Whether you’re a blogger or an entrepreneur, getting recognition requires you to go online. So, we’ve prepared a step-by-step guide on how to create a WordPress website to help you do so.
No worries, even if you’re a complete beginner! This WordPress website tutorial is exactly for someone like you! We’ll walk you through each step thoroughly.
Before we get started with the steps to build a WordPress website, let’s first talk about what makes WordPress the best option.
There are a ton of options for creating a website, after all. So why WordPress, then?
A) Why Make a WordPress Website?
WordPress has some distinct advantages that have made it the dominant website-building platform. The most important thing is that it’s completely free and open-source.
WordPress provides you with a level of control over your site that most platforms don’t. Everything is in your hands, from the looks and design to the features.
WordPress is versatile enough to handle it all, whether you want a small blog or a massive online store.
To learn more, you can see our complete guide on WordPress.
WordPress.org vs WordPress.com – Which One to Choose?
Before we get into the thick of it, it’s important to note that there are two different versions of WordPress. Despite sharing the name, they work pretty differently.
The first is WordPress.org, which is free software for creating and managing websites. It’s a Content Management System (CMS) that gives you total control over your website.
As a result, you can start a blog, eStore, business site, and much more with it.
The other version is WordPress.com, which is pretty different. This version of WordPress is an online platform that will host your website for you.
It’s much simpler to use. However, it’s also quite limited, and you don’t get much control over your site.
For more details, please check out our side-by-side comparison of WordPress.com vs WordPress.org.
When we discuss how to create a WordPress website, we will use WordPress.org.
If you’re wondering how hard WordPress is to use, don’t worry! A bit of effort can help you create a website that looks and works exactly how you want it to.
With that, let’s move on and talk about how to build a website using WordPress.
B) How to Create a WordPress Website (Step-by-Step)
Now that we’ve learned the difference between WordPress.com and WordPress.org, let’s get into the actual steps of building a website with WordPress.
Step 1: Getting a Domain Name
Before you learn how to create a WordPress website for beginners from this WordPress website tutorial, you’ll need a domain name for your website.
In case you didn’t know, a domain name is basically the address of your website on the internet. It helps internet users find your site on the web.
When you go to Google on your browser, you’re using Google’s domain name to locate the website. Similarly, themegrill.com is our website’s domain name.
For more information, check out our domain name vs. web hosting article. Hosting is yet another essential service required to start a website. We’ll explain more about it in the sections below.
Now, let’s go ahead and learn how to get a fitting domain name for your website.
Choosing a Good Domain Name
Before you go ahead and purchase a domain name, there are certain things you need to consider first. Since the domain name is your website’s identity, you will have to be careful before picking one.
Here are a few things to keep in mind when selecting a domain name;
- Keep it simple and short: Nobody wants to type a long and confusing domain name on their browser. Therefore, it’s important to make sure that it’s easy to remember and write.
- Make it suitable for your website: The domain name also needs to indicate what your website is about. It should be related to your content in some way.
- Keep it unique: Your domain name must be unique so visitors don’t confuse your site with others.
- Choose an appropriate extension: There are different types of domain name extensions, such as .com for commercial ,.org for organizations, .biz for business, and more. Make sure that you pick the extension that matches the purpose of your site.
Once you’ve considered these, you should have no issues picking the perfect domain name for your site. Plus, you can get help from domain name generators.
How to Buy a Domain Name?
Now, let us move on to the actual process of buying a domain name. There are tons of domain name registrars that allow you to do this.
In this WordPress guide, we’re going to be using Namecheap to show you how it’s done.
First of all, you will need to check if the name you picked is available or not. Fortunately, domain registrars have handy tools to help with that. Namecheap’s domain name search tool, for example, is simple and easy to use.
Go to Namecheap.com, enter your selected name in the bar, and use the search function. The site will then show you the available options and pricing. As you can see, it’s super convenient.
Once you find a domain name that’s good and available, you can click on the ‘Add to cart’ button.
Once you’re done, click the ‘Checkout’ button on the bottom left.
Now, you can choose the specifics of how your domain works. First, you can select how long you’re planning to register it for and whether you’d like it to auto-renew when it expires.
Underneath that, you can also pick additional privacy and uptime protection features on your website.
Once you are happy with it, click on the ‘Confirm Order’ button. To complete it, you can create a NameCheap account.
Aside from NameCheap, here are some of the best domain registrars out there.
