Are you ready to build your website on WordPress? If so, you’re not alone. WordPress currently hosts 75 million websites or about 27.5% globally.
WordPress is an open-source content management system (CMS), used to create websites and blogs, that has been proven to be one of the easiest platforms for beginners.
While creating a website on WordPress can seem daunting, we’re here to help you learn WordPress step by step without needing to know any code or prior development experience.
Before we getting started, let’s go over some WordPress basics.
How much does WordPress cost?
Typical business or blog WordPress CMS websites can cost as little as $100 per year and as high as $30,000.
The cost of WordPress varies depending on the appearance and functionality you choose. For beginners, we recommend starting small and adding on necessary features as you go.
Because you’re just starting your website, it’s hard to grasp the amount of traffic and growth your site may experience. Starting small will minimize your original investment and potential losses.
WordPress is completely free to download and build. The costs come from purchasing a domain, hosting provider, theme and any additional plugins. It can add up quickly if you’re not careful.
This WordPress tutorial will detail how to build a website for under $100.
What do you need to build a WordPress website?
While managing a website is no simple task, starting WordPress is easy for beginners to follow along. To begin, you will need the following three things:
- Domain name: This is the name of your website and how people will search for－like, www.themesworldwide.com
- WordPress hosting: Hosting servicers store and protect your files
- Time: As a WordPress novice, you need to dedicate time to learn how to build a website
After you have the WordPress basics squared away, you will be ready to start building your website.
Without further ado, follow along with the top 9 skills to master on how to use WordPress.
1. Setting Up & Installing WordPress
While this is the first step to create your website on WordPress, it is a crucial skill to understand how your website is running at a basic level. WordPress is free, but you will have to set up your domain name and hosting provider.
Creating the right domain name is critical because the wrong name can be difficult to change and lead to bad search rankings. Ideally, the domain name should be your business or blog’s actual name. It needs to be readable and easy to remember.
A few tips to make generating your domain easier include:
- Use .com format
- Use keywords
- Keep it short and easy to pronounce
- Avoid hyphens and doubled letters
When choosing your WordPress hosting provider, you need to consider your website’s overall functionality and future growth. There are hundreds of providers to choose from, so pick carefully and evaluate their speed, security, and service. Most also provide a free domain name.
Several recommended hosting providers are:
- Bluehost
- HostGator
- SiteGround
- Dreamhost
After you have chosen your domain name and hosting provider, you can go ahead and install WordPress. Depending on the provider, you will need to input details like domain name, username, password, payment, etc.
Click “Install,” and you’re well on your way to creating your first WordPress website.
Source: Bluehost
2. Finding a WordPress Theme
Learning how to use WordPress themes is important because your entire website’s appearance and baseline functionality is control by it. WordPress themes are designed templates that are installed into your website to alter its appearance,
There are thousands of free and paid WordPress themes to choose from – so weeding out the good from the bad can seem a bit daunting. Overall, you need to consider your website’s overall goals and how your theme can help you achieve them.
Popular WordPress theme companies include:
- WordPress
- ThemeForest
- Elegant Themes
- CSSIgniter
- WPZoom
After you picked out the perfect theme, you are ready to install it into your WordPress site.
To begin, go to Appearance → Themes and click “Add New” button. WordPress will automatically populate thousands of free themes that are all available to you.
For WordPress beginners, choose a theme from their directory. Simply click on the theme and press “Install.”
Once the theme is installed, you can customize it under the “Appearance” menu. This menu launches WordPress Customizer where you can easily change settings like font, color, layout and more.
With just a few clicks, your website will have a unique appearance, and you can begin branding your website.
Source: WordPress
3. Creating New WordPress Pages
WordPress CMS pages are meant to be static landing pages that house important information such as your about page, contact page, FAQ, privacy policy, blog and more. You can create WordPress pages for just about everything.
The best way to start your website started is by organizing your pages with dedicated content. As a WordPress beginner, you may not have enough content to fill these pages – and that’s ok. You can always go back to edit and update these materials later.
To start, go to Pages → Add New page in the WordPress admin dashboard. This will bring to an editing screen where you can add the following information:
- Page title
- Images
- Text
- Videos
- Links
Practice by repeating this process with other static pages your website will need. You will be able to organize these under “Page Attributes” and selecting the “Parent” page.
Before publishing, verify the content and layout in the “Preview” feature.
4. Developing WordPress Blog Posts
If you’re wondering how to use WordPress blogs, posts are your answer. WordPress posts are parts of a blog that appear in chronological order on your website.
