In this digital era, everyone should know how to create a website. More importantly, it’s not that difficult task as we have some excellent and easy to use content management systems (CMS) available these days. With WordPress, it becomes extremely easy to create a perfect website within a couple of hours. Yes! You heard it right. You can create a killer website within a few hours with WordPress. If you are wondering how to build a website with WordPress in such a short time, then we will be your guide to get it done.
WordPress is one of the most popular platforms out there for creating blogs and business websites. To achieve your goal of creating a new website using WordPress, you only need a few things. You only have to spend a few bucks to get the job done. WordPress websites constitute more than 45% of the websites running on the internet.
Here, we are about to share a list of requirements that you need to start building a website with WordPress. Make sure to follow the guidelines and complete your basic requirements to get started.
Why choose WordPress for building a new site?
If you are still wondering why you should choose WordPress as a platform for building a website, then you are in good hands. We will discuss everything you need to know about it.
WordPress offer tons of great features and will help you build a stunning website according to your requirements. Above all, you will find it extremely useful for creating a professional website as it has a very simple User Interface.
As discussed earlier, WordPress has web dominance of 45% among the total number of websites running these days. It’s an open-source platform. It means you will be able to find lots of third-party tools to enhance the functionality of your website. WordPress is completely free and you don’t have to pay a thing for using this platform.
It also comes with a couple of technical advantages as the platform is SEO-ready. It will become extremely easy to market your web after using this platform. WordPress is fast and optimized as compared to other content management systems. Above all, you will find tons of free guides, tips and resources that will help you manage your WordPress site easily.
What you need to build a website with WordPress
Before starting to build a website with WordPress, you will have to take care of small requirements. These requirements include buying the right domain name for your website and selecting the right hosting package for your site.
The domain name has a lot of importance for many reasons. If you are building a business website, then the domain name serves as a brand you want to build. Make sure to give it a thought and then select the right domain name for your website. If you are about to create a personal website, then you can purchase the domain in your name to improve personal branding. For a blog, you can buy a domain name that reflects the type of content that you are going to publish.
After the selection of the domain name, you will move forward to selecting the right hosting packages. There are various types of hosting available these days. If you are looking to create a WordPress site, then we highly recommend using WordPress-managed hosting plan.
In WordPress-managed hosting plan, you don’t have to worry about installing WordPress as your hosting company can take care of it. A domain name and hosting plan will cost you some bucks. Hosting and domain name charges could be either monthly or yearly. So, you can choose a plan that suits you perfectly.
After taking care of the domain and hosting, you can move on to the next step.
How to build a website with WordPress in a few hours?
Once you have taken care of the basics, you can move on to start building your website using WordPress. You will have to follow a step at a time and it won’t take you long to build a complete website.
Here are a few steps that you need to follow so you can create a perfect website within a few hours.
Step 1: Buying a domain and setting up hosting for your WordPress site
As we have discussed earlier that you have to buy a perfect domain name for your website and select the best hosting environment. If you have already selected, then all you have to do is to run WordPress installation.
If you have bought a WordPress-managed hosting plan, then you don’t have to worry about installing WordPress. Your hosting company will take care of it and after purchasing a plan, you will directly land on the WordPress dashboard.
If you have not purchased a WordPress-managed hosting plan, then you will have to follow small steps below to set things up.
First of all, you will have to login to your cPanel account.
Here, you will be able to see a lot of things. All you have to do is to find WordPress installer. You will be able to find it under Softaculous App Installer.
All you have to do is to run WordPress installer and it will ask some basic information from you including Site Title, Admin username, and password. It will create Database itself and you don’t have to worry about anything while using WordPress installer.
Once the installation process is completed, you will be redirected to your WordPress dashboard where you can start building your website. This is where we will move to the next step of getting to know WordPress.
Step 2: Getting to know WordPress
The next step will be getting to know WordPress thoroughly. For this, we have a separate guide and you can check out how to use WordPress properly. However, we will still give a detailed touch on how to use WordPress properly as a beginner.
Once you have landed on the WordPress Dashboard, you will see a lot of tabs on the right side of your screen. These options include Posts, Pages, Plugins, Appearance, and Settings.
