How to Create Your Own WordPress Website (The Easy Way)
by Marshall Hardy, the tech guy @ ClickHelp
DISCLAIMER:
Please, note, that this ‘guide’ is for people with little to none technical expertise, and covers only the ‘easy way’, so nothing on dedicated hosting installs here, sorry. Maybe next time.
Have you ever wanted to start a website, but didn’t know how? Try this new wonderful solution, that will get you up and running in no time; you just need to…
Just kidding😁 First of all, there’s no universal solution where you can hit ‘make everything perfect’ button and be off with it. And secondly, It’s 2018 out there, after all. It’s that time when most of the people know about making blogs, with all its different kinds and variations: Twitter microblog, Instagram visual blog, YouTube vlog, etc. But what if you don’t want to limit yourself to a specific type of blogging, or want to fully use the power of customization, making your very own website?
There are plenty of online platforms that will let you create a blog in no time. Some of them have a specific goal in mind, like Svbtle — it strips pretty much everything, letting you focus on writing. Medium, by the way, does that too — the editor is plain and simple, without any distracting elements. Others try to cover as much ground as possible, like Blogger or Tumblr, allowing you to post any type of content you want, and providing some degree of customizability.
But what about a whole website? After all, blog can be just one of its sections. Here comes WordPress. Yeah, you could’ve kinda guessed I’ll be talking about this one😄 I actually won’t describe every neat feature WordPress has — you can very well read it on their official website. My point here is what Brad asked me yesterday:
“How does a person without strong technical skills start a WordPress blog?”.
And, of course, instead of just giving him a few quick tips, I decided to write this article (you reap what you sow, Bradley 😜), so it may help someone else who might stumble upon it.
Registration
Yes, yes, I know, you can’t wait to get to WordPress setup. We’ll be there in a sec — have a little patience. Note, that I am writing this ‘guide’ for people who have little to none technical expertise. So if you know what a domain is and how to set up your own hosting and database, but still want to read this article for some reason — please, bear with me.
First of all, when you google “WordPress”, you might notice that there are two different official WordPress website links you can visit (aside from the ads):
Right now we’re interested in wordpress.com because .org one is for downloading WordPress source files and installing it on dedicated (or shared, but that doesn’t matter now) hosting — so just don’t mind it for now, I won’t cover it in this post.
Smash that button
After you get to the website, you can safely hit “Start Your Website” button — it’s exactly what we need.
Step 1 of 4
This step is easy enough, just fill in your email address, username (it’s yours, not your website title, so pick your favourite nickname) and password. Or just sign in with google account — it’ll be way faster.
Step 2 of 4
This next step is where it all begins. First of all, think of a creative way to name your website. Or a simple one — it doesn’t really matter at this point, but if you want other people to see and visit your website, think of something that will captivate their minds. I won’t give you advice on copyright and SEO optimization, but I can tell you it’s better to be short and somewhat catchy. Don’t worry though — all of this info can be changed later at any moment.
The next field is asking you what your site will be about. You can either start typing and choose what suits you from the drop-down tips list or just write something of your own (like I did in the example).
As for the primary goal — choose whatever feels right for you. I think this is designed to provide you with something to start, like a site template, plugins you may need, etc.
And the last thing is choosing how comfortable you are with creating a website. I suggest you pick the “1” (Beginner) option for obvious reasons — this way you’ll get more contextual help (I’m not really sure, because I haven’t picked that option a single time, sorry 😅. Let’s find out, though).
Step 3 of 4
At this stage you’ll be asked to think of a site address — basically, what potential users will need to enter in their search bar in order to get to your site. The first two large options (with giant ‘select’ buttons) are the domains suggested by WordPress’ algorithm. Yes, they may look cool with your chosen site address, but are only included in the paid plans. Of course, if you can afford it (it starts at $4/month, we’ll touch that a bit later) — go for it, and you can select any domain you like. There’s even an option for transferring your own domain, if you have one. For the time being, let’s stick with the default free domain.
Step 4 of 4
And the final step in our registration is choosing a plan. I suggest you stick to the free plan — you can switch it whenever you like if you will feel the need to. I won’t repeat what is written right there — you can check the difference between plans yourselves.
The setup
After this, give WordPress a couple of seconds to prepare your site, and you’re done! The first thing you’re gonna see is the lightweight admin panel, provided by wordpress.com:
This can be a bit overwhelming at first, especially if you didn’t use anything like this before. The easiest thing to do would be to follow the checklist. This will get you acquainted with the basics, while these little helpers will guide you through the interface and tell you what you need to know:
From this admin page, you can do pretty much all of the basic things, like adding new pages to your blog (like Blog, Image Gallery, Contacts, etc.), adding new Blog Posts, managing Media (uploading for use in future blog posts or just deleting the unnecessary ones) and so on and so forth.
