WordPress – 10 steps to setup a basic WordPress website
The first question that pops up when building a website is – Why use WordPress?
WordPress has evolved as the most innovative tool for website building. Acclaimed as the most easy-to-use, site-building platform, naturally, over half the websites found on the internet are running on WordPress today. Based on this alone, one can gauge the popularity and functionality of this website-building magic wand.
Initially introduced as a blogging tool in the year 2003, WordPress soon picked up popularity as an exceptional content-management-system, a conventional website-building tool and as a blogging system.
What are some of the biggest advantages of using WordPress? Let’s find out –
Being an open source project, it is free for all. It can be easily downloaded, installed and used by anybody.
Developers are constantly working on improving the WordPress functions. A pre-installed plug-in and template function allows them to be accessed very easily, without any PHP or HTML knowledge. All one has to do is choose a plug-in or a template and click on it to install. This ultimately leads to saving an ample amount of time.
WordPress is largely customizable owing to the availability of thousands of plug-ins. This allows your brand to make a statement online and provides your visitors a unique browsing experience.
With the world moving on mobile phones these days, WordPress, by default has an advantage of being mobile and tab friendly. Moreover, the websites built by WordPress are highly responsive in nature.
By far, the biggest advantage of WordPress is that one does not need to be a technical expert to work on WordPress. The visual dashboard is very simple to work on and anyone can easily learn to access WordPress.
WordPress can handle all websites – big and small. It is even used by some of the world’s biggest online portal websites including the New York Times Blog, Ford, Facebook, HBR, Reuters, BBC, CNN and many more.
So, here are the 10 steps to build a basic WordPress website –
What is the first thing a user needs to decide before building a website for personal or business use? It’s the Name of the website, for example; www.abcwebsite.com.
- So first and foremost, think of the name of the website you want to build. In technical terms, we call it a Domain Name which will be clearly understood in the next few steps.
- Next, choose the Website-building platform, which would be WordPress in our case.
- To make a website online on the internet with your selected domain name (www.abcwebsite.com), you need to purchase your domain name along with a hosting plan. The term Hosting is used to denote the service which connects you to the internet. There are many websites like godaddy, net4india, bluehost etc. where one can buy their domain name and hosting rights. Simply register and log on to these websites and buy the domain name and a suitable hosting plan as per your requirement. It is always advisable to choose a unique domain name with the traditional .com, .org or .net extension, as these are most commonly used and easily remembered extensions for domain names.
- Once the domain name is finalised, the next step is to install These days most hosting providers provide quick installation of WordPress. So, when you log in to your godaddy or bluehost account you will find the WordPress icon ready to be installed in your control panel. Install WordPress and get ready to work right away.
- In case your hosting provider does not provide WordPress, you can easily install it manually. For a detailed explanation on WordPress installation process visit https://wordpress.org/download
- Now, you’re all ready to log in to your WordPress dashboard which looks like the screen shown below
7. There are hundreds of free themes to select from. You can choose the theme as per your requirement, as shown below.(Appearance-> Themes in dashboard)
Select and install the theme
8. You can now add content and create new pages on your website. Most websites typically have tabs either on top or at the end of the page such as About me, Service, Contact us, etc. On the left side bar you will find Pages -> Add New which will add another page to your website. Adding content to website was never so easy. It is as easy as writing and editing using a simple MS word document. Change tagline by typing on the space which displays Just another WordPress site. Go to Settings -> General and change the Tagline as shown below.
9. It is important to set up your page as a static page otherwise it may look like a blog page and will display the latest post at the top like a blog. Go to Settings -> Reading and choose a static page as shown below :
10. With these simple steps, a basic website can be built easily with contents, pictures and static pages. Needless to say, there is a lot to explore and learn with this magical tool called WordPress. This is just the tip of the iceberg. Moreover, installed with thousands of plug-ins and widgets adding functionality to your website, WordPress is limited only by one’s imagination.
