Many people wonder how to make a WordPress website. They’ve heard about WordPress, its incredible popularity, excellent features, and designs, and now they want to join the pack and build a WordPress website of their own. So, where does one get started? Regardless of how advanced you might be with the platform, we have a tailor-made resource for you here. What follows is a choose-your-own-adventure guide on how to make a WordPress website.
Learn more on what WordPress is here
Bluehost
SiteGround
Not every plugin works the same once installed. Some require additional configuration while others begin working immediately after activation. You’ll usually find plugin settings under the main Settings panel in the WordPress dashboard.
To learn more about building a homepage for your website or blog, read this.
WordPress was initially created to serve as a blogging tool, and only later on evolved into a fully-fledged website platform.
Building a successful blog is about much more than just writing up new posts and publishing them. If you want to learn how to dominate, read this guide – these are our tips on how to get from 0 to 400,000 blog readers a month.
What is WordPress, and why should you use it?
To get things started, let me first do some convincing and tell you why using WordPress when building your website is indeed the right decision.
I want to take a minute to do this because, albeit we’re surrounded by undeniable evidence of WordPress’s dominance, some people will still try to tell you that WordPress isn’t good enough for certain types of websites.
Luckily, we can use actual data to do most of the talking here:
First off, what is WordPress anyway?
In simple terms, WordPress is the operating system of your website.
Your iPhone runs iOS, your Samsung Galaxy runs Android, and your website can choose to run WordPress.
Learn more on what WordPress is here
That said, WordPress is not the only operating system for websites available. It is the most popular one, however.
WordPress runs 35% of all websites. Yes, you’re reading this right, that’s all websites.
Also, many of these websites are not what you would call simple blog sites. With brands like AMC, Mercedes, BBC, Walt Disney, and many others trusting WordPress to be the operating system of their online presence. You’re probably going to be okay using WordPress as well!
Next point, WordPress is extremely capable of serving as an operating system of your online (eCommerce) store. Nearly 30% of all online stores run on WordPress.
Then, there’s also the topic of customizability.
- Starting with the design, you’ll find that WordPress offers the biggest choice of installable design packages (themes) that you can import to your website in a couple of clicks.
- You can also extend your website features quite heavily via plugins. Just like themes, they also install in a couple of clicks.
Plus, if you ever need help with anything involving the technical side of WordPress, you’ll find that there’s a vast community gathered around WordPress. Most of the time, you can find help for free.
On top of all that, hosting a WordPress website is also very easy and, most importantly, cheap. 
(We’ll talk about web hosting later on.)
(We’ll talk about web hosting later on.)
All this makes WordPress the most versatile operating system for websites of them all. In the end, by using WordPress, you get:
A platform that’s used by top brands + huge popularity + great community + installable design packages + plugins + cheap hosting + versatility = awesome website!
In the next steps, I’ll show you how to make a WordPress website step by step:
Choose a domain name and hosting
As a new user to the world of WordPress, you’ll have to deal with the most intimidating and confusing step of the process basically right at the start of your adventure.
The confusing thing is the place where you begin your path to make a WordPress website. That starting point isn’t WordPress itself. The actual starting point is getting a domain name and web hosting.
Just to make sure we’re on the same page:
- A domain name is your website’s address on the web. This site’s domain, for example, is
codeinwp.com. - Web hosting is the server where your website is kept. It’s a common misconception among people to think that “websites live on the internet.” Where they actually live is on web servers managed by web hosting companies. Under the hood, a web server is just a type of computer that’s optimized to handle websites.
The intimidating thing about both domains and hosting is that it’s not immediately clear where to get started with them.
Here’s what I advise you to do:
First, pick a name for your website. 
You probably already have some ideas, but you can also help yourself to some of the name-generation tools that are available on the web.
I like DomainWheel since it’s a tool of our own, plus we put a lot of effort into making it as functional as possible.
Start by entering your name idea, or even some seed words that you want to create your website name around, and then see what DomainWheel has to say about it.
You’ll likely find some interesting options among DomainWheel’s suggestions. The tool also tells you which domain names are available to be registered.
