How do you make a website, step by step?
Five steps: pick a hosting plan with a domain name (step 1, from about $3 per month), install WordPress with one click, pick a theme, set up your core pages, and go live. Start today and you have a working site tonight; budget 2 to 4 hours for the first version.
Step 1 is hosting with a domain name, because without that foundation your site has nowhere to live. An entry plan from Hostinger or Namecheap starts around $2 to $3 per month with the domain free for the first year, and DreamHost is the calm alternative with fair renewal pricing. Keep the domain short and sayable. Step 2 takes five minutes: every host named here offers a one-click WordPress install, the system behind roughly forty percent of all websites.
Steps 3 and 4 decide what your site looks like and says. Pick a lightweight free theme (Astra and Kadence are proven choices) and resist installing twenty plugins; each one makes the site a little slower and more fragile. Then create four core pages: home, about, contact, and privacy. Write them to done rather than to perfect; you can rewrite copy forever, but a site that never launches cannot be improved.
Step 5 is going live and only then polishing. Check that SSL is on (the padlock in the browser; virtually every host now handles this automatically), submit your site to Google Search Console, and switch on your host’s backup schedule. From that moment you improve a site that can already be found. If you would rather skip WordPress entirely, a drag-and-drop website builder is the alternative; you trade flexibility for even less setup work.