6 reasons why you’ll love this awesome website creation guide:
Beginner-Friendly:
This guide is very comprehensive, detailed and easy to follow even if you’re not tech-savvy.
Up-to-Date:
This guide is updated frequently to keep up with the latest web design trends.
Fast Setup:
Within 30 minutes your website will be up and running with responsive and mobile-friendly.
Platform Specific:
Your website will be based on the right platform and the most popular (CMS) Content Management System in the right way.
Guaranteed Results:
We guarantee that by the end of this guide you’ll have a working website
Ask for Help:
You can Ask for Help in case if have any problem.
How Easy Is Creating A Website?
Few years back, there were no helpful tools available to create even a simple website. One needed to have decent knowledge about coding and programming languages such as HTML, PHP, CSS, etc to build even a basic website. On top of that, developers used to create every site from scratch, because there were no other options to create a website.
But today, the whole scenario has changed! Now, there are several frameworks and pre-made content management systems (CMS) available which can be used to create a website within few minutes.
Today In this article, we will teach you how you can create a live website or blog by yourself which can be a full-time business or one of your passive income source in the coming years.
Follow this Quick 3 Steps to go Live your Website
STEP 1
Choose a website building platform (CMS)
STEP 2
Get a Domain & Web Hosting
STEP 3
Basic Settings & Customize
Step 1
Choose the Best Platform (CMS)
There are plenty of content management systems or CMS available to build a website. But, choosing the right one is very important so that you do not get in trouble with your website functionality in the future in terms of maintaining, updates, security, backup & everything.
From a basic to advanced website and blog, WordPress is the best CMS recommended by industry leaders.
Statistics Source:
You can easily publish and manage your contents using this open-source software. In this article also, we will be using WordPress to create the website or blog as it’s the best option available.
But if your sole purpose is to create a full-fledged e-commerce website or if you have a unique idea and you want to create a startup based on your unique idea, then you need to choose the other options. Building the website from scratch by hiring experienced website designers and developers would be the best way to go. That will also take lots of time, planning and cost a lot of money.
Why WordPress Is The Best CMS For Most Websites?
Let me tell you the facts about WordPress and why it is the most preferred option for creating a website.
- WordPress is an open-source software or content management system (CMS) which is available for completely free of cost.
- You do not need to have much technical knowledge. Anyone can use WordPress to create a website.
- Even a single line of coding is not required to create a website using it.
- Almost 60% of the websites on the entire internet are created using WordPress.
- There are millions of developers and programmers who are working independently on different things to make WordPress better.
- Thousands of professional and other kinds of pre-made themes available to choose from (both free and paid).
- WordPress is a super flexible CMS that can be used to create a large range of websites including but not limited to blogs, news portals, business & portfolio websites, photo gallery, job portals, college websites, e-commerce stores, community & membership sites, etc.
- More than 50,000 free as well as paid plugins are available to extend the functionality of WordPress sites.
- WordPress websites are highly customizable, flexible and secured from hackers.
- Maintenance cost is almost zero or very minimal with WordPress.
- With WordPress, your website structure becomes very easy and digestive for search engines and makes it super SEO friendly which helps in getting more exposure and traffic from various search engines such as Google, Bing, etc.
For all these reasons, you should always start your journey with WordPress unless you are working on a unique idea or business model.
Step 2
Buy Domain & Hosting
Now that we have decided which CMS to use, let’s see how to actually create the website. At the very beginning, you need two essential things to proceed: a domain name and hosting.
A domain name is basically the address of your website like we access Google by typing Google.Com on our browser. Similarly, you also need to buy a domain name so that others can visit your website by typing that address.
And hosting is the server where your website components will be hosted. Servers are a specific type of computer which stays online all the time and serves required data to the website visitors. That’s why websites are accessible at any time.
You also need to purchase a hosting account to host your website and it’s components. All the contents that you will add to your website will be sent and stored into the hosting server and then it will be served to your visitors.
Finding The Perfect Domain Name
Finding the perfect domain name is the toughest and most important task when you are creating a website. It’s the name and address of your site. If you keep it complex, people will forget the name of your website.
On the other side, most of the common domain names with popular domain extensions such as .com, .org and .net are already taken. So, you need to find out unique names and search if the domain is available.
When you are finding a domain name for your website, you also need to pay attention to decide the best domain extension. Always try to take the .com as it is the most popular extension right now and used by most websites. Facebook is using .com.
If the .com is not available for your domain name and you still need the same name, you can go with other extensions such as .org (used by Wikipedia) or .net (used by SlideShare).
There are country-specific domain extensions available as well such as .in (for India), .us (for United States), .au (for Australia), .fr (for France) and many more. These domain extensions can be very helpful if you are targeting users from a specific country only.
Nowadays, there are specific domain extensions are available too like .agency (for agencies), .app (for mobile apps), .online, .club (for clubs), .store (for shops & stores), .xyz, .tech (for technology), .photography, .media, .news (for news sites), .space and many more. By just seeing these extensions in your domain name, one can easily get an idea about the context of your website without even visiting.