Once you find a domain name you like, just write it down somewhere – you’re going to buy it later on.
Next, you’re going to pick a hosting firm and sign up for a hosting account. 
We have a lot of content on this site on various hosting offerings, comparisons, reviews, and general advice on how to pick your ideal web host. I highly encourage you to give some of those a read.
- Best WordPress hosting providers of 2020 compared & tested
- Best cheap WordPress hosting: 10 options for under $3.95 / month
- WordPress hosting survey: what real users think about their hosting, and which is best according to 6,500+ respondents
That said, if you don’t have the time to go through these resources right now, here are my two top recommendations in terms of hosting:
Bluehost SiteGround
Bluehost
This is one of the few companies officially recommended by the WordPress team themselves.
Bluehost is also one of the cheapest hosts out there. The plans start from $2.95 / month. For that price, you also get a free domain name for the first year. This means that you don’t even have to spend extra to get your ideal domain name.
Bluehost doesn’t track your bandwidth usage (the volume of traffic your website receives), and you get 50 GB of disk space to use up.
The choice is up to you. Most users will generally be just as happy with either of these hosting companies.
Sign up with your web hosting company of choice
Signing up with a web hosting company and getting a domain name registered are the first “real” steps on your way to make a WordPress website.
In case you’re not 100% positive on the exact domain you’ll use, check out DomainWheel to get some ideas.
When it comes to hosting, we generally like to recommend SiteGround and Bluehost due to their easy to use and functional platforms, and a good ratio of server parameters to price.
If you’re not yet sure which one to choose, consider this:
- If you’re under serious budget constraints, go with Bluehost. You not only get hosting for $2.95 / month but also a free domain name bundled in for the first year.
- If you value server performance and customer service more, go with SiteGround – from $3.95 / month.
In this step, I’ll show you how to set up WordPress with either host:
Getting started with Bluehost
Go to Bluehost and click on the Get Started button. Pick one of the plans available – most likely the cheapest one, called Basic – $2.95 / month.
Next, enter the domain name that you want to register for your website.
The next steps are about providing some personal information to finalize the setup.
At the end, you also have to enter your payment details. To get the low price of $2.95 / month, you’ll have to pay for three years upfront. Selecting a shorter period will increase the price per month.
Getting started with SiteGround
Go to SiteGround and click on the GET PLAN button under the specific hosting tier that you’re interested in. Selecting the cheapest option, called StartUp, at $3.95 / month is going to be enough for most websites.
In the next step, SiteGround lets you register a domain name through their system. Enter the domain name you want in the box, and click on Proceed.
Next, you’ll have to provide your personal details and also select the basic parameters of your web server.
Pay attention to this part of the registration form in particular:
This is where you get to select the data center location of your server and the registration period of your hosting plan:
- Pick the data center location that’s the closest to your intended audience – ideally in the same country.
- Pick the longest period you can afford. Your renewal price after the initial period will increase, so picking the longest possible contract as the initial one will save you money in the long run.
Finish the form and complete the payment.
Installing WordPress on your web host
Have your web host selected and an account created? Good! Let’s now install WordPress on top of it.
There are a couple of good ways to handle the process. Pick the option that suits you best:
Getting WordPress installed on Bluehost
When you log in to Bluehost for the very first time, you’ll be shown a setup wizard that will take you through the process of installing WordPress.
If you miss that wizard or disable it by accident, you can always install a new WordPress website by going to My Sites, and then clicking on the Create Site button.
The rest of the installation process doesn’t require any technical knowledge. You just fill out a form and let Bluehost know how you want to set up your admin account.
Getting WordPress installed on SiteGround
Although these things change with SiteGround every once in a while, generally, you should have an instance of WordPress already running when you finish up your account setup.
To check if this is the case, log in to your user panel and go to My Accounts, then into the Installations tab. You should see your website listed there, and a Go to Admin Panel button alongside. You can click on it to enter your WordPress dashboard.
Alternatively, SiteGround might display a site setup wizard to you and guide you through everything step-by-step. During this procedure, you’ll get to set the admin account for your site. When the installation is done, you’ll be able to log in to your WordPress dashboard.
