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Are you looking to make a website? Starting a website can be a terrifying thought specially when you are not techy. Don’t worry, you’re not alone.
Creating a website used to be a massive project. Expensive, too. Things have gotten a lot cheaper and easier over the years.
Believe it or not, but knowing how to make a website from scratch is one of the more essential skills you should master in this day and age.
Here’s why:
- If you know how to make your own website, you will save a ton of money on web developers and designers.
- This will also allow you to follow the market trends and put new things on your website without needing a programmer’s help.
- You will effectively stay ahead of your competition because, while they have their projects slowed down by the need to consult developers, you will be able to build most things yourself (within reason, of course).
What do I need to build a website?
You’ll need the following three things to start your WordPress site.
- A domain name – this is the name of your website such as google.com
- WordPress hosting – this is where your website files are stored.
- Time – 45 minutes of your undivided attention.
So, what is WordPress?
WordPress is free to use open source software called a “Content Management System” (CMS) that lets you build your website and share it with the world – without knowing how to code.
A third of all websites use WordPress. That’s tens of millions of sites, and likely billions of pages. Its combination of power and ease of use (by CMS standards) makes it an ideal fit for large and small websites alike.
Setting up a website with WordPress.org requires a little patience, but this guide is here to help. We’ve pooled our experience and knowledge to bring you something comprehensive, yet easy to follow. Keep it handy, and you’ll have a site up and running before you know it.
A Step-by-step Guide to Creating a Website With WordPress
- Step 1: Find and register your domain name for your website
- Step 2: Decide what kind of site you are creating
- Step 3: Get a host for your website
- Step 4: Install WordPress
- Step 5: Point your domain to your host
- Step 6: Install a WordPress theme
- Step 7: Add content to your website
- Step 8: Continue evolving your website
Step 1: Find and register domain name for your website
First, you’ll need to buy a domain name. This is the web address people will use to find you – for example, our domain name is “nerdyelectronics.com”.
Buying a domain name is super simple. Just head to a domain name registrar – a well-known one is Domain.com – then search for the address you want.
In short, a good domain name should be:
- brandable – unique sounding, like nothing else that’s out there in the market
- easy to memorize
- short – those are also easier to memorize
- easy to type and hard to mix up – you don’t want people to be wondering how to spell your site’s name
- including niche-related keywords – for instance, if you do anything with pizza, it would be cool to have “pizza” somewhere in the name of the site; it works the same in non-pizza industries as well.
Step 2: Decide what kind of site you are creating
Most guides on creating a website will push you into using WordPress. It’s the most popular and flexible website builder. And that’s usually a good recommendation.
But there are a few situations where I recommend different options.
Simple Portfolio or “Business Card” Sites
Many businesses need a simple website that tells people a few things:
- Who the business is for
- What the business does
- Sometimes a portfolio that shows off some work
- Contact info
You need to communicate basic info—and that’s all. If this is what you need, Wix is your best option for creating your website.
Blog Sites
If you know you want a blog or are planning on doing lots of content, start on WordPress. The majority of this guide is around building a WordPress website.
Pick WordPress — there isn’t a single situation where you’ll regret it.
Everything Else
If you’re not sure or have another vision for your site outside the categories above, use WordPress. It’s the most flexible platform out there. It will do e-commerce, it’ll do simple portfolios, it’ll do massive content sites, it’ll do Fortune 500 marketing sites, it’ll do it all.
Step 3: Get a host for your website
Now you’ve got your address, you need to rent your plot of land: it’s time to find a host for your website!
Okay, it’s not a perfect analogy – but it is a crucial step in your website-building process. WordPress is the tool that you’ll use to build your website. But you also need a web host. That’s the actual server that will store your site and make it available to anyone who visits.
Every website on the Internet is on web host. And the best place to go for most people is GoDaddy.
Whichever hosting provider you choose, you’ll need to decide whether to opt for shared or managed WordPress hosting.
With shared WordPress hosting, you share a server – and all its resources – with other sites. You’ll share bandwidth (capacity for traffic) and storage space (for your web content and media). Shared hosting is cheaper, and is best suited to smaller sites
Managed WordPress hosting can take the form of VPS or dedicated hosting, and is better for larger sites that need more resources. As you’d expect, it’s a bit pricier.Hosting plans usually start around $5/month.
Step 4: Install WordPress
Now you’ve got the admin out the way, it’s time for the real fun to begin – it’s time to install WordPress!
This is something you can do directly through your hosting dashboard. Depending on the provider, installation will be one-click or manual:
One-click WordPress installation
The clue’s kind of in the name here! With hosting providers offering one-click WordPress installation, downloading WordPress really is that easy.
Manual WordPress installation
As you might expect, manual installation is not such a straightforward (or dare we say it, fun) process. It basically just involves downloading WordPress to your computer first, and then reuploading it to your hosting provider.
Needless to say, we recommend you choose a hosting provider that offers one-click installs for a hassle-free installation.
Step 5: Point your domain to your host
Let’s do a quick recap.
- You bought your domain using a domain registrar.
- You signed up for a hosting plan.
- You installed WordPress on your host.
If you’ve bought a domain through your hosting provider, then you can probably skip this step because it is taken care of automatically.
The domain needs to be pointed to the hosting provider so that when someone accesses it through their browser, they are directed to the appropriate server. This is most often done using nameservers, sometimes referred to as account DNS.
Once you have the nameserver info from your host, go into your domain registrar and configure those settings for the domain that you want to point at your site.