Once you decide on the domain name and extension, you can buy it from Godaddy, NameCheap or any other domain name provider. But wait, don’t buy it now. Because our recommended web host already gives you a free domain name. So, you don’t need to pay separately for that.
There are my favourite domain name providers are-
Domain.com
Hostgator.com
& many more are there but the above registrar is my favourite domain name registrars.
Choosing The Best Web Host
Once you have decided on the perfect domain name and extension for your website, you need to think about the best web hosting so that you never get in trouble or your website never goes through any server error or slow loading issue.
Web hosting comes in different types: Shared Hosting, VPS Hosting, Cloud Hosting, Dedicated Hosting, etc. As you are just starting out, you should choose Shared Hosting as it comes at the lowest price and ideal for a small website with very little traffic. As your website grows, you can upgrade your hosting to handle more traffic.
There are many web hosting companies available such as Bluehost, SiteGround, DreamHost, WPEngine, HostGator, etc. Among all of these, we recommend BlueHost for WordPress websites.
Why Do We recommend BlueHost?
Not only us But BlueHost is also recommended by the WordPress.Org (official website) itself because of many reasons listed below:
- Over 2 million WordPress websites use BlueHost.
- Bluehost hosting is perfectly tuned for WordPress CMS.
- It offers a WordPress-centric hosting dashboard for easier operations.
- You get a free domain name as well.
- Offers 24/7 support by in-house WordPress experts.
- Gives a one-click WordPress Install feature.
- Includes a free SSL certificate for your website.
- Provides a 30-day money-back guarantee.
- Easily upgradable according to your need.
Buy Hosting
Purchasing The Web Hosting From Bluehost
As Bluehost is the most WordPress-friendly web host, we will show you how to buy shared web hosting from Bluehost and install WordPress to create your website. You can also purchase another type of hosting from other web hosting providers. But the process will be almost similar.
Bluehost offers 3 shared hosting plans- basic, plus and prime. If you want to stay with one site only, you should choose the basic plan. It usually costs $7.99 per month. But if you purchase it now, you will get at $2.75/mo only as part of a discount offer.
But if you want to experiment with multiple sites, you need to choose the plus plan as it offers unlimited website hosting.
Purchasing is really easy, just go to the Bluehost site and click on the “Get Started Now” button > select your preferred plan > grab your free domain name or enter if you already have one > enter your account information > select the plan duration (the more duration you buy for, the more money you save) > you can uncheck all the package extras to save more money as they are not much needed > finally enter your card details and complete the purchase > after purchasing just set a password and login to your Bluehost hosting account.
How To Install WordPress On Bluehost Hosting?
Bluehost and most of the other popular web hosting providers offer one-click WordPress installation. Below, you can see how to utilize this feature to install WordPress on your Bluehost hosting:
- Go to the cPanel.
- Click on the “Install WordPress” button.
- Set your desired WordPress username and password.
- Finally, click on the “Install Now” button.
- Within a few seconds, WordPress will be installed on your hosting.
- You will see the success message on completion.
Once the installation is complete, go to “yoursite.com/wp-admin” (replace ‘yoursite.com’ with your domain name) using your browser > enter your username and password which you set at the time of installing > Login to your WordPress dashboard.
At the same time, you can access your website homepage through the browser and you will see that your website is live now and there is some Welcome message written there by default.
Step 3
How To Choose The Theme Or Design?
The default theme that is installed with WordPress does not look that great and professional. So, you will definitely want to change the Theme.
Let me tell you here, that there are thousands of pre-made WordPress themes available both free and paid. Free themes can be easily found on the WordPress repository. You can install free WordPress themes by navigating to Dashboard > Appearance > Themes > Add New. Browse and install the one you love.
But, we recommend you to use a paid theme which is better in many aspects. They are more responsive, user-friendly, search engine optimized, fast loading and secure. Some of the great and simple yet most popular paid WordPress themes are Genesis, Magazine Pro, Schema, Divi and Newspaper. You can buy these themes from their official store by searching on Google.
Tip: There are many nulled paid themes available online for free. If you don’t have a budget for themes, use free themes from the WordPress repository but never use these nulled ones. Malicious codes are injected into these themes which can affect your website as well as other websites hosted on the same hosting account. Your site may get hacked or unwanted advertisements may be displayed to your visitors by the supplier of the nulled theme. It’s also illegal to use nulled themes. Web hosting providers may suspend one’s hosting account if any virus is found which may be caused by the use of nulled themes & plugins.
How To Create, Manage & Showcase Content?
Creating, publishing and managing content with WordPress is very easy. Just navigate to Dashboard > Posts > Add New > Add your title and content > Publish. That’s it, you can create more posts like this which will be visible in your homepage, from there users can also visit the post pages. Every time you publish a post, a new page is created on your website which can be used to read or access that post by visitors.
