Building your website can be quite a nightmare, but it has become way too easy after the arrival of WordPress into your lives. Equipped with multiple facilities and user-friendly options, WordPress brings website creation within everybody’s reach.
It provides services from blogging to other business areas of building a website, using which beginners and inexperienced individuals can easily create a professional-looking website by avoiding the problems of learning complex coding.
This article will help you with a step-by-step guide through a basic start-up using WordPress. It goes from setting up your domain and hosting, right through to customizing your site and adding content. Let’s learn more about it.
First, to make a WordPress website, you’re going to need two things, i.e., a domain name and a host. A domain name identifies your website on the internet-for example: www.yoursite.com. The host is where the files that make up your website are housed.
Common providers to host a WordPress website include Bluehost, HostGator, and SiteGround. Most of them also perform domain name registration so you can get everything from them and make it easy.
Once you are done installing WordPress, you will be directly taken into the WordPress dashboard. The dashboard is the control panel of your website. First, let’s differentiate between the different sections of the control panel. This includes Posts, Pages, Media, Plugins, and Settings. Work your way through those options so that you get used to the interface.
The Posts section is where you will create blog posts, and then you have Pages. This is where you will build static pages such as Home or About. Under the Appearance tab, you can manage your theme. Apart from that, Plugins lets you add additional features to your website.
Now, you need to get your settings optimized. Click Settings from within the WordPress CMS dashboard, set up options like your website’s title and tagline, and select your time zone. Under Permalinks, you’ll want to choose a structure that cleans up your URLs and makes them SEO-friendly, something like www.yoursite.com/sample-post. Set the Discussion settings. Check if your blog allows comments on posts.
A theme is what provides the look and feel of your WordPress site. Several thousands of both free and paid themes are available in WordPress. To choose one, click on the Appearance tab and select Themes. You can browse through different themes or use the search bar to find a theme that’s best for your website. Once your theme of choice has been chosen, adjustments to that theme can be made. For that, go to the Appearance tab and click on Customize. Here you can adjust color, font, style of header, etc.
Your website needs to have at least some basic pages, such as Home, About, Contact, and Blog. To get that, select Pages from the dashboard and then click Add New. For each of the pages, add content to your WordPress editor, including images and links. Do not forget headings, bullet points, and short paragraphs to make the content more readable.
Plugins are like apps for your website. They add more features and functionality without requiring any coding. In order to install plugins, click the Plugins tab and select Add New. A few of the required plugins for most websites include:
Now that your website is set up, it’s time to begin filling it with content. Within WordPress, the two main types of content are Posts and Pages. Posts are where blog entries are shown in reverse chronological order. Pages are meant for static pieces of content, such as About Us or Contact.
To Add a New Post or a New Page, click either Posts or Pages, depending on which you’d like to add, then click Add New. Thereafter, you can start writing in the WordPress Editor, make headings, and insert images into your text. You can also embed videos.
It’s very important that you understand how visitors to your website interact with the website, and you need to set up some monitoring for this. Use plugins for monitoring Google Analytics or Jetpack to track totals of visitors, page views, and other key metrics.
Monitor your site performance regularly to identify bottlenecks where your site can be improved. The issues you can resolve here include page load speed, bounce rate, etc.
WordPress has Free, Personal, Premium, Business, and e-commerce, among others, depending on what you want. In each of these plans, you get to have different features such as storage space, access to premium themes, or even install plugins. Go for the best option that would suit your needs.
For example, if you are going to make a personal blog, a Free or Personal plan is best for you. Otherwise, if you want to create a business website, then you could choose either the Business plan or the e-commerce plan.
Fast load means a good user experience and higher ranking in search engines. Optimize it with image compression and add caching plugins like WP Super Cache or W3 Total Cache. Do not overload with too many scripts from other websites. Test your site speed regularly, with a little help from special tools such as Google PageSpeed Insights.
You might get some inspiration from a few successful WordPress sites in your niche. Take a look at some portfolios, blogs, eCommerce, and corporate business pages. Watch how different sites utilize design elements, layout, and content. This will help you get ideas on how to enhance your website.
Although making a website with WordPress can be overwhelming initially but once you get familiar with the right steps and tools, it becomes quite an enjoyable experience. This guide will help you take in the basics of setup-from setting up your domain to designing your pages and adding engaging content with ease. With WordPress, anyone can easily get the experience of building a professional yet dynamic website without any prior experience.
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