If you are a beginner and want to set up a WordPress website, you must first understand what a content management system is. It’s very easy to learn how to make a WordPress website with a step-by-step guide for beginners.
Content management system, as its name suggests, is a platform that allows you to create and publish content on a website. If your content is cake, then a content management system is the cake stand.
Here will now look at a step-by-step guide for beginners to set up their WordPress website.
1. Choosing the Right Content Management System
Whichever hosting service you choose, it is important to choose the right content management system. WordPress is the ideal content management system for your website since most websites are built on it. It is not only easy to use, but also helps your website look professional.
You don’t even need any coding knowledge to work on WordPress. WordPress is open source software, which means its plugins and themes are worked on by developers and designers. After which others can modify and redistribute.
2. Choosing the Website’s Name and Hosting Service
First, zero in on the kind of website you want to create – business, personal or casual. With each kind, you will need to decide on its name carefully.
For a business website, it can be as simple as youcompanyname.com. For a personal kind, it can be something that reflects the theme of your website.
For a more casual one, it can light and fun. Unlike earlier times when a website’s extension always ended with .com, .org or .net, these days you can have almost anything as an extension. Be sure to check all your options.
There are web-hosting servers like BlueHost and SiteGround for your WordPress website. BlueHost has a few packages on offer. You can pick the one that works best for you. It’s very easy to set up. Select your package, fill in your domain name, and fill up your account’s information.
Then, in the admin panel, you will find the Install WordPress button. After that, you can choose if your website should begin with www or not. Fill up the other details they ask and then the installation will be complete.
3. Configuring Your New Website
After getting your domain name and your web-hosting server, it’s time to configure your WordPress website. Go to your website’s wp-admin and log in. You will then see the admin menu on the left side.
The menu includes your dashboard, media, posts, pages, links, comments, appearance, plugins, users, tools, and settings. First, let’s look at the appearance of your site. For that, you will need to install a good theme.
With WordPress, you will have a number of themes to choose from. These cool WordPress themes are designed for all kinds of websites. With great design and functionality of themes and plugins, your website will look and work wonderfully.
It’s all a matter of a couple of clicks to have them installed and up and running. Ideal for beginners and people who aren’t tech savvy, WordPress is a boon. Go to your dashboard, click on appearance themes.
Add a new theme and preview it to see if it looks like what you had in mind. Install your new theme and activate it.
Next, go to appearances and then click on widgets. Widgets are essential for various products and features to be showcased. You can fill the sidebars, footers, and headers with widgets. From top products to social media timelines, you can have anything you want.
Now go to the appearances part of your dashboard and go to the menu. The menu is how you will determine the way to navigate your website. A good menu makes navigating your website a good experience.
If the experience isn’t good, your bounce rate will be high. In short, you need an about us page, contact us page, blog, and any other pages you might need.
4. Installing Plugins
Plugins are important for your website to be relevant and work efficiently. Even for beginners, how to make a WordPress website can be tricky. But with plugins, your website can look and feel highly professional.
If you need social media buttons, SEO, security, updating, creating contact forms, maintaining comments sections, and a lot more, you can install plugins and sort them out.
5. Adding Content
No matter how you make your website look, if the content isn’t up to mark, it won’t succeed. There are way too many websites these days and way before your website was thought of.
Even if your kind of content is out there and on other websites, be sure of your website has the best content. Keep your content free of errors and plagiarism. Your readers must find value in your content. Only then will they come back to your website over and over again.
With content comes SEO. For that, install a good plugin like Yoast SEO. It will help with search engine optimization. As a beginner, you need to ensure that your website shows up on search engines.
There are several parameters to adhere to for search engines to rank your website and display it on their search pages. SEO plugins will help with that. It will also help your content be error free and grammatically correct.
One can learn how to make a WordPress website with a step-by-step guide for beginners. This article can act as such a guide. Beginner or long-timer, WordPress website is a great platform for all kinds of website.
It has grown from being a blogging platform to one of the most powerful content management systems available out there.
WordPress makes it very easy to build, maintain, and update your website from time to time. Learn how to build your own website on WordPress even without much coding knowledge.
You won’t even need to hire expensive professionals to set up your website. If you can browse the Internet, you will be able to set up your own website. Once you do that, you can learn how to better it as well.