You might wanna customize your website, because, frankly speaking, the default theme is kinda underwhelming.
But before we hit “Customize” in the toolbar on the left, find little “Themes” button, located there, and click it. Basically, theme is a template for your website, it controls a lot of things: starting from how different sections of your site are presented (menu, title, blog posts positioning, etc.) to colors and fonts.
In the top-right find the price switcher and hit “Free”, so you’ll be browsing only free themes. Yes, they are not as cool and complex as paid ones, and, in most cases, provide less functionality, they will totally do as something to start with. You can further narrow down your search by switching “Feature”, “Layout” and other filters. Just play around with them, see what you can find.
There are two ways you can preview any theme without actually doing anything to your site (there’s no need to be afraid of losing your customization, these themes won’t be automatically applied):
The first one is to click on the theme ‘tile’, and this will take you to theme info page, where you can read everything about it — see how it looks, when filled with content, what it supports, etc. And if you like it enough, you can click “Activate this design” button to apply chosen theme to your site. Remember, that your site won’t immediately look like it does in the theme info page — it’ll need some amount of customization.
If you don’t want to read anything about the theme, click the little three dots and choose “Try and Customize”:
This will immediately take you to the customization menu, which I told you not to go into just yet (we clicked “themes” instead, remember?):
From here, you can quickly change website Title, rearrange menu items or edit widget area (pencil icons in blue circles).
But if you want to leave them alone and start going through the toolbar (left-hand side of the screen) options one by one, just like I prefer it — that’s cool.
The number of options in the left menu can vary, depending on the theme you selected, but there are few universal ones.
Site identity
Change your site title, tagline (caption under the title, you’ll see), logo, site icon, and site footer. These are the basic elements of most websites. You can experiment here (and everywhere else, so long as you don’t click “Publish” button), and see what happens when you change it.
Colors & Backgrounds / Fonts / Header Image
I believe the titles of these sections are pretty self-explanatory, and there’s no need to go into details.
Menus
Some themes have only one menu, some have multiple (like top menu, bottom menu, sometimes slide-in side menus) — here’s the place for their customization. You can add as many links/pages to the menu as you like, though I suggest add only some general categories (like Image Gallery, Contacts, etc.), which can contain several pages. Play around with them, see what fits you best.
CSS
This is where it gets all techy. Although if you’re using a free plan, this option won’t be available to you. For the peeps with paid plans — don’t go there. CSS is a special “Style Sheet language”, which is needed to tell your website how it should look. CSS is used for simple things (specifying the background color, fonts) as well as for complex stuff (button animations, drop-down menus). So, if you’re reading this guide, then you must be a newbie, and I don’t recommend going into the CSS section unless you really know what you’re doing.
Widgets
These little guys are something like building blocks that some people made for you, so you can use them, even without technical skills. Try selecting a place where you want them (different themes have different areas available for widget placement)— there’s a whole list (thou not a big one). I don’t see the point in describing each, so just play around with them (most of them have their own settings, which will be opened after you add a widget). You can always delete the ones you don’t need.
Homepage Settings
The homepage itself is the main page of your website — the first one your visitors will see. This section contains only two options: Your latest posts and Static page. The first one acts like any blog you’ve seen — Medium, Blogger, whatever — it just renders your latest entries in a kind of a news feed. Static page, though, will be whatever you’ll make it be. You can choose one here, but first, you’ll most likely need to create a new one — because you’ll have only “Contact” page available by default, and it’s not a very good candidate for a homepage.
Theme Options
Again — some themes have options, others don’t. And what’s inside this section will entirely depend on which theme you chose. But once again… don’t be afraid to play around with settings. Until you clicked “publish” button at the top — nothing is saved.
In Conclusion
That was the very basic setup of your own WordPress website. You can add all the necessary pages, style them, add widgets and so on. The downside of the free plan is that you can’t install plugins. And plugins is one of the greatest strengths of WordPress— they add so much functionality, you can’t even imagine. I mean, if you want your WordPress to do something — anything — specific, there is probably a plugin for that. And the lack of customization through CSS is kinda daunting as well. But if you’re a total tech-newbie, and you want your website up and running in the minimum amount of time and with some degree of customization — WordPress is your choice.
P.S.
Yeah, there are website builders like Squarespace or Wix, but firstly — there’s always a tradeoff between site builders and CMS (content management system, like Wordpress) in terms of flexibility/ease of use balance, and secondly — I was specifically asked about how to setup wordpress, so… Maybe, another time?
Stay cool!
Marshall Hardy,
the tech guy @ ClickHelp
