WordPress is the most popular website building platform in the world, according to 2022, almost 42% of all websites on the Internet use WordPress!
How are we going to create a site on WordPress?
In this article, we’ll go through the whole process of creating a step-by-step site on WordPress and get acquainted with the basic concepts and terms.
If you ultimately want a world-class website, you can’t do without a premium theme. There are many sites, but the market leader is themeforest, that’s where the templates you see on the vast majority of WordPress sites are bought!
That’s exactly what’s waiting for us today. We will create a site in WordPress from scratch and go through all the steps.
How to make a site in WordPress?
Perhaps many of us have thought about creating our own website, but not everyone knows what it takes. Creating a website can be very time-consuming and difficult process, especially if you do not have some knowledge and skills.
But do not worry, because, as they say, not holy pots molded, so that there is hope. We have decided to help the beginners with this question, telling them all the details of creating a site based on WordPress. The most important thing – it will not require any financial investment!
So what are we going to talk about in our article:
- Search and register hosting and domain.
- Installing WP.
- Setting up the design.
- Creating pages in WP.
- Customizing WP with extensions and add-ons.
- Getting support for learning WP.
Before we get down to creating a website, let’s answer the questions that beginners often ask.
What will it take to create a website?
It doesn’t take much to create your WP website:
- Domain – simply put, the name of your website, for example zolin.digital.
- Hosting – the storage of your website files.
- About 50 minutes (approximately) of your free time.
How much will it cost to create a website on WordPress?
To give an unambiguous answer to this question at once will not work, because there are several factors that affect this.
The average business site can cost about 5 thousand rubles, and up to 30 thousand dollars a year.
We advise you not to jump over your head immediately, and start with a minimum, and gradually add new features to your website as your business project develops. This way, you’ll avoid overspending and minimize possible losses, and you can avoid overspending.
In this article we’ll share with you how to create a website while spending less than 4 thousand rubles. We will also tell you what to do next, and how to increase the number of opportunities in the future.
Is it really worth choosing WordPress? What’s the best base for building a site?
There are many free and intuitively simple and easy-to-use content editors that you can use to customize your site. We recommend using WordPress as the base for your website. In case you want to create a blog, we recommend checking out our other article on creating a blog on WordPress.
WordPress is the most popular website platform in the world. Almost 42% of all Web sites on the Internet!
The main advantage of WordPress is that it is free, and it comes with many different designs (themes) and extensions (plugins). It is amazingly flexible and compatible with almost all third-party services and resources.
Our sites, including the WordPress lab, are built on top of WordPress. Let’s find out where and how to host a site based on WordPress
Step 1: registering a domain name and purchasing web hosting for WordPress
The domain name is the name by which internet users will search for your website. This is where your website will be located. For example, google.com or zolin.digital.
Web hosting – the storage of absolutely all your website files.
We, in turn, recommend choosing GODADDY.COM when searching for a domain registrar and hosting provider.
They should be given a medal for technical support alone, not to mention the other features and benefits!
1.1 Selecting a hosting rate and domain
The first thing to do is to find a domain – this is an important process, which is worthy of attention in the first place. Only after that should be added to the domain name hosting.
Then, add the hosting service to the selected domain.
The next step is to pay for these services and their activation, and only then you can move on to the installation.
1.2 Installing the CMS (WordPress) on the server
Here everything is done in the same way as with the blog: install WordPress in any way convenient for you: manually or automatically.
Congratulations! You have just created your website on CMS WordPress.
After that, go to the WordPress login page. The link to login to the admin area looks something like this:
https://www.site.ru/wp-adminYou can log in to your WP website using the admin login and password you entered earlier.
But this is just the beginning, and it’s time to move on to the next, no less important step and learn how to fill a site on WordPress!
Step 2: Choose a theme for your website
What your WP site will look like depends directly on the chosen theme.
Themes in WordPress are templates designed by professionals and are designed to change the look of your website.
Each WordPress website has its own basic theme, set by default. Except that this theme is not particularly attractive and is unlikely to attract visitors. But do not worry too early, everything can be fixed.
Here it is important to understand that there are hundreds and even thousands of complete templates for WordPress created, including support for Elementor plugin, here are the most popular of them:
Immediately after installation, WordPress will activate the standard theme and initially the site will look something like this:
Change the theme through the WP admin panel. Go to: Appearance → Themes, look for the “Add new” button.
Then we see a lot of themes and choose the one – your theme, which fully conveys our mood and state of mind. You will be offered ~5 thousand free options from the official WordPress.org catalog.
If you know the name of a theme that is ideal for you, you can find it by typing the name into the search bar.
When the theme is selected, just hover over it and click “Install”.
After that, you will have the opportunity to make its settings: look for the line “Appearance” in the menu, click “Customize”.
This will launch the theme adjuster, which will allow you to tweak the theme to your liking, as well as use the preview function of your website.
