The Beginner’s Guide to Building a Website in 2026 | Part One

You have an idea and you need a website, but you don’t know where to start. You’ve heard the horror stories, coders lurking in the shadows, the $10,000 price tags, the existential dread of HTML. The whole process can be daunting, like the definition of daunting written in an ancient dead language. But times have changed.

The dead language has been deciphered, and the website building experience is somewhere you can thrive in.

This is the 2026 guide of how to build a website by yourself.

This is a video for beginners who wanna build a website but don’t know where, when or how to start. We’re gonna get you online, and then we’re gonna become best friends. Hooray! You can do this with no coding experience and without having to sell your body parts. You get to stay, hands. Back in the internet’s dark ages, you needed skilled coders, copywriters, and designers just to make the smallest of changes, but the barrier of entry has been leveled.

Three advancements

We’ve seen the great democratization of website creation, and it’s all thanks to three glorious advancements in the land of website creation.

First, WYSIWYG editors.

That stands for what you see is what you get. It’s a truly evil acronym, but it’s a beautiful concept. It gave us a familiar MS Word-like interface.

You lay out your content exactly how you’d like it to appear, and the coding – the stuff that determines image size, fonts, color, design, and where your graphics land – is all done in the background. The computer does the dirty work. Thanks, robots. Please don’t enslave us.

Second, drag and drop functionality.

This is what makes modern tools so accessible to the novice. Want to add a page or rearrange a menu? Just drag and drop. You don’t ask a programmer’s permission. You just do it.

Third, predefined website templates.

You no longer start with a blank canvas that costs thousands of dollars for a designer to prototype.

Now, you can skip the designer entirely. You get pre-configured designs for practically any use case, like online stores, consultants, B2B companies, and blogs. You get all the relevant functionality for your niche, but you can still design it with your own personality, fonts, colors, design, and more.

Keep an eyeball, or even two eyeballs, on AI functionality.

Some tools allow for just a well-thought-out prompt to add sections to your website, images, and even full-fledged sites. Robots… Just say please, ’cause they might start remembering.

We know the players in the game now. Now, which champion will you choose to ride with you in battle?

You have two main options for your first website: website builders and the OG WordPress.

First, website builders.

Think of these as the all-inclusive resorts of the web. Pina colada, please. They provide everything: pre-designed templates, media libraries, and hosting, all the necessary components in one neat package. Popular examples include Wix, Squarespace, and Shopify. The perks for a novice are huge.

A single point of contact for support and billing, a super user-friendly interface, and predictable pricing. The downside, however, is that they’re proprietary programs. If you decide to migrate to a new platform later, it can be sort of difficult, if not impossible. You’ll likely have to rebuild your entire website, but practice makes perfect, right?

Price-wise, website builders are subscription-based platforms. Base plans start around $15 a month, but can go up to $50 a month for more advanced plans. Costs are determined by what you need, the level of customization, storage limits for your content, and bandwidth for how many users can simultaneously use your site at the same time.

Next is WordPress.

The key difference here is that WordPress is an open-source platform. It doesn’t belong to a single entity, meaning many companies, like name.com, offer it via a monthly hosting service.

The pros? Thousands of free and premium templates to use, plus a massive library of plug-ins to enhance usability, and best of all, the freedom to move.

Since it’s open source, your WordPress site can be moved from one provider to the other. Keep in mind that if, for any reason, you’re dissatisfied with your WordPress host, you can move it to a different host. But if you are dissatisfied with WordPress itself, you won’t be able to move your site to a Wix or Squarespace.

The con? The support can be trickier.

You have endless online resources, forums, and communities, but your hosting provider may not offer that one-on-one support that you crave. You might have to, you know, read things. The cost, you may ask? WordPress hosting comes with a significantly lower price tag. For example, a plan can start as low as $6 a month with unlimited storage.

You may still pay incrementally for extra features, but the starting price is lower.

Which is best for you?

Both are great for a novice. WordPress is more affordable and portable. A website builder is a better solution with more support in case you get stuck.

All right. Platform decided. Now, which platform do you think is best for your idea or your business?

Thanks for joining me and becoming my best friend. I’ll see you on the next one. Bye.

Check out The Beginner’s Guide to Building a Website in 2026 | Part Two

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