And, if you’re confused regarding the step above and require a proper walkthrough, we have a detailed article just for registering a domain name.
Step 2: Getting a Web Hosting
Now that you’ve set up your domain name, we can move on to the second step of the WordPress website tutorial – web hosting. While a domain name is like the address of your website, hosting is where your site is actually located.
Basically, web hosting is storage containing all your website’s files. Once they’ve been stored there, visitors will be able to access your site.
Therefore, choosing good web hosting is a very crucial step in building a website with WordPress.
Types of Web Hosting Services
You’ll find that there are different types of hosting services out there. Once you understand what these are, you’ll be able to pick the type of hosting that perfectly suits your needs.
i) Shared Hosting
The cheapest hosting plan is shared hosting. With it, multiple websites share the same IP address and server resources, including memory, hard disk space, and bandwidth.
- Pros: Budget-friendly plan.
- Cons: Limited space, compromised speed, and security.
ii) VPS (Virtual Private Server)
With the VPS plan, you will be provided with a certain portion of server resources. You will share the server with other VPS users, but there will be limited users, not as many as in the shared plan.
- Pros: Secure, with the option to get more server resources anytime as your business grows.
- Cons: Expensive for small businesses and beginners.
iii) Dedicated Hosting
This is a very expensive plan in which all the server resources are dedicated to a single user. It’s perfect for large enterprises that expect a lot of website traffic.
- Pros: Full storage, bandwidth, and full control over the server resources, which are more secure.
- Cons: Not a cost-effective plan for small companies.
iv) Managed Hosting
Managed WordPress hosting is a service in which the hosting company will handle everything hosting-related for you. With this, you won’t have to worry about setting up, managing, problem-solving, etc.
- Pros: Extremely convenient and user-friendly.
- Cons: Quite expensive for small and growing businesses.
How to Choose the Best Hosting for WordPress?
It’s important to remember that each option has its own pros and cons. As a result, you’ll need to carefully consider your website’s needs, such as server space, bandwidth, security features, etc.
For example, large enterprises will have to deal with a lot of visitors and require a powerful hosting plan. However, a small blog won’t have issues with shared hosting’s limited bandwidth.
Similarly, a website with a lot of multimedia content will require more server space than a text-only website.
So, the logic is to choose the hosting plan that best meets your needs. By considering the needs of your WordPress website, you will be able to find the perfect hosting plan for you.
For more details, please check our article on how to choose WordPress hosting for a website.
If you want to try our recommended hosting companies, then here they are:
- Bluehost – Starting from $2.95/month for Shared WordPress Hosting
- SiteGround – $ 3.99/month for ‘StartUp’ shared & managed WordPress hosting
- WP Engine – $13/month for a managed WordPress hosting plan
To learn more about these hosting services and other alternatives, check our handpicked list of the best WordPress hosting companies.
How to Buy Web Hosting for Your WordPress Site?
It’s much easier than you think to purchase web hosting since companies have simplified the process.
The best way to build a WordPress website is through a hosting service provider that WordPress has officially recommended.
In this WordPress website tutorial, we’ll use Bluehost. It’s a high-quality hosting service with a 1-Click WordPress Install feature that’ll make things much easier later. Just click on the ‘Host Your Site’ button on the homepage.
Now, picking the perfect pricing plan for your website is simple. Take your time carefully considering the features and prices for each plan. Once you find the right one, click on the ‘Select‘ button.
Now, under the ‘Use a domain you own’ field, enter the one you purchased earlier and click Next. Alternatively, you can create a new one from Bluehost right here.
On the next page, you’ll need to fill in all the relevant personal details for your account. After that, scroll down and fill in your payment details.
Finally, you can go to the bottom and agree to the terms and conditions before clicking on ‘Submit.‘
After that is done, you’ll be allowed to create a Bluehost account, enabling you to move on to the next step. Other hosting companies like SiteGround are also similarly convenient.
Step 3: Install WordPress on Your Hosting Account
With your domain name and hosting ready, you can finally get started installing WordPress software. It’s the major step to follow to create a WordPress website.
If you’re wondering if it’s a hard step, then don’t worry. Choosing a hosting service like Bluehost or Siteground will make this whole thing super easy.
With the best WordPress hosting services, you’ll get the ‘WordPress Auto-Install’ option when purchasing the web host plan. You can always get a ‘One-click WordPress Install’ option if not.
