In a world, where digital marketing has reached new heights, blogging has definitely taken the centre stage. Hundreds of bloggers are active across the globe in expressing their opinions regarding a certain product or a service. Therefore, all major companies and conglomerates in the world are utilising these bloggers to take their markets across the boundaries and rake in increased profits. But have you ever wondered about the platform used by these bloggers?
WordPress is the most commonly used platform by the bloggers and the owners of small businesses to increase their reach and the possibility of increased profits. It is a publishing platform that comes with an amazing set of features of which most are available for free and are user friendly. The set of instructions are easy to follow and setting up your blog account or a website can be done in few minutes. Also, if you want, you can make changes in the WordPress account to suit your requirements without any kind of licensing fee. Therefore, in this article, I will be discussing the steps involved in setting up an attractive website on WordPress.
- Domain– this is the first thing you need to kickstart your website. It is basically the web space you own for your leisure or business purposes.
- Hosting– Your website needs to live, and that is exactly what the hosting does for you.
How to buy a domain name and hosting?
You should opt for such name which should be attractive and not be too long and it is better if you buy domain and hosting services separately because there are companies which offer domains for a good price but charge high for hosting, so it is better if you go separate.
Once the domain has been selected and bought, the next thing is the hosting and you cannot afford to go wrong in this one because this is where your website lives and is connected to the world of internet. There are several companies such as GoDaddy or BlueHost where you can opt for excellent hosting services but GoDaddy’s hosting services are not up to the mark.
Once the domain and hosting are bought, you can now proceed to set up your website.
- You can buy a domain name from WordPress or you can go for the option– I already have a domain name and put in the column where the domain name is requested for. If you do not have a domain name, then do not worry, you can do it later in the procedure, but it is better if you do it as the first step.
- Create your account by filling in all the details such as name, address, business name etc. Opt for the package and complete the step by paying for the package selected. Ensure that you look for extra details such as domain privacy protection etc.
- Create your password and you are good to go.
- These companies usually have the option of 1-click-installation in the account panel where you can find the option of WordPress. Now you should enter in the domain you have already bought and click on the install now button and voila! Your brand new WordPress website is ready to go live and make its presence known in the online community. You can also manually install it but if your host company does not have this option then it means, it is a bad one. Therefore, before you make any kind of payment, ensure that the company you are opting for has the option for ‘1-click-installation’.
- But, remember that this is a very basic website which needs more time and patience from you to make it trendy and attractive. There are more than 1500 themes accessible to you. To access them, you can go to the option named ‘appearance’ and then click on themes.
- If you want more professional or elegant looking website themes, then you can also opt for ThemeForest.net where you can flip through hundreds of themes till you get the perfect one for a reasonable cost. Punch in the keywords and you are good to go!
- Once the theme is selected, you can now install the themes by clicking on the icon – activate. If you are worried about losing the previous data when you change themes then you do not worry because when you change the themes, only the layout is affected and not the data stored in it.
- Now next in line of order is the content creation. Your website will require pages which will talk about the product or service you are currently offering. For that, you can go the WordPress dashboard and click on pages and then click on add new. This will help you to create content pages for your website. In this, you can add text, pictures and other things you would like your potential customers to see.
- Click on update and save the changes you have made and go to menus option in the appearance icon and find the page you have created and link it to the list. Your page will now appear on the website.
- You can create new categories add as much content you want but ensure that you do not crowd the space.
Some extra tips to make your website look better: –
- • When you choose page titles and taglines, ensure that these are formed of those keywords which are commonly used by the people so that they can view your website on the list easily and click on it. It plays an important role in deciding the ranking of your website in a search engine.
- If you do not want people to leave comments, then you can uncheck the allow comments option in the discussion box located in the screen options when you create the page.
- Does the homepage look like a blog post then you can fix that issue by opting for the option called ‘static’? It will not change whenever you put up a new blog or any other post.
- Install Plugin. Plugins are the extensions built to further the capabilities of WordPress and they are very easy to install. WordPress has more than 25,000 free plugins available. You just must go to the Plugins option, choose to add new and you can add as many you want. So, if you want to track the traffic or the lack of it received by your website, you can just add Plugin called Google Analytics. Install it, connect it with your Google account and you ready to start the party!
- If you want to make your WordPress website SEO friendly, then you can opt for Yoast SEO. Install this plugin and you will be able to edit the titles, meta descriptions and what not if you have this plugin added.
Congratulations! Your website is ready to be launched! Remember, this is just the tip of the gigantic iceberg. All you need is time and patience to better your website. Work hard, research well and you will have an amazing website for the world to see and also you can see some great websites like Audio Visual Companies Toronto in order to get inspiration on how to optimizes tour wesbsite. Who said only a coder can build website!