How I started

Making your own website.
 

Brightful World. How I started, the ups and downs, the moments that I thought well this is nothing, this is not going to work and the times that I was really happy, celebrating all kinds of future successes. Yes, it all belongs to a process like this. Especially the nights when I was laying in bed, o man at such times I’m really good at worrying and thinking it all will fail. And then I say to myself; just go to sleep, tomorrow the sun will shine again and you will have faith again.

 

Never made a website before

I was thinking of writing ’never made a site before’ and then I thought that’s not true. When I was 12 or so I made a ’site’. It was really easy with a free program. You can barely call it a site but I was seriously proud of it.

I don’t count that as a real site but it’s fun to remember things like this. So I never made a site before and seriously, I was walking in the dark.

 

Choose a name for your website

First, you have to choose a name for your site because you have to buy the web name, called domain name, to start it. Cool a name! Your own chosen name! Excited!

Quite soon I came up with the idea of ‘my bright world’ but it was already existing and I was also doubting. Made it myself difficult because I was searching for the perfect name, wouldn’t you? I wrote lots of pages full of names and ideas. Thought of the meaning of it. What was it that I wanted to tell with the name?

I wanted something about my character and my life. ’Bright world’ kept coming up but didn’t felt good yet. One day I thought of brightful, sounded for me like you can say ’I’m brightful’. Like in the meaning of cheerful, happy, positive. To me, it feels like you say your character is bright. Also, brightful makes me think of bright and beautiful together.

 

Life is brightful

I see my life most of the time bright and beautiful, not always of course, but I’m a positive person and even in bad times I can see that there will be, must be, light at the end of the tunnel.

So that makes that there is always some form of brightful, in the moment itself of in the hope that it will be there again.

To be honest, I’m healthy, I have a roof above my head and I have food so my life is brightful. Let’s not forget that it starts with these simple things that we can be grateful for.

So back to Brightful World. I enjoy sharing my world and I hope my stories inspire you in making your own brightful world!

I like to divide my website in three theme’s; lifestyle, travel and design. So everybody can read and be inspired by the part that they are interested in.

 

But it’s not just about the name

Next dilemma you have to choose a hosting site. This is the ‘mother’ of your website, where you buy your domain name and a ’pack’ with space, a program to build a site etc.

I did some research and found thousands of hosting sites. Now the search for a good name didn’t feel that hard anymore, compared to this what completely new was for me.

A bit annoyed by it, I went on thinking why are there so many hosting possibilities? Why not one good one? Especially because they all have different ’things’ included in there pack, things I never thought about before. Like making an automatic back-up from your site, unlimited domain names, less or more space for your website, and so on.

So you have to think what’s more important for you while you hardly know anything about it.

I decided that I wanted to know more and started my own comparing list. From ten I wrote everything down. From the five best I read heaps of reviews online, which left me with two best. I contacted these two with my last few questions. On the first place ended Siteground.com

So that felt good, another item I could cross off my list! Now we can celebrate we have a name and we can start this new era. From here it would be just fun and creating.

 

Learning my way through WordPress

I choose the make my site with WordPress. It’s an ’easy’ help program to make websites. Easy if you know how it works, I had no clue in the beginning.

Starting a website is like hiking in the mountains. You walk up a mountain enjoy the beauty, celebrate that you made it to the top and walk back down on the other side.

Back down misses the promise of a spectacular view on top.

Then there is another mountain and if you want to succeed you have to climb up again.

Well, that is how it feels. I’ve climbed a few mountains already with this process.

 

Too much new information

So to get this far I had already a few times that I thought this is too much new information, I’m going to quit! Or can I not hire someone to do this. Walking away from the mountain is easier than again climbing to a top.

Well, I wanted it too much to quit and didn’t have the money to pay someone, haha. So every time I decided to, yes, climb that mountain.

 

Doubting, one of my qualities?

Now two weeks on the go. Even when the site looks already really nice I still have those doubts visiting me. Why would my site work? Why would people look at it? There are so many sites already. This kind of thoughts I mostly have before I go to sleep. Sometimes it sadly keeps in my mind the day after as well. Like standing in the valley and unable to see the beauty at that time.

Lost my patience sometimes because all these mountains are also quite some work. It was not always ‘brightful’. Sometimes I keep going, other moments I take a break for the rest of the day and start the next day with new energy.

l heard the quote: Worrying makes you suffer twice – New Scamander

So I decided to let go of all the thoughts that didn’t give any useful value to the situation.

 

And I really have to say, that after lots of trial-and-error-experience the website really turned out very nice. And after a certain point, I became full of trust and was back in my Brightful World.
In another story, here, I will tell you more about my mission with this website.