You can also navigate to Dashboard > Posts > All Posts > Edit to update your posts that you have published earlier.
How To Add Pages, Posts And Categories In Menu Bar?
A menu bar is a must to make your website user-friendly and your content discoverable and well-organized. To add pages, posts, categories, tags into your site’s menu bar, simply go to Dashboard > Appearance > Menus > Create a new menu or edit existing ones > Drag & Drop posts, pages, categories, tags, etc from the left side to the menu bar > Select the display location from the Menu Settings section > Save Menu.
Now visit your website and you should see the items that you added to the menu bar in the set menu bar locations.
How To Set A Static Page As Homepage?
By default, WordPress shows the latest posts on the homepage. But for any reason (for business websites, single page websites, etc), if you want to show a specific page of your website on the homepage, you can also do that. For that:
- First of all, create a new page from Dashboard > Pages > Add New.
- Add content to the page and publish it.
- Go to Dashboard > Settings > Reading > “Front Page Displays”.
- Select “A static page” and select the page that you’ve just created.
- Save the settings and visit your homepage.
- Now you will see that page on your homepage.
How To Add Widgets & Set The Sidebar Area?
WordPress sites, by default and most popularly, have a layout made of some main parts such as Header (for logo, site name, tagline, ads), Main Content Area (for content), Sidebar (for various widgets) and Footer (for the footer, important links, company details, contact details, widgets).
You can add various widgets such as Text (for text & HTML code), Image, Latest Posts, Recent Comments, Post Categories, Calendar, Gallery, Social Media Icons & Links, Search Bar (to search content within your website) in these areas. Simply navigate to Dashboard > Appearance > Widgets > Drag & Drop widgets to the different areas of your website.
Unlocking Endless Opportunities With WordPress Plugins
What Are WordPress Plugins?
WordPress plugins are small pre-made elements that can be installed in WordPress to extend its functionalities. Like, by default, WordPress is made to publish content (for blogs & news sites) but if you want to create a social media type of website or a community, you just need to install a plugin called BuddyPress and your website structure will be changed into an online community.
Similar way, there are different plugins available to do different things in WordPress without touching the actual codes of the website. These plugins add, deletes or modifies the code of your website and make it how you want.
WordPress Plugins are available both for free of cost and for money. Most of the essential and basic plugins are available for free on the WordPress repository. However, for some special purpose, or for advanced functions, you may need to purchase plugins from other developers. You can also custom made a plugin or theme by hiring a developer to fulfil your needs.
How To Install A Plugin?
You can easily install a plugin on your WordPress installation by navigating to Dashboard > Plugins > Add New > Search or browse or upload plugin > Install Now.
Essential Plugins For Every WordPress Blogs
Here is the list of some free essential plugins which is required to make your journey on WordPress smoother:
Jetpack: Makes your site secure, provides site statistics, social sharing buttons, backups, etc.
Akismet Anti-Spam: Protects your site from spam comments, shows link URLs in comments to prevent link spam, automatically deletes spam comments to make your space free.
Yoast SEO: Gives you various options to improve your whole site’s SEO. Recommended by SEO and digital marketing experts.
Google Analytics: It helps you to install the Google Analytics code into your website so that you can measure your site’s user metrics on Google Analytics.
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Starting The Online Journey!
Now, you have successfully created your website. Start creating new content to start getting traffic from search engines, share your content on social media to get traffic from there. Once you start getting good traffic, you can monetize your website with various methods which we will discuss in another article. If there is any problem or query preventing you from starting your journey, comment down below. We’ll try to answer you and congratulation on your website!
In this digital world, everything has changed and shifted online. Now, people spend a lot of time on the internet. It has opened an ocean of opportunity for us to start a business online without any heavy investment and take it to the next level with the help of digital marketing. Blogging has also become popular and now it’s one of the crucial parts of any business to drive more relevant and quality traffic.
But starting even a small website was very hard in past, but now, there are tons of pre-made scripts or frameworks available which can be used to build a website without even knowing a single line of code. So if you are also here to create your first website or blog, you are in the right place.
Why Having A Website Or Blog Is Important?
Though there are several ways available to make money online. But still, a website is a must-have tool to build your online presence.
And everybody does not create a website just to make money. It can also be the presence of anyone’s offline business in the digital World which will provide details about the business so that it can become discoverable for someone who is searching about that business online.
On the other hand, there are plenty of websites and blogs, which were started just for fun by the owners. And they are now very popular around the World. A website or blog has the power to generate real money and it can also replace your “real job” within a few months or years if maintained correctly.
For someone, a website can become a passive income stream where they need to work once, but the money will be coming in for the next few years.
If you have an existing business or thinking to start a new business online, having a blog on the same niche can be very helpful. Blogs attract a lot of traffic organically and if you create a blog that is related to your business category or niche, it can give you tons of customers.
A Website can easily become an asset for you. Later you can either scale it to earn more money or you can sell it at a very good price online. There are lots of people who create websites and later sell them at a huge price.
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