Here, we’ll show you the process with Bluehost. First, go to Bluehost.com and click the ‘Login‘ button at the top menu. After that, enter the email and password that you received earlier and log into your hosting account.
When you’re logged in, you’ll see something like this on the Bluehost dashboard. To create a WordPress site, click on the ‘My Sites‘ option in the sidebar.
Now click on the ‘Create Site’ button at the top-right corner. Enter your Site Name and Tagline before clicking on ‘Next.’
After that, you’ll have to choose your Domain. Use the drop-down menu under the ‘Domain‘ field, select the one you purchased earlier, and click on Next.
That’s all there is to it. Bluehost will now automatically install WordPress for you. Wait until it’s done, and then save your login credentials.
Step 4: Log Into WordPress Dashboard
Now that we’ve discussed how to set up a WordPress hosting account and install WordPress, all that’s left is understanding how things work.
Fortunately, WordPress is quite user-friendly, so familiarizing yourself with the interface will take little effort.
Next, you must log in to your WordPress dashboard to carry out further tasks. Luckily, with Bluehost and some of the other best WordPress hosts, you can get a direct link to log in to your site.
Clicking on the ‘Log into WordPress‘ button will directly take you to your WordPress dashboard.
However, you may not want to log into your hosting account every time you log into the WordPress website. So, there’s another way: via the WordPress login URL.
The WordPress login URL is your domain name with /wp-login.php. It looks something like this: https://example.com/wp-login.php.
Replace ‘example.com’ with your domain name and enter it in your browser. Then, you’ll see the WordPress login page.
After that, enter the WordPress login credentials that you received earlier. For safety, you can bookmark our detailed guide on WordPress login.
Next, you’ll be able to access your WordPress Dashboard, which is where you can manage your website. The dashboard looks like the screenshot below.
From here, you can do everything from writing articles to managing users to customizing your WordPress website. The sidebar on the left neatly displays all the options.
Let’s go through these options one by one:
- Posts: You can add, edit, and manage all kinds of posts for your website from here.
- Pages: This is where you can create, edit, and manage static pages on your website, such as ‘About Us’ and ‘Contact Us.’
- Media: This option allows you to manage various media items, such as images, audio, video, etc.
- Comments: You can moderate the comments left by your visitors from here.
- Appearance: From here, you can customize the looks of your site, including the design, menus, widgets, and more.
- Plugins: You can manage your plugins here if you want to add more features to your site.
- Users: This option allows you to manage the different user accounts registered to your website.
- Tools: From here, you can check out some of WordPress’s useful tools, such as Site Importer/Exporter and Site Health.
- Settings: You can configure how your site works from here. Since WordPress is a flexible platform, there are many settings to choose from.
Now that you have installed WordPress on your hosting account and accessed the dashboard, you have technically created your WordPress website. But it’s not complete yet.
You still need to design your site, add content, make it SEO-friendly and secure, and more. We’ll show you all the steps in the sections below.
Step 5: Choose a WordPress Theme & Customize It
Now that you know how the dashboard works, it’s time to start designing your WordPress site.
The good news is that you can customize everything on the WordPress website to make it look just the way you want. To do so, you’ll make use of WordPress themes or templates.
A WordPress theme provides a pre-designed look for your website and its posts and pages. It’s the main design layout or the integral part of your site’s outlook.
For example, ColorMag is a WordPress theme for magazine sites. It has a dozen of pre-built demos that you can import to your site.
Below is one of the many demos that you can use.
As the theme is the core of your site’s appearance, you must carefully choose a theme. Choosing the perfect theme is crucial in building a website with WordPress. We’ll talk about how to select a theme next.
How to Choose a Perfect Theme for Your WordPress Site?
Here are a few points you should consider while choosing a WordPress theme.
- Decide your site’s niche: First, decide which type of site you want to create. Is it a blog, eCommerce site, business site, or online magazine? For example, if you want to create an online store, you need an eCommerce theme like eStore.
- List the features you need: Now you know your site’s niche, you can make a checklist of features you want. For example, a corporate agency site may need ways to display products, services, reviews, testimonials, etc. So, a highly customizable theme like Zakra may be perfect.
- Check theme’s last update date: WordPress is one of the most frequently updated software. It gets better and more secure with every update. So, you need a theme that incorporates all the latest WordPress standards. Choose a theme that is recently updated or often updated.
- Support facilities by theme provider: When using a theme, you may sometimes need technical help and support from the theme company. Research the theme provider’s support options well and choose a theme from a company with good support facilities.
