Building and setting up a WordPress website from scratch

Building an online presence is a must in this era of technology. Luckily, complete guides are waiting for you to read them and apply all the steps described. This is one of these guides and after you read it, you should be able to build your website using WordPress without much effort. By following each step involved in building a website, there is nothing that can go wrong. Choosing a CMS (Content Management System) can be difficult if you have no knowledge in this field. The information you find in this article should be enough to get you started. WordPress is one of the most popular content management systems out there, followed by Joomla and Drupal. It Is a recommended CMS because it helps people who don’t have anything to do with technology to understand how the website works. Here’s what you should know about this:

Why WordPress?

The first thing you’ll need to know about is what are the reasons behind choosing WordPress over other types of CMS. Well, WordPress seems to be the most flexible and easy to use. A large number of websites out there use WordPress, so it should be easy to make a choice, considering that the majority is speaking. Big websites such as CNN, TED or TIME Magazine use WordPress, and it seems like it does the job just right. The major reasons why WordPress is a good choice for beginners are:

• It is user-friendly

From the installation to setting things up, WordPress is easy to use and doesn’t require any previous knowledge in terms of websites. The platform is truly intuitive and can be associated with many other products that are meant to make your website more efficient. Configuring a website by using WordPress won’t take long either.

• It is open-source

You should know that WordPress is free and the community that uses it is quite extensive. This means that whenever you encounter a problem, it will most likely be solved quickly. With Joomla or Drupal, things aren’t that simple and it might take a while to get an issue assessed. Moreover, there are a plethora of themes that you can choose from, some of them being free, and other paid, depending on what you desire from your website.

Domain and hosting

The first step you need to complete in order to start your website is choosing a domain and a hosting option. Picking a domain name is sensitive because you will have to respect a series of criteria. For instance, your domain should represent the niche your website is focused on. Research a little and see if the domain name you selected somehow leads to that niche. Take your time to choose this. Your domain should be short, related to your brand, easy to type and specific to the niche of the website. Next, you need to deal with hosting. There are two options when it comes to hosting. You can either choose shared hosting or managed WordPress hosting. Both options are good, but for a first-timer, it would be best to choose a shared hosting plan. It is cheaper and it works just fine for a person who wants to launch a website right away. Don’t worry – in the future, you can upgrade to another hosting plan at any given moment. Next, you need to choose your hosting provider and set things up with them. Look for easy to use WordPress installation.

Configuring

Finally, you should start configuring your website. This is a list of the most common things that need to be set up:

• Theme

Choose a theme for your website. Depending on its specific, you have to choose a theme that matches the niche perfectly. On WordPress, you can search through a wide selection of themes. Starting with a free theme and upgrading later to a paid, more responsive one is the right decision for a beginner.

• Pages and posts

After your theme is set and ready to use, you can start managing your pages and posts. Adding pages in WordPress is very easy. You simply need to go to the Pages section and click Add New. You can create templates that you will be able to use for future pages. Opt for a landing page and a contact page at first. Don’t forget to assign attributes to each page you create. As for posts, go to the Posts section and start working on your content. You can use the visual editor or the HTML editor. Using HTML is better, even it might be a little more difficult. Some basic info and you’ll learn how to do it.

• Widgets

Widgets can be very helpful for adding functions to your website. In order to add some, access the Appearance tab and see what widgets you can add. They are loaded with the sidebars, footers or headers of your website. The theme you select for the website influences how many widgets you can add to a page.

• Menus

Since you reached the Appearance tab, you can also play with the menus. Visitors will click your website’s menu to navigate your website. Finding each category easily and rapidly reaching the content you published is a must. Include at least four pages in the menu – the about page, blog page, contact page and a page that includes all the services you offer.

• Background

To change the appearance of your website, you can replace the background. Again, this depends on the theme you choose. Some themes come with included backgrounds that fit the colour scheme already. For a professional-looking website, make sure that every element on the page is matching.

The last resort

If you think that everything mentioned in this article becomes much too complicated, you can always hire a web design expert from Parxavenue Ltd. and have your website built rapidly and effectively. There are numerous individuals that need such services, and many great companies now offer them.