Build and Run a Free Online Games Website
In this article, you will learn how to build, develop and profit from a free online games website. Although this will not help you make a professional-looking website - those are usually created by experts in the field, this will help you create a good "free online game" website.
Steps
- Decide how to brand your website. Most websites use 'games' in their title so users realize what kind of site they're about to visit, however, there are a few obvious exceptions, such as MiniClip, which is just about the most popular free online games website.
- Check that the URL (domain) for your website is available. Check the .com version is available at BetterWhois. Getting the .com is very important to branding. If it is not available you should reconsider your name. Your next best option for a top-level domain name extension after ".com" would be ".net" or ".ca" (geo-specific to Canada. Keep that in mind).
- Choose a hosting company that can offer enough disk space and bandwidth. GoDaddy.com is popular and costs around $6.00 per month. Make sure you do research into the host before you sign up.
- Gather the content. There are many sites that give away free games for your website, just search the Internet. If you're willing to learn how, you should create your own games. This will give you original content, instead of regurgitating what other people have created. To make Flash games, you need to learn how to program in Flash.
- Learn HTML and CSS. Try searching for online tutorials. W3Schools is a very good website that teaches you all the important web design and development languages with good examples.
- Work on design and coding. It is advisable to give as much interactivity as possible to users, so a knowledge of PHP, ASP, Javascript or another scripting language is a good idea. Since this is a tutorial to do this free, we don't recommend spending any cash to get someone else to program for you. Also, if you spend money on someone else's program, you probably won't get what you want.
- Sign up for Google Adsense. Google Adsense will let you monetize your website so you can make money. Every time you make 100 dollars with Google Adsense, you will get a cheque of 100 dollars in the mail.
- Add all of the content you prepared to your design to your website. Keep it well organized in folders for ease of access.
- Upload your site. To upload your website to your host, you will need a FTP (File Transfer Protocol) client. Filezilla is good for this. Some hosts offer an online FTP client included in your package. If so, stick with that one.