Considering these points, you can pick a theme for your site. Now, let’s go ahead and see where to find the best WordPress themes.
Where to Find the Best WordPress Themes?
The easiest place to get free themes for your site is from the official WordPress themes repository. There are over 12000 themes to choose from, and all of them are free to boot.
WordPress.org is the best place to get free themes, not only because the themes are free. Quality themes that passed a rigorous review process before being available for download are also available.
All themes’ stats are transparent. You can see the number of active installs, downloads per day, user ratings, support forum activities, etc.
With all these, you can easily determine how good a theme is.
Yet, there’s a catch in selecting the best theme from such a big collection. But no worries! We have handpicked the best free WordPress themes for you.
A basic free theme can create a simple website for beginners, but a powerful and complex site will require a feature-rich and professionally coded one.
Such themes are mostly available for purchase. You can buy premium themes from marketplaces like ThemeGrill, ThemeForest, Zakra Theme, etc.
How to Install a WordPress Theme?
Once you have selected a theme for your website, it’s time to install the theme. It’s the essential step in building a website with WordPress.
Installing WordPress themes is actually simpler than you’d expect. In these easy steps, we’ll show you a tutorial on how to use a WordPress theme for your website.
From your WordPress Dashboard, navigate to Appearance >> Themes, where you can see the currently installed themes on your site. Now, click on the ‘Add New‘ button at the top.
You can use the Search Bar at the top right to find themes stored in the official repository on this new page. Enter the name in the search bar, and then click on the ‘Install’ button.
After that, click on the ‘Activate’ button that appears.
Alternatively, you may upload a purchased or downloaded theme’s zip file to install the theme on your site. To do so, click on the Upload Theme button.
Here, you can click on the ‘Choose File’ button and find the file of your theme. Remember, it has to be in a .zip format. Then, you can click on the ‘Install Now’ button.
Once the theme is installed, you can Activate it, and you’re good to go.
If you need a more detailed guide, please check our full guide on how to install a WordPress theme.
How to use the WordPress Live Customizer?
Once you have your theme installed and activated, you can customize it to your heart’s content. The exact customization options will differ according to the theme you have on your site.
Go to Appearance > Customize from your WordPress dashboard to open the Live Customizer. Here, you can play around with the settings and see the effects in real time.
On the right, you’ll see the various customization options. You can check your Active Theme at the top and even select a different one with the ‘Change’ button.
These customization options are going to be different depending on the theme you have installed. However, here’s an explanation of some common customization options in the Live Customizer.
- Global: From here, you’ll be able to modify colors, layouts, typography, buttons, etc. all over your website.
- Front Page: Hide or display blog posts on your website’s front page.
- Header: Customize your header as you see fit and handle navigation around your website for an improved user experience.
- Content: Configure your blog and posts by tweaking meta information, colors, and much more.
- Footer: You can control your site’s footer, add a footer bar, insert widgets, use HTML, and more.
- Additional: From here, you can enable social icons on your site and change their positions.
- Menus: These options allow you to create, customize, and remove various menus. Learn more about WordPress menus.
- Widgets: Like menus, you can experiment with your WordPress widgets and see how they look in real time.
- Homepage Settings: It allows you to choose what’s shown on the home page of your site.
- Additional CSS: This option allows you to add CSS codes to your site for even more customization.
At the bottom, you can find the option to show how your website will look on different screens. It’s also important to make sure that it looks good on mobile devices.
The Hide Controls option can also be used to get a better look at your site without the options sidebar.
Once you’re happy with how it looks, you can click on the Publish button at the top.
Want to learn more about Customizer in WordPress? Check out our detailed guide on what is WordPress customizer and how to use it.
Some of the Best WordPress Themes to Get Started
Since there are a ton of amazing themes out there, you might get overwhelmed at first. To help with that, here are some of the best ones that you can find:
- Zakra: A fantastic multipurpose theme with a ton of customization options.
- ColorMag: The most popular magazine WordPress theme out there, with powerful features.
- OceanWP: A highly customizable theme with pre-built demos and templates to get started with.
- Divi: A highly flexible theme that is feature-rich and optimal.
- Neve: This super-fast theme comes with a ton of amazing features that are perfect for small businesses and blogs.
Are you not satisfied with these? Don’t worry. We have a handy list of the best WordPress themes available.
Step 6: Adding Features with WordPress Plugins
Of course, we can’t talk about how to create a WordPress website without mentioning plugins.
