A complete guide to building a WordPress Website

Hey! Don’t you wish to create a website without any knowledge of coding. Well! Here’s a solution to it. Creating a website in today’s digital world is not a big deal, with platforms like WordPress, Squarespace, and Wix where we can easily create websites. In this blog, I will share a quick and simple guide to creating a WordPress website.

So let’s move toward getting to know more about WordPress.

Let’s take a brief look at WordPress. There are numerous ways to build websites, but why is WordPress the ideal option to develop websites among the developers?

What exactly is WordPress, & why should you choose it?

WordPress is the most popular CMS globally used to create web pages, and posts and publish them. In fact, it powers almost 40.6% of the active internet base. WordPress offers tons of advantages to its users along with a variety of themes and plugins.

The most important feature is that WordPress is absolutely free & secure to use. In other words, WordPress is only a few clicks away to install and use freely.

Here are some of the key attributes of WordPress:

• Cheap and cost-effective
• Multilingual
• It’s easy to understand
• Extra versatility is its key feature.
• It provides quality security & is fast and secure
• 55,000+ plugins for impeccable site experience
• Over 3,000 beautiful and professional themes
• SEO Friendly
• Mobile responsiveness

But wait,

According to what is mentioned above, WordPress is FREE but you’ve certainly heard about people paying for the websites they’ve built.

To clarify, let’s talk about the differences between WordPress.com and WordPress.org.

WordPress.com vs. WordPress.org

The main difference between WordPress.com and WordPress.org is who is responsible for hosting your website.

Firstly, WordPress.org is a free platform to create and maintain websites. It is a highly recommended platform that allows you to host your own website.

However, WordPress.com is another option but is slightly different. It is a web-based platform that will assist you in hosting your sites. Each element is handled carefully by WordPress and is in fact easier to start.

Hosting companies such as Bluehost or SiteGround are just as easy to use as WordPress.com, but they are less expensive and provide more flexibility.

Throughout this article, we shall talk about WordPress Software that is available here WordPress.org

Moving on, let’s take a look at the fragments of building a WordPress website from scratch.

Step 1:- Register a domain name

To acquire a domain name, look for a domain name provider’s website. For instance, Nepal’s official.np domain registration, Gurkha.host, Namecheap, and so forth.

A domain name is similar to your home’s address which justifies your location in the world.

Following are some tips you can use while choosing a domain name for your site:-

• The domain name must be related to your site content.
• Try considering keywords related to your business to sound good. For example, if I create a travel blog, I can include keywords like “food”, “foodie”, etc.
• Keep it in a nutshell.
• Select an appropriate extension like .com, .org, .net, and more as they convey some specific meaning; for instance, .com is used for a commercial while .org is for organizations. So, choose based on what your website is all about.

2. Buy a web hosting

Web hosting is an engine that drives your website and is a place where your website’s files live. Anyone willing to build a website must have web hosting if you want others to access your website.

It’s easy and simple to purchase web hosting as the efforts of the companies make the process easier and simpler. The best & suitable way to build a WordPress website is via the hosting service provider under WordPress’s recommendation.

While exploring web hosting providers viz. Bluehost, Siteground, and Dreamhost you can learn about other hosting services too like:-

• Shared
• Managed WordPress
• Virtual Private Server (VPS)
• Dedicated
• Cloud

Hence, You can select any one of the above hosting plans according to your website needs after reviewing your need for memory, space, and other resources along with your budget.

Moreover, you can explore other web hosting companies from Nepal here!

3. Install and configure WordPress

After purchasing your domain name and web hosting, you’ll receive an email from the support team along with your details that can be used to access your profile and start working on your website.

Many hosting providers offer quick and simple one-click WordPress installations or manual ones that make things comfortable.

Let’s take an example, If you choose Bluehost it shows a simple wizard to move with the installation.

• In cPanel, scroll down and hit the “WordPress” icon.
• You will see the Quick Install option to download WordPress. Click on “Get started”.
• Next, select your domain name. It’s where your WordPress site will be hosted. Click “Next”.
• Enter your site name, admin password, and admin username. Click on “install” to continue.
• Once your installation completes, it will show a message – “Installation complete”.

