If you can create amazing scripts from scratch and loves to spend time writing endless lines of code this tutorial is not for you. I’d really like to be able to create my own applications from scratch, I’ve tried learning some programming languages before (PHP and Ruby on Rails) and hope that someday I’ll be able to master one of them so I can rely on my own skills to create and debug websites. But as of now I just can’t get past xhtml and some css. You see, I’m more of a design/marketing guy. I highly suggest you try learning one of the main web development languages before trying to create a website, and I’m not talking about html.

I decided to write this tutorial for people who have great website/service ideas but have no technical expertise on how to create them. I’m not a coder but I’ve been able to manage the development of a few websites that turned out exactly as I had them in mind. Remember, I’m not a coder so I might be very wrong about some of the concepts and/or terms I use here, I will just state what has worked for me so far.

You don’t need to know how to write code in order to create a website. Getting things done will probably happen faster if you do. But you can still manage to have a website online. Even though I can’t code a half-decent website myself, from all the hours/day I spend surfing the web I know exactly how a website should function and I bet you do to.

1. SELECTING THE BEST PROGRAMMING LANGUAGE:

There are many languages out there to choose frome: ASP, PHP, Perl, Ruby and so on. On one of my attempts at learning a programming language I’ve googled “The best programming language” and couldn’t find it. I’ve read somewhere that the best language is the one you are most familiar with. In other words, you can develop awesome websites using whatever language you choose as long as you can work it to do what you want. What I noticed though is that PHP is very popular among programmers and is probably the one with the highest number of free scripts available. I also recommend PHP because most of the hosting companies support it and you can run it on a linux server, which are the cheapest. Some amazing websites have been developed using php including Facebook and Youtube.

2. CREATING THE CODE:

Ok, if you are reading this you probably don’t know how to write code, so what we have to do is hire someone to do it for you. There are many ways you can find the right people to do the job, here are a few resources:

• GetAFreelancer
• Elance
• SitePoint MarketPlace

I really recommend GetAFreelancer, it’s my favourite place to find talented programmers.

There are more places you can go to find amazing programmers to work for you. If you want to develop an open-source project try SourceForge, people may help you for free over there.

3. EXPLAINING WHAT YOU WANT:

It’s not easy to pass the idea to someone else if you are only going to use words, I suggest creating a design of the website and sending images of how you want things to work. Explain every single detail because programmers will quote depending on that, this is very important specially if you have a limited budget. You don’t want to ask programmers to add things later on the project because they will charge more for any extra  work.

4. IT’S BEEN DONE BEFORE:

Try searching for available scripts at HotScripts. There are a lot of scripts available there that might help your programmer build your own application. Instead of having the programmer create everything from scratch ask his opinion on some of the scripts you find that might make his work easier. Sometimes it’s cheaper to purchase a script and have it implemented to your project than creating it.

If you have a good idea write it down and create a layout kinda like a sitemap. Explain every section and functionality of the site in detail. It’s good to use websites as reference when explaining for ex: “The comments system should look like Youtube’s.” You probably want a lot of features that already exist in a few sites out there, skip the trial and error part and just design something similar (unless you have a better concept in mind). It’s great to see an idea becoming a reality, once the site is ready you will need to market it, that’s the next topic I will write about. Stay tuned, and if you have any suggestions or tips please comment below. Thank you.