is where a CMS makes life easier. These days a good CMS will come with a Site Builder baked right in. Again, lot’s of options here, but there are a few caveats to many of the leading site builders you might have already heard of.

The Problem with Wix, Squarespace, Weebly, and others.

The Solution – WordPress

50,000+ plugins

The reason company’s like Microsoft, Facebook, and The New Yorker use WordPress as their CMS of choice can be summed up in one word, Options. Chris Rock gets it.

“There’s a plugin for that“

Not only are there countless plugins for WordPress but it’s also OpenSource. While some might feel like being OpenSource is kinda meaningless to a non-programmer, OpenSource software comes with some major benefits to it’s users. Most notably it’s free! 100% free, no limited trial, no limited features, it’s free now and forever.

Don’t get me wrong, there are other free “plans” available with the other guys, but this brings me to the second reason to love use OpenSource products like WordPress.
You can take it all with you!
Turns out your GoCrappy GoDaddy web hosting isn’t all it’s cracked up to be? The good news, if you used WordPress to build your site, you can have it up and moved to a new host in minutes!

A new host like…

Why host with GreenGeeks?

I’ve talked a lot about Requirement #3 – Content Management Systems, the best part is signing up with GreenGeeks you can satisfy both Requirements #1 and #2 all while saving some money!

While you can host a single website with WordPress.com this guide is about getting you your Best Bang for your Buck. By using GreenGeeks as your host and making-use-of their easy to use WordPress installation – you will end up with a number of other included goodies at a better price!

My Favorite Features

What Chris Rock is getting at, is having options is always a good thing. Using GreenGeeks is great because they don’t place unnecessary limitations on the things you can do with your web hosting service.

• Free Site Migration!
  Over the years I’ve used lots of different webhosts and services. Some worked great but were charging me $15 a month to host a single tiny blog, but 6 years ago I switched to GreenGeeks, they even migrated my tiny blog fo Free!
• Free Domain Name!
  When setting up a GreenGeeks account if you choose any payment plans one year or longer, which I highly recommend, they even throw in a Domain Name, aka, checklist item #1 fo Free!
• Unlimited Storage & Unlimited Bandwith – on all Plans!
  Majority of webhost offer Unlimited Storage/Bandwith at their premium tier price options, GreenGeeks offer it on all their plans, why worry about how much space your site may or may not need? This is often an area where webhosts can take advantage of consumer’s lack of understanding technical jargon.
• Unlimited Hosted Domains & Email Accounts
  This is one of the biggest reasons why I love GreenGeeks. While one domain might be my main project, every now and then, I like to experiment with new technologies and host other sites for fun, like one of my recent projects, Campfire.Club. With GreenGeeks, I don’t need to sign up with another plan, I can just log in to my control panel and start building a whole different website.