If no WordPress website has been set for you, the easiest method to get one going at SiteGround is to contact their support team via live chat and ask them to set up WordPress for you.
They’ll be super happy to do this, and you’re also avoiding the possibility of any errors occurring along the way.
Getting WordPress installed on any host via cPanel
Most web hosting firms use a tool called cPanel to let users manage their hosting setups. In simple terms, cPanel is an online administration panel that enables you to configure a web server, add new accounts, databases, emails, and also website scripts like WordPress.
In most versions of cPanel, there’s a script installation tool called Softaculous. You can find it in the SOFTWARE section.
Once you click into it, you’ll quickly realize how many features Softaculous offers, and how many different website scripts it can install for you. Luckily, WordPress is there at the top of the list. Click on the WordPress logo to begin.
Click on Install Now to start the installation.
Softaculous will show you a form where you have to input all the details of your website. Even though the form is a larger one, the fields are easy to grasp.
This is the most important part of the form:
This is where you choose the domain name of your site (you likely already have the right domain name selected there by default; if not, adjust the selection), also enter your site’s title and the details of your admin account.
Once you click on Install, the installation process will begin. You’ll get notified when it finishes a couple of minutes later.
At this stage, you’ll be able to log in to your WordPress dashboard.
Get to know the WordPress interface
The first thing that every user new to WordPress has to get familiar with is the WordPress interface itself.
While the UI does become very easy to use once you learn the ropes, it’s not the most straightforward thing for people when they first see it.
To log in to your WordPress dashboard, go to
www.YOURDOMAIN.com/wp-admin/
Enter the username and password that you’ve set during WordPress setup with your host.
After logging in successfully, you’ll see the main WordPress interface:
Here are the most important sections:
- (1) Welcome message. This is where you’ll find some shortcut links to various key areas of the admin panel.
- (2) The current status of your site and what’s going on with it.
- (3) Posts. This is where you can create blog posts.
- (4) Media. The media library of your site – this is where you can upload and manage images and other media files.
- (5) Pages. This is where you can create pages.
- (6) Comments. You’ll find all reader comments there.
- (7) Appearance. This is where you can change your current theme and customize other design features of your site.
- (8) Plugins. Install new plugins here.
- (9) Users. Manage user accounts that have access to the site.
- (10) Settings. The main settings panel of the site.
It’s a good idea to spend a while here, go from section to section and see what’s available. Get yourself familiar.
Next:
Take care of some basic website settings
While WordPress is perfectly operational on its default presets, you’re going to get more out of it once you take care of some basic optimizations:
Set permalinks
Permalinks define how WordPress goes about structuring the web addresses (called URLs) of individual sub-pages on your site.
Long story short, you want to have the page’s title in the URL. The default setting doesn’t give you that, so we need to adjust it.
Go to Settings → Permalinks from the main sidebar in the dashboard.
Select the following setting:
Click on Save Changes.
Make your site visible to Google
Generally, most WordPress websites are set to be visible to Google by default, but we’re going to check if that’s the case with your site – just to be sure!
Go to Settings → Reading, and make sure that the box labeled “Discourage search engines …” remains unchecked.
Check your site title and tagline
Go to Settings → General and see what’s in the Site Title and Tagline fields. Adjust if needed.
The site title and tagline are often used throughout your site in places like homepage titles, SEO titles and descriptions, header areas of the site’s design, etc.
It’s just good always to have the correct title and tagline set up.
Enable / disable comments
Whether you want to accept reader comments or not is entirely up to you.
There are good arguments for and against, so feel free to make your own decision.
To change your site’s comment settings, go to Settings → Discussion. This is the field to tweak:
Disable pingbacks and trackbacks
Pingbacks and trackbacks are leftover features from back in the day. No one uses them anymore.
To disable pingbacks and trackbacks, go to Settings → Discussion and uncheck the following box:
Set the correct time zone
The time zone setting is a small thing, but it has the potential to make working with your site very confusing if it’s set incorrectly.
