So you are thinking about starting your own Scuba Diving Site at the Deep Stop. Here is a short guide to get you started. The only decision you need to make to start your own scuba diving site is…

Your Name

The name for your site, or rather the URL, is what people will type in to find your site and is known as the address. The more relevant your address to the topics you aim to write about the better. Search engines use the address of a site to help determine how useful it is for the search term. If you want as many people to read and visit your website as possible then ensure your name matches your ‘target’ search terms. There are no rules about the name for your website, other than it needs to be at least 4 letters and contain letters and numbers, it cannot be numbers only, so it can be your own name, like andy.thedeepstop.com, or a generic search term, like scuba.thedeepstop.com, or a project, like diruk2006.thedeepstop.com.

This is a unique name and cannot be changed, so choose wisely. If you choose the wrong name, then simply start another site and let me know at andycarroll at thedeepstop.com and I can delete the mistaken site. Although I can change site names later on, it is not very easy, and we all like easy, I’m sure you will agree.

So, when you click on the ‘Create a New Scuba Diving Website’ link you arrive at a screen which looks like this (Click it for a bigger version) ;

So you enter your name, and then the title of the website (which can be changed anytime you like, so don’t worry about this) and finally your email address. You can create as many websites as you like because you may want a personal site, a business site, a club site and even a project site, it doesn’t matter. Just remember you need time to write on all of them!

That’s it. Once you do that the system will check that no-one else is using that name and that the email address at least looks like an email address. As long as these conditions are met then you are then presented with another screen which looks like this (Click on the image for a spangly big version);

You can immediately visit your new scuba diving website, and if you have received your welcome email, which is sent immediately, you will also have the password to be able to get into the admin area.

Congratulations, you have completed the first step.