How to Create a WordPress Website: A Comprehensive Guide

It’s your decision to create a website. This post is for you whether you’re creating a website for your offline business, a personal project, or you’re getting ready to start an online venture.

Fortunately, this is not 10 years ago that you are reading this. Thanks to the internet and technology, once-impossible or time-consuming jobs may now be completed in a single afternoon.

When it comes to creating your website, the same applies.

You had to write all of the website’s code yourself in the early days of the internet, before content management systems and user-friendly website builders. You would be out of luck if you couldn’t code or didn’t want to learn. Unless, of course, you were able to pay a professional.

But the web of today is really different. It is possible for anyone who wants to develop a website to go from having none at all to having one published in a single day.

All the information you’ll need to create your first website is provided here, along with a selection of website building tools you may find useful.

The hardest part of the process won’t be really developing your website, but rather deciding which strategy to use.

1. Select the Appropriate Platform

As we just discussed, there are a ton of options available to you for the actual construction of your website. Selecting the appropriate strategy is crucial and might take the most time during the procedure.

For instance, you may use languages like HTML, CSS, and more to completely create your website from the ground up. To create a simple website, you simply drag & drop elements using a website builder. Alternatively, you may depend on a CMS to give you a framework that you can modify and use to create your website.

Beginners are best served by adopting an easy content management system (CMS) like WordPress or a website builder.

Using a website builder will be the simplest option if your goal is to create a reasonably simple website. Complete novices are the target audience for website builders. Using these, the procedure is easy:

You select a web developer.

Select a payment plan based on the demands of your site and traffic.

Include your domain

Choose a template or theme.

Make your website unique.

Post it in real time on the web!

WordPress is the best option for anyone with more intricate website needs.

You have almost endless customization choices when using WordPress. Moreover, it’s designed to support content creation and maximize the potential of your website. With just a few clicks, you can install WordPress on almost any server. WordPress is a great platform for novices as, despite its complexity, it has a relatively low learning curve.

For the sake of this tutorial, we’ll assume that you choose WordPress as your content management system.

2. Protect Your Host and Domain Name

A domain name and host are required for any website to be operational on the Internet. People cannot access your website without a domain name, and you cannot keep the files that make up your website anywhere without a host.

One approach to obtain a free domain name and hosting is to use a subdomain, such as “yoursite.wordpress.com,” of a bigger website. But without a professional domain name, this doesn’t appear very professional, and it will be difficult for you to gain traction.

The same holds true for buying your own web space. Though there are many alternatives available, if you’re just starting out with website development, a simple shared hosting package would work perfectly. You could wish to improve your plan later on, but there’s no need to make things more difficult right away.

You share server resources with other websites that are hosted on the same server when you use shared hosting. Because of the efficient cost-sharing across several customers, your monthly price will be quite low.

You can safeguard your domain name and hosting in a number of ways, just like everything else you do online. You may take your time investigating all of your alternatives, or you can just follow the steps listed below to make things easier.

3. Set Up Your Host for Your CMS

It’s now time to install WordPress after taking care of your domain name and hosting. By integrating software that allows you to install your preferred CMS with only a few clicks, the majority of starter hosting make this simple.

Rather than requiring you to download and upload your CMS manually, our program will handle all of those technical duties for you.

We’ll need to access your server in order to accomplish this. In the event that you chose a host, cPanel will be the tool we use for this. Your server will come with this software installed, which makes managing your server environment very simple.

4. Select Your Theme

Your website will be built using WordPress. But you’ll need to install a WordPress theme before you can make any changes to the appearance of your website. A theme is essentially a group of files that control the appearance and functionality of your website.

Consider WordPress as the fundamental framework of your home, consisting of the foundation and scaffolding. Your motif, however, is the color and appearance of your house, including the wood floors.

You’ll have hundreds of options when it comes to themes because the WordPress ecosystem is so vast (and that’s just the free themes).

Additionally, there are premium themes available that provide you even more features, support, functionality, and much more. Generally speaking, premium themes have better coding, greater functionality, and devoted support teams than paid themes.

WordPress has the nice feature of allowing you to change themes whenever you want. Your current blog entries, pages, and other media won’t be impacted in any way by this. Your content won’t disappear, even if it doesn’t display correctly after a lot of customization.

5. Personalize Your Website

You’ve probably already installed WordPress, chosen your theme, obtained your domain name and hosting, and perhaps even installed a few plugins.

This is the exciting part—it’s time to personalize your website.

First, you should draft the few pages that are required.

Homepage

About this page

webpage for a blog

You may also need to construct other pages for your website, such as a services page, resource page, or anything else you can think of.

It’s really simple to add pages to a WordPress website. Once you’re in your website’s backend, select Pages>Add New. A screen allowing you to add a page to your website will appear as a result.

Follow a similar procedure if you wish to add any blogs to your website. When you select Posts>Add New, a screen that resembles the page editor will appear. After writing your blog post, select “Publish.”

How you adjust your theme will vary depending on whatever theme you are using.

For instance, you may be able to modify your theme’s personalization settings from a separate tab. If you bought a premium theme, you may customize it by looking through the documentation that was included with it.

Nevertheless, by going to Appearance>Customize, you may also make general adjustments.

You may alter your site’s color scheme, header components, menus, general theme settings, and much more from this panel.

6. Launch

It’s time to launch your site after you’re happy with the way it appears and works. Your website ought to be live by now if you followed all of the previous instructions!

To view your site live, simply enter its URL into the browser.

Use a coming soon or maintenance mode plugin if you wish to develop your website without letting users view it in its incomplete condition.