Posts and Pages are self-explanatory as you will write a blog post in Posts and create new pages of your website in the Pages section. However, WordPress is far more than just posts and pages.
To get started, you will explore the appearance area of the website where you will be able to see multiple tabs including menus, customize, and themes. In menus, you will have to create navigation of your website. You will have options to add categories, posts, pages, and custom links in the menu bar.
In the settings tab, you will be able to see the general settings of your website. For example, in the ‘Writing’ tab, you will be able to add the site title and tag line of your WordPress site. In the ‘Reading’ tab, you will be able to adjust the front page of your website.
A pro SEO tip: Make sure to keep your permalinks to PostName structure as it is the best permalink setting for improved SEO.
Now that you have got a complete idea of WordPress dashboard, we can move to the next step which is selecting the right theme for your website.
Step 3: Selecting the right theme/design for your website
One of the great things about WordPress is having the freedom to choose the design. As WordPress is an open-source platform, you will find tons of free WordPress themes in the WordPress theme directory.
Make sure to navigate to Dashboard > Appearance > Themes. Here, you will be able to search for different themes and you can use the filter as well for the specific functionality that you are looking for.
If you are creating a business website, we will recommend using a Premium WordPress theme. You can search for premium WordPress themes on ThemeForest. As a business, you can spend a few bucks to find a feature-rich and lightweight theme for your site.
However, you need to be sure that you are selecting a theme with excellent premium support from the theme author and compatibility with all the major plugins and latest software versions.
It is highly recommended to focus on your website’s design. You can take your time and choose the right design for your website.
You will have tons of options with excellent demo templates that will help you make the decision. Once you have selected the right theme, you will have to install a WordPress theme and get started with building a website.
Step 4: Finding Plugins to increase website’s functionality
Plugins are the small tools that will help you increase the functionality of your WordPress website. Whatever feature you are thinking of, you can just navigate to Dashboard > Plugins > Add New and search for that feature. You will be able to find a related plugin for that feature. You can read some reviews, plugin description and install it on your website.
There are tons of free WordPress plugins available in the WordPress plugin repository and you will be able to find your desired feature by searching for the right plugin. If you are looking for advanced page builders or excellent sliders for your website, you can get them by finding the right plugin.
If you are purchasing a premium WordPress theme, then you should know that most premium themes are bundled with different useful plugins. Some plugins are mandatory that you will be able to install automatically after the activation of a premium theme.
We will highly recommend two plugins that you should install on your WordPress website for better security and excellent SEO. You should use Yoast SEO plugin for improved SEO of your blog posts and webpages. Apart from it, you should also install Sucuri Security for securing your WordPress website from malware and hacking attempts.
Step5: Creating Pages/Posts and making your WordPress site Live
Once you have activated a theme and installed all the necessary plugin, you can move on to the final step that is creating posts and pages. To create a new post (blog post), you will have to navigate to Dashboard > Posts > Add New.
Here, you will be able to create your blog posts. WordPress has a default editor where you can write your posts and it will autosave them in case you accidentally close the tab. It has multiple features including adding a featured image to your post, adding your post to a specific category, and adding tags for your post.
When you are creating website, you will have to create pages as well to get started. If you are creating a home page or a landing page where your visitors will land first, then you can go to Dashboard > Pages > Add New.
You can create a page the same way you created a blog post. However, the page structure is different than a blog post and you can use a page builder like WpBakery Page Builder. Elementor is another great page builder to use so you can create specific sections on your home page.
If you have purchased a premium theme, then these themes come with demo content. You can import demo content by checking out theme options in WordPress dashboard. Once the demo content is imported to your website, you will get all the demo pages and posts that you can then re-edit and create a proper website (which is the easy way BTW!).
After creating pages, and setting menus for your website, you can go live and start publishing on a regular basis.
Getting Free WordPress Help
One of the great things about building a website with WordPress is free resources to improve your WordPress knowledge. We are continuously working and providing free WordPress guides and tutorials for all WordPress users. These guides will help you manage your websites.
If you are still wondering how to build a website with WordPress, then we recommend taking a look at the guides that we have shared previously or ask us a question in the comment section so we can help you. Stay tuned for getting lots of free WordPress guides and tips.
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