After you’re done, you can start working on it picking pieces of functionality and designs for your WordPress site.

Now, Click on the link provided to find your WordPress login URL along with the password.

Log in with your username and password to start working on your new website.

However, If you need to install WordPress manually, it might take some time but it’s easy. You may check out the official guide by WordPress.org on how to install WordPress.

Basically, you’ll need to download WordPress, upload your files to the domain name folder, create a database, point your browser to the domain name and follow the instructions.

You’re done! You have created your first WordPress website.

You can now head over to the WordPress login page & can always access your dashboard by going to:

yourdomain.com/wp-admin

You can log in to your WordPress site using the admin username and password you entered earlier.

After entering your log-in data, you can see the main interface of WordPress.

After this process, let’s choose a design for your website.

Step 4:- Choose a WordPress theme and plugins

Now, let’s move to the most exciting part i.e. design & appearance.

The best part here is that you can customize everything in WordPress as you wish. You’ll have to make efficient use of WordPress themes or Templates.

In simpler words, WordPress software provides users with a pre-designed look for your website its posts, and pages. It is the main design layout or the integral part of your site’s outlook.

Where to find the best WordPress themes?

Step 5:-Add Content to Your Site

WordPress comes with two default content types called posts and pages. Posts appear in reverse chronological order and pages, on the other hand, are meant to be static. For instance, Your about page, Contact page, Privacy policy, etc.

How to Create Posts and Pages in WordPress?

Post and Pages creation are similar to each other.

first, select the Posts/Pages option on the sidebar. This will bring you to the page where all your posts/pages will be listed.

Now to create a new post or page, just click on the ‘Add New’ button at the top.

This will drop you to the WordPress post editor. Here, you can include all kinds of content including text, images, or other graphics which is fairly intuitive.

After you’ve completed preparing your content, simply click on the ‘Publish’ button located in the right corner.

Step 6: Customize your website

Along with theme customization, you can further customize your website in numerous ways. Let’s take a brief look at some of them:-

Initially, let’s start by customizing your site title. From your admin dashboard, select Settings > General. Here, add your website title and tagline. You can also toggle other basic site information like your URL, email, time zone, and more.

Further, let’s customize your reading sections. Under Settings > Reading, you can change your homepage to a static page.

Now, To create a WordPress menu, go to Appearance>Menus from your WordPress dashboard.

Step 7: Managing WordPress Security

Now that you’ve completed creating your WordPress website and adding content to it. you’re almost done. however, there are a few essential things you must work on immediately. let’s make your website secure.

Here are a few easy steps to make your website more secure:-

1. Keep WordPress Updated

2. Keep your Themes and Plugins Updated

3. Enable SSL

4. Backup your Websites Regularly

In addition, the following are some of the best WordPress plugins for secure websites:-

• Bulletproof Security
• Wordfence
• iThemes security

Step 7: Optimize your content for SEO and performance

There are some Seo plugins like Yoast SEO to optimize your content and further increase visibility. Moreover, Optimize permalinks, headings, titles, subheadings, videos and images, and other media.

Likewise, Speed plays a significant role to make the path to the success of your website.

Certainly, none of us like to wait. Hence, don’t let visitors slip off your site due to poor page loading speed.

Enable browser caching to improve your website’s performance. Well! Browser caching is the process of temporarily storing your website’s data on your visitors’ browsers. In this way, your content doesn’t require to be sent from the web server for it to appear in the browser, which increases the website speed.

Install and activate a caching plugin like W3 Total Cache to enable caching for your website.

Wrapping Up

Congratulations! You’ve successfully learned how to start a WordPress website!

Now you know the process is simple and easy. The great thing about WordPress is that even absolute beginners will be able to have a site of their own in no time.

We hope this article made the whole process clear to you.

But wait!

you’ve learned how to create a WordPress website, but don’t you like to extend your knowledge on WordPress? well! here’s an article on the 6 Most Important Reasons to Use WordPress in 2022.

If you have any questions, feel free to let us know in the comment sections below.👇