How to create your own WordPress website

Domain and Hosting.

To run your own website you will need two components:

A domain (the www.YourWebsiteName.com) and website hosting which is essentially a computer that is always on so it is accessible to your customers.

This is fairly straight forward to set up. Hosting comes in many different packages, I recommend One.com as it contains everything you need in one package. The starter package costs just £10.80. This isn’t the quickest hosting but you can upgrade to quicker tariffs within if needed. This package also contains unlimited domain specific email addresses and a website builder.

The Framework

Within One.com’s control panel is an option for a one click WordPress install. WordPress is my content management system (CMS) of choice as it’s one of the largest CMS with over 74.6 million websites using it’s framework. You will have to fill in basic information such as username, password and what you want your website title to be.

Please don’t user the username ‘admin’ this makes it easy for people to hack into your website.

The Styling

This is the fun bit where you get to decides what your website will look like. WordPress has millions of themes that are available to style your website. Free WordPress themes are available via many websites such as https://wordpress.org/themes/ premium WordPress themes are also available from websites such as http://themeforest.net/category/wordpress. Themes are skins for your website that use the default functionality of WordPress in different layouts or styles to suit different company sectors. Most themes are easily customisable being able to change colours or images easily. You can alternatively commission a website designer to create you a bespoke website design. If a generic theme isn’t quite for you this may be the option for you. This will allow you to have a completely custom website.

Custom Features

WordPress is a highly flexible framework that allows you to add in custom functionality such as changing your website into a e-commerce webshop or adding a social media share link. Within WordPress’s admin is the ability to add plugins. The majority of plugins are free and allow you to easily enhance your websites search engine ranking or allow your images to pop out and become full screen. If you want any custom features, it’s best to speak to a web developer to see if it can be easily added as a plugin or if your theme needs to be customised.

Contact me to find out how I can help you.