Do not try to do everything in one fell swoop, you will still have time to adjust the appearance of your site.
Next, we add content to the site.
Step 3: Adding content to the website
In the very beginning, WordPress has two kinds of content: pages and posts. Posts are part of the blog, they are shown in reverse order (new entries will be shown at the beginning).
Pages, on the other hand, are static content, for example a contact page, a page with information about you, etc.
If you don’t change anything in the WP settings, the home page of the site will show entries from the blog. It’s possible to change this by making WordPress show the home page of the website exactly the one you want.
You can create a separate page for your personal blog or news section. In fact, you can create a website without a blog section.
Let’s move on to adding content to the website.
You should start by adding a couple of pages to your WP site. Don’t worry if you don’t have the amount of content for those pages that you need right now. This can always be fixed by editing and updating.
Go to “Pages” in the admin, click “Add New” a new page. This will take you to the page editor.
First, you need to title the page, say, “About the Company”.
After that, you will be able to add content in the text editor below. Here you can add text, insert video, link, picture, audio, etc.
The editor in WP is based on blocks, in it every element is a block. This makes it easy for you to organize the articles on your site and highlight them as you see fit.
To learn more about the editor, we suggest reading our tutorial on the WordPress Block Editor.
Once the content has been added to the page, we click “Publish” and then it is posted to the site.
If necessary, you can repeat the process, increasing the number of pages, each of which will correspond to a particular section of the site.
Next, add a couple of posts to the blog.
To publish blog entries, click on “Posts” and then on “Add New”. These manipulations are performed in the WP toolbar.
You’ll see the same screen as when we added the pages.
You can think of and add a title to the entry, and then in the visual editor you can insert the content. You’ll have the option to save the entry as a draft, or click “Publish” which will make the created entry immediately appear on the site.
But don’t forget about categories and tags – they’re a great way to filter content.
Step 4: Set up the new WordPress site
Once the first content has been added to the site, you can set it up and present it in a presentable way on your site.
Let’s start by setting up a static front page.
4.1 Configuring the static front page
Go to “Settings” in the WP admin, and then → “Reading”. Find the option “On the home page display”, click on the static page, and then select the pages that were created for the blog pages and the homepage.
Be sure to click “Save Changes” at the bottom of the screen. Now the page “About the Company” will be used as the main page of the website.
If you have created a separate page designed for a blog, and you named it, for example, “Blog”, select it in the list that pops up as “Posts page”.
4.2 Changing the name of the website and the slogan
During the installation process you have the opportunity to choose a name for your site. WordPress will automatically add a line to the website name that says “Just another WordPress site”.
In the future, you will be able to rename both the name of your site and its slogan. To do this, simply go to “Settings” and then “General”.
A short description of your site can be any line of your choice. A short description usually consists of one line describing your portal. You can also leave the tag line field blank, if you prefer.
Be sure to click “Save Changes” to save your settings.
4.3 Creating the Main Menu of your WordPress Site
We suggest adding a navigation menu to your site, especially since there’s nothing complicated about it.
Go to the “Appearance” page, and then → “Menus”. Title your menu and click “Create Menu”. After that, your menu will be created, but until it will be empty.
After that, choose the pages you want to see in the menu and click “Add to Menu”.
The empty navigation area will be filled with the pages you selected. You can use the mouse to change their position by moving them up and down.
Next, choose the place where the menu will be displayed. These locations depend on the WP theme you’ve chosen. Most themes have the main menu displayed at the top.
Once you have decided on the location of the menu, click “Save Menu” to save the navigation menu. You can see the menu in action by visiting your site.
Step 5: Install additional plugins
WordPress plugins are kind of like smartphone apps, only for a website. With their help you can add to your website certain features that will increase the functionality of your site and simplify its operation.
There are over 50 thousand plugins available for free at the moment. But there are also paid plugins, which are sold by developers and third-party sites.
We often describe the best plugins for WP in “Zolin Digital” to make it easier for you to decide which plugin will help you add a particular feature.
Backup – not always everything goes according to plan, sometimes it happens such a phenomenon as a failure, leading to the loss of all site information. To avoid this, you should back up your site regularly. Therefore, it is recommended to pay attention to the choice of a plug-in for creating backups. Do not ignore this step, because it is actually extremely important!
Security – we have a complete WP security guide for beginners with which you can secure your website.
Design and customization – for this purpose, we suggest using either the standard block editor or Elementor (Our Elementor Template Rating). Both editors will help you decide on a homepage design, create pages for specific purposes, and even come up with your own custom theme.
And if you’re a developer, check out this article on how to create a plugin for WordPress.
As you can see, there’s nothing complicated about creating a website on the WordPress platform. Not only is it fast and does not require unnecessary costs, but also very interesting, because you have the opportunity to realize their creative potential.
We tried to present all the information as comprehensible as possible, but if you still have questions, you can feel free to ask us, and we will definitely help!