In case you didn’t know, WordPress plugins are basically additional pieces of software that you can add to your new WordPress site. By doing so, you’ll be able to add new features to your website.
It goes without saying that plugins are very important if you want to run a WordPress site. Fortunately, it’s super easy to manage plugins and will require no coding.
Where to find WordPress plugins?
As with themes, you can find a ton of plugins for free on the official WordPress website. In fact, the official WordPress plugins repository contains over 59,000 plugins from which to choose.
It’s important to note that outdated or badly coded plugins can leave security vulnerabilities on your website. As a result, only go for plugins from sources you can trust and update them regularly.
To help you out, we’ve handpicked the best WordPress plugins for you.
How to install WordPress plugins?
Installing WordPress plugins is similar to installing themes. It can all be done right from your WordPress dashboard.
First of all, go to Plugins on your sidebar. It will bring you to the page where you can see your list of installed plugins. Now click on the ‘Add New’ button at the top.
Here, you can directly install plugins from your WordPress repository on your website.
You can find the plugin by entering its name in the search bar and clicking on the ‘Install Now‘ button. Once the installation is complete, click on the ‘Activate’ button that appears.
Of course, you might need to install plugins from outside the repository at some point. In that case, you’ll need to upload the plugin manually.
To do so, click on the ‘Upload Plugin‘ button at the top of the Add New page.
Now click on Browse and navigate to the .zip file. After that, click on Install Now and wait for it to finish installing. Finally, click on Activate.
For more details, check out our complete tutorial on how to install WordPress plugins (step by step).
Some Amazing WordPress Plugins
Now that you know how to add plugins to your website, let’s get started on the best ones. We’ve listed some outstanding ones for you.
- Everest Forms: This plugin makes creating contact forms for your WordPress website easy.
- User Registration: This plugin lets you create user registration and login forms, user profile pages, and other similar pages in WordPress.
- WP Rocket: This plugin can help significantly improve your site’s performance through proper caching.
- Elementor Page Builder: Elementor is a drag-and-drop page builder plugin that allows you to create beautiful web pages with absolutely zero coding.
- WooCommerce: With powerful WooCommerce, you can easily turn your website into an online store in just a few clicks.
Step 7: Creating Posts and Pages in WordPress
Now that you know how to create a WordPress website and set it up with free themes and plugins, you can immediately start adding content. There are usually two ways to do this: posts and pages.
WordPress Posts appear in the Blog section of your site. Depending on your website’s niche, they can be used for all sorts of content.
They are arranged in reverse chronological order so the newest posts will be found at the top. For example, blog articles can be posted on our blog.
On the other hand, WordPress Pages are used for one-off content that doesn’t need to be updated or changed.
This includes timeless content such as ‘About Us’, ‘Services,’ and ‘Contact Us,’ which will generally remain the same as time goes by. Most websites will use a combination of Posts and Pages
How to Create WordPress Posts?
Of course, you’ll need to know how to create posts to add content to your website. From your dashboard, first select the Posts option on the sidebar.
This will bring you to the page where all your posts are listed. You can manage your posts from here.
To create a new post, click on the ‘Add New’ button at the top.
This is going to bring you to the WordPress Post Editor. Here, you can add all kinds of content, including text, images, galleries, and more. It’s all fairly intuitive, so no need to worry.
Once you’ve prepared the content, click the ‘Publish‘ button at the top right.
How to Create Pages in WordPress?
Creating web pages using WordPress is also quite similar. Go to Pages on the sidebar of your WordPress Dashboard, and you’ll reach the screen where you can manage your existing posts.
Like before, click on Add New at the top.
This will open the WordPress Page Editor, which is similar to the post editor. As mentioned earlier, you can add content as you please and then press the ‘Publish’ button when you’re done.
Displaying Your Pages in Your Website’s Menu
Now that you’ve created and published content on your website, it’s time to display them on your site. One of the most common places to show the page links is in the WordPress menu. Here, we’ll briefly show pages in the menu.
If you don’t know, the WordPress menu is a list of defined links that usually appear in the header section of your site. It’s mainly used for navigation.
To create a WordPress menu, go to ‘Appearance>Menus‘ from your WordPress dashboard.
Next, you’ll see the menu editor page. Give your menu a name and click on the ‘Create Menu‘ button.