Step 6: Install a WordPress theme
WordPress uses themes to determine how your website looks. This makes it really easy to change how your site looks without having to rebuild your site from scratch. Swap out your old theme for a new one and ta-da! Your design will look completely different.
And what is a theme, we hear you ask? It’s like a ‘template’ for your website; a fully-made example site that you can then populate with your own content and tweak to your liking.
To install a free WordPress theme, follow these simple steps:
- Log in to your WordPress dashboard.
- Hover over ‘Appearance’, then click ‘Themes’. This will take you through to the theme dashboard.
- Click the button above the themes that says ‘Add New’, then browse themes under ‘Featured’, ‘Popular’ etc, or use the search bar to search for specific industries.
- Demo a few themes to find the one you like, then hit ‘Install’ under the theme to download it.
- After a couple of minutes, a button will appear under the theme that says ‘Activate’. Click this, and the theme is all yours!
Step 7: Add content to your website
Now the fun part — it’s time to create the individual pages of your site.
You’ll do this within WordPress.
WordPress has two types of content: pages and posts.
Think of posts as blog posts that are published under a “blog” section of a site. If you’re not planning on having a blog, then you can skip posts entirely.
Pages are the more permanent pages on your website. Like your About or Contact Us pages. When you’re first creating your website, you want to get a batch of pages live so your site feels real.
Every website has a few standard pages you should create:
- Homepage – Your WordPress theme usually has settings for this page.
- Contact Page – Create a new page and install a WordPress form plugin so you can add a form to the page.
- About page – Tell your story and why you’ve started your business.
- Product or services pages – For the main services or products that you’re offering, it’s a good idea to create a dedicated page for each.
- Blog – If you’re building a blog, make sure all your posts get listed here.
This list will get you started. You can always add more later.
Once you’ve ‘added’ a page or post, you’ll need to populate it with your own content before clicking ‘publish’ to make it live on the site. The best approach is to add any written content sections in different ‘Text Blocks’. You can add images and videos in between (videos can also be embedded from YouTube or similar sites), as well as image galleries (either as a carousel of images or a selection of thumbnails).
Make sure you preview any draft posts or pages before hitting publish!
Step 8: Continue evolving your website
Once you’ve added some pages and posts, your site really starts to look like your own. Now it’s time to go a step further, and start customizing your site to fit the needs of your content.
Of course, there are plenty of ways you can customize your site, but we’ll be focusing on four key ones here:
1. Change the Site Title and Tagline
When you set up your site, WordPress automatically sets your site’s title to ‘Just another WordPress site’ (bit rude, we know).
But you’re not ‘just another WordPress site’, so make sure you clear this up sharpish!
- Log in to your WordPress dashboard.
- Head to ‘Settings’, then ‘General’
- Add your website’s ‘title’ next to ‘Site Title’
- Next to ‘Tagline’, add a few words explaining what your site is about
- Hit ‘Save Changes’
2. Add a navigational menu
This is a really crucial step in the making of any site. You could have the best content in the world, but it won’t mean a thing if nobody can find it!
Most themes come with at least one menu option, while more complex themes may have several. Adding one is super simple:
- You guessed it! Log in to your WordPress dashboard.
- Hover over ‘Appearance’, then click ‘Menus’
- Add a name for your menu next to ‘Menu Name’, then select which pages you’d like to add from the list down the left side.
- For themes with multiple menu options, you might see several tick box options under ‘Menu Settings’ such as ‘primary’, ‘secondary’ etc. Your best bet is to tick primary for now – you can always change this if you’re unhappy with the live version.
- Hit ‘Save Menu’ to put your new menu live onsite!
3. Set a homepage
When it comes to your homepage, you’ve got two main options: a dynamic page, which updates with all your latest posts, or a static page, which keeps the same content.
Either way:
- Log in to your WordPress dashboard.
- Click ‘Settings’, then head to ‘Reading’.
- You’ll be taken to a page of ‘Reading Settings’, the first of which is ‘Front Page Displays’.
- Select either ‘Your latest posts’ or ‘A static page’.
- Hit ‘Save Changes’ to make your homepage changes live.
If you select ‘Your latest posts’, you can also choose the number of recent blog posts that show up on the page at once, and whether you want to show the full text or a summary.
If you select ‘A static page’, just make sure you set up a page called ‘Blog’ (or similar) which can hold all your latest posts.
4. Change Comments Settings
WordPress comes with a built-in comment feature, which is automatically set to ‘on’. Comments are a great way to show engagement and build community on site.
That said, comments don’t suit the tone of every site. And even if you’d like to keep them on yours, we strongly recommend that you add a filtering step so you don’t get overwhelmed with spam:
- Log in to your WordPress dashboard.
- Click ‘Settings’, then head to ‘Discussion’.
- We’d recommend selecting ‘Comment must be manually approved’. That way, you have the choice whether or not to publish a comment (new ones will appear in your dashboard).
- Don’t forget to hit ‘Save Changes’!
You don’t have to do any of this extra stuff — it’s all optional. It depends on your priorities and goals.
A website is an ever evolving thing. The way it looks after you first create it, won’t be how it looks a couple months later. At least that is the case if you are actively working and growing your website.
Hi, I’m Vivek, a Senior Embedded Innovation Specialist. I have been working on Embedded Systems and IoT for the past 11 years. I love to share my knowledge and train those who are interested. Nerdyelectronics.com was started out of this interest. You can read my full profile in this link.
