WordPress.com is the world's most popular content management system (CMS) to build and maintain websites. WordPress is free, and more than half of all websites with a CMS use WordPress. With WordPress, you can create pages and fill and shape the site's layout.
WordPress works in your browser. So wherever you have internet, you can manage your WordPress website, blog, or online store. It doesn’t matter what kind of computer you have, whether you have a Mac, a Dell, or something else.
Most of the professionals also work with WordPress. That means you can choose from tens of thousands of free and paid designs and plugins.
Do you plan to have a custom website made? Then you are also right. Almost every web designer uses WordPress.
Step 1: Order WordPress hosting and a domain at a top WordPress web host
Step 2: Wait until WordPress is installed (it does not take that long).
Step 3: Set up some WordPress settings.
Step 4: Choose a WordPress theme (design).
Step 5: Install a few WordPress plugins.
The WordPress software is free. The official WordPress website is WordPress.org, not WordPress.com - that is a commercial party.
Unfortunately, this does not mean you can build a website completely free of charge.
To start a wordpress.org site, you must spend 10 to 15 dollars monthly. It would be best to have an excellent hosting package with all the basic features. A professional-looking design may cost you $30-$50. It is a one-off.
If you are short of cash, you can get hosting and a domain name for about $10 monthly, plus a free theme.
Three things you need to build your own WordPress website yourself are as follows:
A domain name, such as www.xyz.com
A hosting package. That is simply renting a server space where your website files stand up.
And a CMS (content management system) to build and maintain your website. We are going to use WordPress.
These three things are all arranged by one hosting provider.
I recommend SiteGround for WordPress hosting.
SiteGround is one of the finest hosting providers in the world. They are technically strong, offer fast hosting, and receive praise for their support.
They have 24/7 support (in English), and they also have a live chat. It is handy if you work on your website often at the weekend or in the evening.
With GrowBig for $5.95 per month, you can host multiple websites. So you can save a lot if you want to start several websites. You should also take this package if you expect more than 300 to 400 visitors daily.
With the GoGeek package for $11.95 per month, you get more space, back-ups, speed, and a test environment (where you can test changes on your site before the launch).
The StartUp package is very useful if you do not want to spend too much and do not expect many visitors initially. This package costs only $3.95 per month.
With every package, you can install WordPress with a click.
Enter your username and password here. Your username and password are in the email you received. Then click on log in.
You will see the WordPress dashboard after logging in. I never use the options in the Dashboard (with the header 'welcome to WordPress'). I click directly on the menu item where I need to be.
So, let's briefly discuss the WordPress menu (which you see on the left).
The first option you see is the Dashboard. When you log in, you land on the subheading 'Home' of the menu item 'Dashboard,' but just like I said before, I never use that.
The second sub-header, ' Updates,' is interesting. You can update WordPress, your themes, and all your plugins on this page.
That is pretty simple. You click on 'Select all and click on 'Update Plugins.' Usually, updates are ready within ten seconds. Performing updates ensures your website remains safe and can access all improvements and new functionalities.
Posts are blog articles.
You can create, write, edit, schedule, and publish blog entries here if you want to blog. If you click on posts, you will see all the blog articles you saved as a draft version and all blog articles you published. If you want to create a new blog, click on add new.
Here, you see all the images (and other files, such as PDFs) that have already been uploaded. Why can you ignore this? Because you can upload images yourself in the text editor of blogs and pages.
This option is for making a list of links in the sidebar (almost no one does that nowadays, and it can be done more simply).
Pages are normal web pages. Think of the contact page, service pages, and the 'about' page. You can create, fill, edit, and publish pages with a text editor.
The design of your website
On display, you can adjust a part of the design and layout of your website. When you click on view, a submenu pops up.
Themes: The entire design of your website. Here, you can upload, download, and activate themes.
Widgets: For widgets, you can control the contents of the sidebar and the footer.
Menus: With menus, you can determine the layout of your menu.