After that, you should add pages to your menu. On the left panel, you can see ‘Add menu items.‘ Click on the ‘Pages‘ tab. After that, tick the pages you want to add to the site’s menu and click on the ‘Add to Menu‘ button.
After that, the added menus will appear on the ‘Menu structure‘ section on the right side. You can drag and drop the items as you want.
Next, you should select where to display your menu. You can tick a display location from the ‘Menu Settings‘.
That’s it! You’ve created a WordPress menu and added it to your site. For a detailed guide, please check our article on creating a WordPress menu.
Step 8: Managing WordPress Security
Now that you’ve created your own WordPress website and added content to it, you’re almost done.
But there are a few really important things you should work on immediately, such as security and SEO. Let’s begin with security.
It goes without saying that keeping your website secure is extremely important. As a site owner, you’ll be responsible for protecting your site after all.
While WordPress by itself is far from insecure, it’s better to be safe than sorry when it comes to security.
Fortunately, you can take some easy steps to make things much better.
1. Keep WordPress Updated
With each new update, WordPress improves security by fixing bugs and vulnerabilities. As a result, it’s extremely important for you to keep your WordPress updated to the latest version.
It’s also super easy. Go to Dashboard >>Updates to check if your WordPress needs updating.
2. Keep your Themes and Plugins Updated
In a similar vein, outdated themes and plugins can also present a huge security vulnerability to your site. As a result, it’s important to keep them updated.
As with the last option, you can go to Dashboard >> Updates and update your themes and plugins from there.
3. Enable SSL
In basic terms, SSL (Secure Socket Layer) makes your website’s data more secure. In fact, websites without SSL are marked by web browsers as ‘Not Secure.’
To add SSL to your website, you can purchase it from your hosting provider.
4. Backup your Websites Regularly
When it comes to website security, it is often better to prepare for the worst-case scenario.
As a precaution against your site going down, you should make sure to backup your website data. There are a number of amazing plugins that can help with that.
5. Limit Login attempts
One simple method to improve site security is to limit the number of times someone can attempt to log in to your website.
Limit Login Attempts Reloaded is a free plugin that can help you do just that.
In addition to these tips, some helpful security plugins come packaged with many amazing features that you might want to check out.
WordPress security is always a task of paramount importance, so never take it easy. Here is a complete guide on keeping your WordPress site secure: 15 Simple WordPress Security Tips to Protect Your WordPress Website.
Best WordPress Plugins for Security
Do you know what’s more important than having an amazing website? Security. Here are a few recommendations for security plugins to keep your site secure.
i) BulletProof Security
With over 40,000 active installs, BulletProof Security is one of the best security plugins for WordPress websites. It adds a firewall, database security, and much more to protect your website files and database.
Additionally, it secures your website against RFI, XSS, SQL injection, and code injection hacking through multiple outer and inner layers of website security protection.
Key Features:
- Single-click setup wizard
- Extensive system info
- HTTP error login
- Auth Cookie Expiration (ACE)
- Idle Session Logout
Pricing: Freemium (The premium version costs $69.95 for a lifetime)
ii) Wordfence
Wordfence is an open-source plugin that performs various tasks, such as login security, IP blocking, security scanning, and more. In short, it helps to secure your WordPress websites from malware and infections.
The laundry list of features is just too long to go through, but the highlight of this plugin is its scanning capabilities.
Key Features:
- Two-factor authentication
- Login security & security scanning
- Web application firewall
- Advanced manual blocking
- Real-time threat defense feed
Pricing: Freemium (The premium version costs $119/year)
iii) Solid Security
Solid Security hypes itself as the best security plugin for WordPress and offers 30+ ways to protect your site from malicious attacks.
This WordPress plugin is best known for strengthening user credentials by fixing common vulnerabilities and automated attacks.
Key Features:
- Database backups
- Two-factor authentication
- Strong password enforcement
- File change detection
- Brute force protection & Malware scanning
Pricing: Freemium (The premium version starts from $99/year)
Also, check out and subscribe to the ThemeGrill blog for more WordPress website security tips and tutorials for beginners.
Step 9: Improving your Visibility with Search Engine Optimization (SEO)
In case you didn’t know, Search Engine Optimization means optimizing your website and its content so that it will rank high in search results on search engines like Google.
Basically, it means making your website more search engine-friendly.
You might know how to create a WordPress website, but managing one professionally is another matter. Good SEO is vital if you want to ensure that your site has a large audience.
After all, if people can’t find your website on Google, you’ll have fewer visitors.