In the WordPress admin dashboard, go to Posts → Add New to begin your blog. The menu screen will look similar as it did when you added Pages, but it will include extra functions like categories, tags, post formats, and scheduling capabilities.
You can begin inputting your content and different media blocks like text, images, videos or carousels. Other posts options include adding a feature image, changing post URL, changing authors, turning comments on/off and installing WordPress plugins.
Categories and tags help sort your content into various sections and topics. Not only does this help with organization and readability, but it also improves your site’s search engine optimization (SEO).
Once your content is added and formatted to your liking, you can either publish your WordPress post immediately or schedule for a later date.
5. Using the WordPress Customizer
After you have installed your WordPress theme and created content, you can start customizing so your website shines through the millions.
WordPress offers a Customizer, and while this depends on the theme chosen, you will have the ability to change a majority of your website’s appearance to match your branding.
Though there are many things to change within the Customizer, here are a few:
- Building a static page: Acts as your homepage and as a first impression to site visitors
- Brand your website: Update colors to match your business or blog’s logo design
- Change site title and tagline: The title is typically your business or blog name, where the tagline describes your website.
- Regulate comments: Select the “Comments must be manually approved” option to avoid spammers attacking your website
Once you have played around a bit with the customizer, your website will begin to look like your own.
Source: WordPress
6. Installing WordPress Plugins
With over 50,000 different WordPress plugins to choose from on the market, it can be difficult to prioritize which suit your website needs. Plugins are essentially apps that add features and functionality to your website.
If you’re wondering how to use WordPress plugins and where to find them, we have you covered. While shopping and comparing plugins, verify the different reviews and ratings, software upgrades, and support capabilities.
Check out these free WordPress for beginners plugins you should add:
- WPForms: Add contact or subscription forms to your website
- Yoast SEO: Increase your SEO, reach and overall traffic from Google
- Updraft Plus: Create scheduled backups to improve website
- Beaver Builder: Design pages with drag and drop simplicity
Installing free plugins is easy, simply search for the desired plugin in WordPress and click “Install,” To install paid plugins, you will need to go to the “Plugin” section in the WordPress admin dashboard where you will be directed to upload the zip file from your provider.
Plugins are a great way to bring better efficiency and functionality to your website.
Source: WordPress
7. Create a Menu
Menus are an integral part of how to use a WordPress because it helps site visitors navigate page to page through your site. Additionally, it organizes pages and posts under different categories.
Menus are often found at the top of a website, or navigation menu, but can also be viewed at the footer or on a sidebar. Parent pages are typically organized by menus that will include additional child pages.
To create a menu, you will go to the “Appearance” tab in the WordPress admin panel and select “Menus.” From there, you will assign different pages to where you want them to appear under the “Menu Structure.”
With the WordPress drag and drop feature, you can easily design your menu, place pages in custom orders and create a hierarchy.
8. Adding WordPress Widgets
As a beginner without coding knowledge, widgets are a great way to add extra functionality to your WordPress sidebars. Widgets create a simple way for beginners to add features like calendars, galleries, comments, and more without any prior coding knowledge.
These widget-ready areas are located on the sidebars and are defined by whatever WordPress theme you selected. If you cannot find a widget you’re looking for, there is most likely a WordPress plugin that can fulfill that need.
Found in your WordPress “Appearance” dashboard, the simplest way to add widgets to drag and drop them into your sidebar.
Some of the best widgets include:
- Category posts
- Social icons
- Google maps
- Archives
- Chat
- Testimonials
These simple, but powerful tools have proven to be important staples for WordPress websites. With their flexibility and usability, they’re the perfect tool for WordPress beginners.
9. Assigning User Profiles
Assigning user profiles is essential in keeping your information secure and opening the channel to other authors. When thinking about how to use a WordPress blog effectively, and if you want someone else to be able to post a blog to your website, they will need access.
Under the “Users” tab in the WordPress admin center, you can set up users under specific roles that have different capabilities. A user can be assigned as an administrator, editor, author, contributor or subscriber.
Final Thoughts
If you are ready to learn how to use WordPress, these 9 skills are incredibly useful and will help you to launch a successful website. While we know starting a website is not a simple task, utilizing WordPress will certainly make the process easier.
While WordPress includes impactful functionality and appearance, it is built to be user-friendly for beginners to build without coding experience.
What useful WordPress tutorials did you learn from?
Share with us in the comments below!
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