Plugins: Plugins are small software additions.
You can download plugins for almost every function, like a page builder, statistics, social media buttons, and a contact form.
Users: Do you want multiple people to log in to your website? With users, you can add people and manage users. You will probably not use this option very much, either.
With settings, you can:
Change the title and subtitle of your site,
Determine how the URLs of your website are structured,
And how the blog posts are shown on the website.
We can ignore over half of the menu items, use part once, and use a few items often.
Some things need to be done first. We have to set up a few settings and discuss some parts (the menu, otherwise, you might encounter problems later. And, of course, we want to prevent that.
All in all, this takes about ten to fifteen minutes. Let's start by laying a solid foundation.
A clean URL
First pages
WordPress menu
WordPress provides new pages with unclear URLs.
For example, a new blog page will get the following URL: https://xyz.com /? P= 6. The part P = 6" is quite unclear. We can’t imagine what the page is about.
We will change this to a 'clean' and search engine-friendly URL. And this is very easy to adjust.
Click the Settings menu item and then go to Permalinks.
Then tick the Message name and click save changes.
The title of each new page is now automatically converted to the URL. For example, if you create a page titled "Best food for dogs," the URL will automatically be xyz.com/best-food-for-dogs. And so the reader can see directly at the URL what the page is about.
And now the first point of our to-do list has been crossed out.
Good to do, right?
At this moment, just create the pages. Later on, you can fill them. OK?
Go to the Pages menu item.
Then click on New Page.
Almost every website has an 'About' page. Let's, therefore, make it directly.
Fill in 'Enter your title here' About (or 'About us' or me), then right-click the blue 'publish' button.
Look, you made your first page. Yeah!
And now, we will do the same for the contact page.
Click on the New page again and mention the 'Contact' page. Then click on publish again.
Note: You can even get a freelancer or hire an online WordPress Setup service to do things for you!
If you visit your website now, you will probably see some strange things on the menu.
Without creating a menu, every page you create is automatically placed on the menu, but in the order of newly published pages to older ones.
The more pages you add, the more chaotic the menu becomes. Everything is going to run together at a given moment. It is not the order you want, and you likely do not want every page in the menu.
And that is why we have to create a menu ourselves. We can then determine which links are in the menu and in which order.
Go to the Menus menu item. You can find it under the heading Display.
Give the menu a name (for example, 'Main menu') and click on Create menu.
Under Pages (at the far left), tick the About and Contact pages.
Then click on the Add menu.
Every page you would like to have later in the menu should be added to the menu in this way.
Now, we are going to add a slightly more difficult link, a link to your homepage.
Click Custom Links (bottom left, under the tab pages) and enter your full domain name at the URL. So https://www.xyz.com or https:// xyz.com. The best thing is to go to your website and copy the entire URL from your address bar (it can also be that you have https:// instead of https://). Technically, these are two different pages. So just copy and paste, and then everything should be fine.
Type in the link: the word Home and click again Add to menu.
You must add a link this way whenever you want to link to a webpage that does not appear in the 'pages' or 'messages' lists. For example, if you want to link the menu to another website. But you probably will not use this option more often.
Now, let's organize the WordPress menu.
Under Menu Structure (right side), you can arrange all menu items simply by dragging them. It is a drag-and-drop system.
Place 'Home' at the top and bottom 'Contact.' The 'Home' is expected to be at the forefront and 'Contact' at the back, and there are a few good reasons to deviate from this.
You can create a submenu (an extension menu) by placing a menu item at the bottom right of the main link. You will then see that the block has also been moved slightly to the right. A submenu is useful if you want to show many pages in the menu.
Click on 'Main menu' under 'Menu settings' (at the bottom of the page) (sometimes there is something like 'Primary navigation').
Is the menu as desired? Then click on the 'Save menu.'
Do you want to add a new page to the menu? Then go back to the menu, add the relevant page, and click 'Save menu.'
You are almost done. Your new site or blog is ready to use!