Fortunately, WordPress also has that covered for you. There are some absolutely amazing plugins that you can install to make the whole thing much easier.
Best SEO Plugins to Optimize Your WordPress Site
WordPress, by default, offers many SEO benefits. Its posts and pages have a simple and neat content structure.
It lets you build SEO-friendly simple and short URLs. And on top of them, you can add more options using SEO WordPress plugins.
Here, we’ll briefly talk about some of WordPress’s most popular SEO plugins.
i) Yoast SEO
With over five million active installs, Yoast SEO is a leading WordPress SEO plugin in the present market due to its cutting-edge SEO features.
The plugin has powerful options for achieving every sort of technical optimization. It also provides handy options for handling page titles, descriptions, and URLs, which are important in delivering effective SEO.
Key Features:
- XML sitemaps
- Internal linking suggestions
- Keyword optimization
- Better content
- Page Analysis
Pricing: Freemium (The premium version costs $99/year)
ii) Rank Math
Another top WordPress SEO plugin with features to enhance your site’s SEO capability is Rank Math SEO.
The plugin has it all: a clean design, top-notch features like extra keyword information, smart link suggestions, and everything you need to optimize your post.
Your site’s traffic will easily reach greater heights with Rank Math, which acts as an entire SEO team but just within a few simple clicks.
Key Features:
- Role manager
- Setup Wizard
- Multisite ready
- Offers 30 detailed SEO Tests
- Integrated with Google Search Console
Pricing: Freemium (The premium version starts from $6.99/year)
iii) The SEO Framework
The SEO Framework is an all-in-one SEO pack best known for its simplicity and ease of use.
This amazing plugin comes with a ton of useful features that have been preconfigured, so you’ll have a much easier time managing things.
Additionally, the plugin will help manage all facets of SEO and put together a beautiful overview page.
Key Features:
- Built-in Sitemap
- Strict privacy policy
- Follows Google’s Webmaster Guidelines
- Overview Pages with color-coded Guidelines
- Automatically pings search engines upon updates
Pricing: Freemium (The premium version costs $7/month, paid yearly)
To learn more, you can check out our WordPress guide on helpful SEO techniques for your website.
Step 10: Getting Support for your WordPress Site
Of course, knowing how to create a WordPress website is not enough. An important part of running a website is knowing what to do if something goes wrong. In that case, there are several different options for WordPress users.
WordPress is a free, open-source software with a worldwide community. As a result, there are thousands upon thousands of amazing WordPress resources, such as tutorials and documentation, online.
In addition, thousands of WordPress experts are active on WordPress support forums and can help you with all sorts of issues.
Another option is to get WordPress support from the developers of the products (such as themes and plugins) that you’ve installed.
Product-specific community forums are available, and most WordPress companies provide dedicated customer support.
For example, if you are using ThemeGrill products, i.e., WordPress themes and plugins by ThemeGrill, you can contact us via our support forum, live chat, or email.
You can also check out the ThemeGrill Knowledgebase and ThemeGrill News.
C) What to Do After Building a Website with WordPress? (6 Important Things)
We’ve shared step-by-step instructions on how to create a WordPress website. So, your site is ready. But that’s not all! There’s still some work you should do to make your website successful.
1) Create a Contact Form
Creating a contact form for your WordPress website is a must. The form helps to maintain effective communication between you and your potential audience.
Everest Forms is the best WordPress contact form plugin available in the market. This free drag-and-drop form builder allows you to build any form quickly and easily.
Everest Forms provides several pre-made templates. You can make small tweaks to the templates and instantly create a contact form.
Alternatively, you can create a contact form or blank page from scratch.
You can drag the required field, such as Name, Number, Emails, etc., from the left-hand side and drop it to the right-hand side to the desired positions.
This plugin also allows you to make other necessary settings, such as General and Email settings.
If you want a more detailed guide, you can explore our article on how to create a contact form on WordPress.
2) Start Building an Email List
Email is one of the most popular and effective tools for digital marketing. It allows you to send customers news about product updates, discount offers, etc.
You can also share your latest blog articles. But first, you need to create an email list.
An email list is a list of the email addresses of users who agreed to receive emails from you. Hence, creating an email list means collecting emails.
One of the best ways to collect emails is via sign-up forms on your website.
In WordPress, you can easily add an email subscription form to your website using the all-in-one form builder plugin “Everest Forms.”