For example, if the time zone is wrong, you might be surprised when you set some blog post to go live at 8 AM, only to find out that it went live in the middle of the night because your site thinks it’s on another continent. It happens.
To make sure your time zone settings are correct, go to Settings → General and look for this field:
…
All these settings are quite basic to take care of. This part shouldn’t take you more than 10 minutes in total.
Pick a WordPress theme
One of the best things about WordPress is that you can change the entire design of your site with a couple of clicks. This is done with the help of WordPress themes.
Just to show you what’s possible, here’s what a stock WordPress website looks like:
And here’s what it can look like after installing a new theme and spending a couple of minutes customizing it:
Best news?
Many of the top WordPress themes are free.
Here’s how to pick a theme and install it on your site:
Go to Appearance → Themes and click on Add New.
Switch to the Popular tab.
What you’re looking at are the themes that the community appreciates the most. They are all free.
Browse through this list and pick a theme you like. I’m going to go with Neve (it’s a theme made by our sister company, and also one of the most popular themes in the directory).
Click on Install to get the theme imported to your site:
When the installation finishes, the Activate button will appear. Click on it.
Customize your theme
Depending on the specific theme you’ve picked, the getting-started and customization process can differ. Here’s how it works with Neve:
As soon as you hit that Activate button in the previous step, Neve will show you a success message and invite you to begin working with the theme by importing a starter site.
A starter site is a ready-made website structure that has been pre-designed and pre-filled with demo content. Using starter sites speeds up the setup process of a new WordPress website.
Click on the big blue button (see above) to begin importing a starter site. You’ll see a list of available designs.
Pick a design you like, click on it, and then on the Import button. Neve will let you choose which elements you want to import along with the design. You can leave everything toggled on for the best results.
The import itself can take a minute or two. When it finishes, you’ll be able to view your site:
Get more in-depth with customizations
There’s a module in WordPress called the Customizer. It allows you to get into a lot of detail when it comes to customizing your site and design.
To see what’s available, click on the Customize link in the top bar, or go to the WordPress dashboard and then into Appearance → Customize.
The exact scope of the options available depends on the theme you’re using. Still, generally, you’ll be able to adjust things like the site’s layout, headers and footers, colors and backgrounds, typography, buttons, menus, and more.
Go through the different sections and see the effect that tweaking them has on your site – the changes take effect in real-time in the preview pane on the right.
Click on the Publish button (top left corner) if you want to keep the changes.
Install a set of must-have plugins
Plugins are to your WordPress site what apps are to your smartphone. 
While you can certainly use your smartphone without installing anything extra on it, you would be missing out on a lot of cool functionality. It’s the same story with WordPress plugins. WordPress is functional out-of-the-box, but you can get a lot more out of it with plugins.
We covered our favorite must-have plugins quite in-depth elsewhere on this blog. I encourage you to check that resource out to get detailed descriptions of what each plugin does and why they should make your must-have list as well.
Here’s an excerpt from that resource – just the names of the plugins and a short description of what each does:
- Yoast SEO – the most popular SEO plugin for WordPress; it will help your site rank better in Google
- Google Analytics for WordPress – integrates your website with Google Analytics
- Cache Enabler – makes your site load quicker; alternatively, check out these caching plugins
- Wordfence Security – makes your website more secure
- UpdraftPlus – automatic backups to keep your content safe
- Optimole – optimizes the images on your site, reduces the amount of disk space they take up, and makes them load faster
- WPForms – lets you create good-looking contact forms; alternatively, you can try out Contact Form 7
- Revive Old Post – takes a random blog article from your site and posts it to your social media profiles automatically
- Not enough? Check out what else is available in the official WordPress Plugin Directory ← you’ll find more than 55,000 plugins there!
This is all cool, but there’s one thing missing:
How to install a WordPress plugin
This is an uncomplicated process. From the WordPress dashboard, go to Plugins and click on Add New:
Either browse through the lists of Featured or Popular plugins, or enter the name of the plugin you want into the search field:
When you’ve found your plugin, click on the Install Now button.
Once the plugin gets uploaded to your site, the Activate button will appear. Click on it to finish the installation process.
