How to Build & Launch a WordPress Website
by David Page, Digital Marketing Consultant at Elfsight — developer of customizable & coding-free website widgets
Nowadays, website building doesn’t require special training. There are countless CMSs and website builders with an intuitive interface that allow you to easily create a website. Today, WordPress is a leading CMS and there are many reasons for that.
According to W3Techs, WordPress powers 33% of all websites on the Internet. WordPress.com is free and comes with thousands of website designs and extensions. It is extremely flexible and works with almost every third-party tool and service available to website owners.
If you thought of building your personal website or starting a blog, this article is the sign you’ve been looking for. Building a WordPress website is pretty simple with the right approach. And this is exactly the approach that we are going to discuss in this article.
Feel free to make suggestions and share your best practices in the comments below.
Choose a Platform
One of the most common mistakes that beginners make is choosing the wrong website platform. Recently, I posted a list of the most popular CMSs and website builders. Learn about the most convenient solution for e-commerce, small business or personal use websites and make the right choice:
WordPress is a perfect solution for those who are building their first website and are not going to receive large amounts of traffic. Although websites like CNN, TED, Techcrunch, NBC have no problems with the latter. WordPress is easy-to-install, has a strong community and it doesn’t require any special training. Moreover, it’s free and comes with thousands of designs and add-ons — you only pay for premium add-ons, your domain name, and hosting.
Okay, you made up your mind about the platform. What’s next?
Choose a Domain Name
A domain name is your website’s address. This is what your users will type in their browsers to reach your site (For example, google.com).
To choose the right domain name, stick to the following recommendations:
- Make It Short. Shorter names are easier to type and remember
- Mind Branding. Whether you are building a company’s website or a personal one, it is important that your domain name was associated with your brand
- Include Keywords. This one is optional. To improve your website’s ranking, you need to identify the right keywords for your business and include them into your domain name.
Choose a Website Hosting
Next, you need to choose a website hosting — a street name where your website is going to live on the Internet. At this point, you have two options:
- Shared Hosting
- Managed WordPress Hosting
For your first website, I recommend shared hosting as long as WP hosting is too costly. BlueHost and SiteGround are among the best options available on the market. Let’s take a closer look at them.
BlueHost
BlueHost is a website hosting with easy WordPress installation, domain registration, email, FTP, 24/7 support and more. It is one of the officially recommended hosts by WordPress, which is a big deal.
BlueHost offers that following pricing options:
If it’s your first website, consider the Basic plan. As your website grows, you can upgrade.
SiteGround
SiteGround is also one the hostings officially recommended by WordPress. One-click installation, managed updates, WP-Cli, WordPress staging, and git integration. 24/7 Support included.
SiteGround is a great option for WP novices. There’s a knowledge base filled with guides on how to perform certain tasks.
Now that we finished with website hosting, let’s pass on to the website itself.
First Preparations
Finally, you may get started with your website’s basics.
Set Up Static Front Page
Settings > Reading: Choose static front page, select your homepage and posts page.
Change Title and Tagline
Settings > General: set Website Title and Tagline. Title is the name of your website that shows up in your browser tab and in the search engine results. Tagline is a short marketing statement that should describe the purpose of your website.
Choose Theme
Appearances > Themes: Choose from a variety of free and premium WordPress themes. Once you’ve installed it, you can customize it. Click the Customize link under the Appearance menu.
Set Up Background
Appearances > Background: Choose a powerful visual to grasp the visitors’ attention and communicate the idea of a webpage. You may use a splendid landscape that gives a feeling of freedom or a plain color background that matches your branding.
Now that we have the essentials, let’s upload some content and see what it looks like.
Add Content
In WordPress, you may set up two types of content — posts and pages. Posts belong to the blog and appear in reverse-chronological order (newest first).
Add Blog Posts
Posts > Add New: Posts can be created either in a visual or in an HTML editor.
Pages > Add New: Pages are design templates that can be called on command and used for different purposes.
Sort It Out
Posts > Categories: Create categories for each topic to facilitate website navigation.
Posts > Tags: Tags are similar to categories but yet they are more specific. Each post has its own set of tags, not it just belongs to 1 category.
Add Visuals
Media > Add New: Upload images and videos to your webpages. Edit its title, caption, description and more to improve your website’s SEO.
At this point, you are halfway through your website building journey. Now you may tailor the website for your needs.
Customize
Set Up Comments
Settings > Discussions: There you may choose manual approval of incoming comments.
Create Navigation Menus
Appearance > Menus: Create a new menu — select pages to display and hit ‘Add to Menu’. Choose the positioning — Primary menu is usually the top navigation of your WP theme.
Add Widgets
Appearances > Widgets: Widgets are pieces of code that add functionality to your website — navigation, social media, etc. My personal favorite is Elfsight — 24+ easily embeddable social media widgets and share buttons, form builders, pricing tables, countdown timers, contact forms, FAQs and more:
Install Plugins
Plugins > Add new: Plugins are pieces of code that allow performing a specific function on a website (e.g. social media sharing plugin).
Here is our list of some essential free plugins that you may want to install on your website:
Features
- WPForms Lite — add a contact form to your WordPress website.
- Envira Gallery Lite allows you to create beautiful contact forms, subscription forms, payment forms, and other types of forms for your website.
- MonsterInsights — connect your WordPress site with Google Analytics, so you can start making data-driven decisions to grow your business.
Website Optimization
- Yoast SEO improve your WordPress SEO and get more traffic from Google with this plugin.
- WP Super Cache improves your website speed by serving cached pages.
Security
- Updraft Plus — Create automatic scheduled backups of your website
Video Guide
As a video guide, I chose the following YT video by Tyler Moore. In 1h 12min he’s going to teach you how to get your domain name and hosting, install WordPress, import your website and customize it in any way you want. You’ll also learn how to make a logo and even install security. As a result, you will have complete control of your website and have a great time creating it.
Proceed to YouTube to navigate through the lessons using the timeline.
Conclusion
WordPress is an easy-to-use solution for personal blogs and websites. As you learned from the article, the building process is easy and straight forward so it’s available for everyone. Now you don’t have any more excuses not to start your personal blog or an online course.
