You can create your own personal website for under R1,000 per year. No coding experience needed. You only need three basic things to create your personal website.

A personal website is a great extension of your personal brand, especially in the technological era. It gives you a place where you can showcase your creativity and skills e.g. writing, photography, videography, though leadership and research. It also doubles as an online resume/ curriculum vitae (CV). Your personal website can even help recruitment agencies find you.

Here is what you need to know in order to create your personal website.

Step 1: Domain & Hosting

You need a domain and hosting. I recommend Afrihost because it is reliable, trusted, and affordable. It also has fast and impressive customer support.

Note: In my 6+ years of creating websites, I’ve also used GoDaddy, Wix, WebAfrica (before they transferred their domain and hosting to 1 Grid) and several other service providers for domain and hosting.

Domain

Good news! You only pay once a year for your domain.

Once, again, you can buy a domain from Afrihost on (prices are displayed below).

Note: A .co.za domain is cheaper than most domains. Here are some alternatives to Afrihost: SmartWeb and Bluehost.

Hosting

On Afrihost, you can pay monthly for domain hosting. You can buy the domain hosting here (prices displayed).

Since you don’t need a fancy website, I recommend the Silver Home package (it is R39p/m) as at June 2020. It has a free CPanel (which allows you to use any website script you want e.g. WordPress, an SSL certificate and unlimited email addresses so you won’t need to buy email hosting).

Once you have domain and hosting. The next step is to build your website.

Step 2: Website Design/ Development

I recommend building the website with WordPress (it is open source, free and easy to use). To do this, you will need to log into your Afrihost account (or service provider account).

Thereafter, click on hosting.

Then click on “hosting products”, followed by a click on “shared hosting”. Once you get to the shared hosting page, click on “website manager” followed by a click on “log into website manager”.

After logging into website manager, you will be directed to your free CPanel, where you’ll have to scroll down to the “software” section. In this section, you’ll need to click on “Softaculous App Installer” to install your free WordPress script.

After installing WordPress, you will get a link to the admin (back-end of your website) where you will develop/ design your website. This is where most of the work is done.

It helps to know what you want your website to look like. Look at other websites that you like and use them as a guide.

For a fancy site, I recommend buying a theme (but you don’t have to because WordPress has free themes).

In summary, you need a domain, a hosting package (that has a free cPanel) and a WordPress script installation.

Happy creating. Xoxo, Ofentse

Disclaimer: This is not an advertisement for Afrihost or any service provider listed above.