The plugin has been enabled, and you can start using it.
Not every plugin works the same once installed. Some require additional configuration while others begin working immediately after activation. You’ll usually find plugin settings under the main Settings panel in the WordPress dashboard.Craft a great-looking homepage
Every website needs an awesome-looking homepage. You really don’t want your homepage to feature random info or placeholder text. Getting yourself a custom homepage does a couple of things for you:
- You get full control over what your first-time website visitors see.
- You can introduce your business effectively, showcase your top products, and summarize what you’re about.
- You get to funnel people to the most important areas of your site.
The process of setting up a custom homepage will differ depending on the WordPress theme you’ve chosen.
If you went with our recommended Neve and imported a starter site, then you already have a template homepage waiting to be customized. Here’s how to do that:
When on your homepage, click on the Edit with Elementor button.
This will launch the interface of the Elementor page builder.
- Elementor is one of the most popular page building plugins for WordPress. Simply speaking, it gives you a visual interface for working on your pages.
To modify any element, click on it, and then either edit the text or tune up the styling.
You can also add new elements to the page by clicking on one of the small icons in the top left corner and then picking a new element from the list, like so:
To add an element to the page, drag-and-drop it into place – exactly where you want it.
The process is straightforward: edit the elements on the page one by one, add your content, upload your images, realign some elements, add new ones, and so on – until you have a homepage that serves the purpose of your website.
Click on the UPDATE button in the bottom left corner when you’re done.
To learn more about building a homepage for your website or blog, read this.Create some standard pages
Apart from the homepage, your website also needs a couple of standard pages that will give your visitors the info they need. These pages include:
- An about page – people who visit your about page have already expressed interest in what your website represents; capitalize on this by introducing yourself and your business, and tell people why they should listen to you.
- A contact page – this is where you can give people a direct way of contacting you.
- A services or products page – showcase your offering.
- A privacy policy page – these days, all websites need a privacy policy page to stay away from trouble and be transparent about what the website does with visitors’ data.
Of course, you don’t have to stop with just these. You can create any number of additional pages.
To create a standard page in WordPress, from the WordPress dashboard, go into Pages and click on the Add New button. You’ll see a simple text editing interface.
Enter the title of your page up top and then start typing your page’s content below.
If you want to add images, you can do that by clicking on the “+” icon in the top left corner and then selecting the Image block from the list.
Click on the Publish button (top right corner) when you’re done.
Add menus / navigation
At this stage, your WordPress website should already be looking quite handsome, which is great, but there are still a couple of things we can do.
Namely, let’s adjust the menus:
From the WordPress dashboard, go to Appearance → Menus. What you’ll see are your theme’s default menu settings.
You can customize this easily.
- To add new menu items, select pages from the section on the left, and click on the Add to Menu button.
- To realign the menu items, drag and drop them into place.
- To remove menu items, click into a thing that you want to delete and then click on Remove.
- To change the location of the menu, adjust the presets in the Display location section at the bottom.
Click on Save Menu when you’re done.
Consider starting a blog
A blog can be an excellent way to attract new visitors to your website and ultimately get more eyeballs looking at your business.
From a technical point of view, starting a blog with WordPress is more than simple. Or, to be more accurate, you already have a blog functionality integrated into WordPress from the get-go.
WordPress was initially created to serve as a blogging tool, and only later on evolved into a fully-fledged website platform.
To create new blog posts, from the WordPress dashboard, go to Posts and click on Add New. You’ll see the same interface you saw when working on your standard pages.
Simply type in your content, add a title, and click on the Publish button when you’re done.
Building a successful blog is about much more than just writing up new posts and publishing them. If you want to learn how to dominate, read this guide – these are our tips on how to get from 0 to 400,000 blog readers a month.Conclusion on how to make a WordPress website
That’s it; our path to learning how to make a WordPress website efficiently is done!
The cool thing about this process is that it’s repeatable and can be applied over and over again, no matter what type of WordPress website you’re working on.
That said, getting your website online is just the start of the journey for most users. Getting people to find the website and then keep coming back to it is a whole different challenge.
0 Comments