You can create a subscription form starting from scratch or tweak the pre-existing form templates provided by the plugin.
Moreover, the pro version of the plugin includes access to the add-on “Email Templates.” This allows you to customize the emails you send to your users.
One important tip: Always use a professional email with your custom domain. You can also use Gmail with a custom domain if you’re a Google user.
You can look up our article on the best WordPress email marketing plugins for alternatives.
3) Add Social Share Buttons on Your Blog
Building a website with WordPress isn’t enough. You’ve got to popularize your site if you want to grow your brand.
What could be easier than sharing your content on social media? It’s one of the biggest platforms for sharing content and growing digitally.
You can add social sharing buttons to your blog to grow your site’s popularity. Basically, these buttons allow your users to share your posts on their social media timelines.
The easiest way to add social share buttons on your blog is through plugins. We’ve prepared a list of social media plugins for you to try out!
4) Add Google Analytics & Start Measuring
Google Analytics is the best tool for understanding your audience. It tracks all your visitors’ data and gives you a better understanding of your website.
It gives you insight into your most popular pages and posts. Not only that, you can know about the age, gender, location, and interests of your audience.
It’s super easy to add Google Analytics to your website. First, you must sign up for a Google Analytics account. To do so, log in to the Google Analytics website.
Next, it takes you to the account creation page, where you must fill in your account name and data-sharing settings.
After that, you need to fill in the details of your website, such as your Website Name, Website URL, Industry Category, and Reporting Time Zone.
Once you’ve filled out the form, you need to connect Google Analytics to WordPress. One way connects manually, and another uses the Site Kit WordPress Plugin.
After you’ve connected, you can easily see your audience report, acquisition reports, behavior reports, conversion reports, and real-time reports.
If you want a complete guide, read our article on how to add Google Analytics to WordPress.
5) Prevent Comment Spam
Comment spams are unwanted or unnecessary messages that are sent over the internet by spammers. These spams may hamper your site in many ways and may also slow down your site’s performance.
Hence, preventing such spam is another important task after you create a WordPress website.
One easy way to prevent such spam is using the WordPress dashboard. That’s right—the best CMS platform also has built-in functionalities to prevent spam.
To do this, navigate to Settings >> Discussions and enable or disable various discussion settings as needed.
Besides, there are many WordPress anti-spam plugins for this purpose. One of the best and most free is the Akismet Anti-spam plugin.
Akismet is the most popular open-source plugin by Automattic, the team behind WordPress. This plugin automatically checks all comments and separates spam comments.
6) Improve Your Website Speed
Imagine opening a website and it taking forever to load. Would you visit that site again? We assume your answer is ‘No’. That’s why your site’s loading speed is very important to attract a larger audience.
Actually, the right question is, therefore, ‘How to create a fast WordPress website?’.
To increase your site’s speed, you need to install a plugin. There are several plugins; however, we recommend the WP Rocket plugin.
It’s one of the best all-in-one WordPress speed optimization plugins. WP Rocket is a premium plugin; it costs $59/year.
Best of all, the plugin is user-friendly, and you can set it up in seconds. It provides image optimization, database optimization, and even the ability to host Google Analytics code on your site.
With the help of WP Rocket, your site will load as fast as a rocket.
Wrapping Up With How To Make A WordPress Website!
So, this was our WordPress guide on how to create a WordPress website.
To recap the process of building a website with WordPress, we included purchasing a domain and hosting, setting up WordPress, installing themes and plugins, adding content, security, SEO, and support, and what to do after setting up a website using WordPress.
Before we wrap up, let’s revise the steps one more time. If you missed any steps, you can go back and see the above.
- Buy a Domain Name and Web Hosting Account
- Install WordPress and Login to Your WordPress Dashboard
- Select a WordPress Theme, Install it, and Customize it
- Add Additional Features on Your Site Using Plugins
- Create Content (Adding Adding pages and Posts)
- Make Your WordPress Site Security Strong
- Optimize Your Website for SEO
- WordPress Support Options
This is basically what we’ve included in this WordPress website tutorial. You can bookmark this article and always check it out when you need help with any step.
As you can see, the process is simple enough. The great thing about WordPress is that even absolute beginners can have a site of their own in no time.
You can also check out our beginner-friendly guides, WordPress theme reviews, and plugin reviews. Our most popular themes offer high-quality design and fully dedicated support.
We hope this article made the whole process clear to you. If you have any questions, feel free to let us know in the comment sections below.
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