Creating a website can be a daunting task, especially if you’re not familiar with coding or web design. However, WordPress makes it easy for anyone to create a beautiful and professional website, even without any prior experience.
What Is WordPress?
When discussing website building, we come to the most popular platform globally. This platform, constituting 43.2% of all websites, powers two out of every five sites you visit. This platform powers many well-known global websites, including Microsoft Blog, Facebook News, Harvard University, and the White House. You can explore even more on their official website Here.
Renowned for its flexibility, this platform empowers you to create a wide range of websites. Beyond personal websites and blogs, you can build news sites, educational platforms, and much more. In fact, it even allows you to create online stores through the WooCommerce plugin. This plugin, remarkably, is a product of the same platform and accounts for a staggering 21.0% of its website share.
How Can I Start Using WordPress?
If you want to use WordPress, there are two ways, paid and free if you want to learn about it and learn before proceeding and starting. Here are the steps to install WordPress:
Choose a Suitable Hosting Company
You might ask, what is a hosting company?
Imagine you want to build a house: This analogy can help you understand how website hosting works. In essence, the house itself represents your website, the place where you’ll showcase your content and ideas. Just as a physical house needs land, your website needs space on the internet to exist. To put it another way, the internet is like a vast city, and your website is like a house within that city. In order to build your house, you need to rent a piece of land from a landlord. Similarly, in order to create your website, you need to rent space from a hosting company. Think of them as the landlord who rents you the space you choose to build your house on. They provide the foundation upon which your website can be constructed.
Here’s what hosting companies typically provide:
- Storage space on a server connected to the internet: This is where your website’s files and data will be stored.
- A domain for your website: This is the unique address that people will type in their browsers to visit your website. For example, the domain for WordPress is “wordpress.org”.
- Email associated with your domain: You can create email addresses that use your domain name. For instance, you could create an email address like “info@moneyplent.com”.
- Tools to manage your website: Most hosting companies provide tools that you can use to manage your website. These tools might include a file manager, a database manager, and a website builder.
As a beginner in the online world, you may face difficulty choosing the right web hosting provider for your website. Here are some tips to help you make the decision:
Determine Your Needs
Before you start looking for hosting providers, you need to determine your needs accurately. What type of website do you want to create? Is it a personal website? A blog? An online store?
The needs of each type of website vary. For example, an online store may need more storage space and traffic than a personal website.
Set Your Budget
Web hosting prices vary widely. Set a budget that fits your needs before you start looking for hosting providers.
Compare Different Hosting Providers
Read reviews of different hosting providers. Once you’ve identified some potential options, compare the hosting plans they offer. In particular, make sure you understand what each plan offers in terms of storage space, traffic, customer support, and additional features.
Look For Important Features
When choosing a hosting provider, make sure it offers important features such as:
- Ease of use: It should be easy for you to use the hosting control panel to manage your website.
- Customer support: The hosting provider should provide good customer support in case you face any problems.
- Money-back guarantees: The hosting provider should offer money-back guarantees if you are not satisfied with their services.
Start With A Small Plan
There is no need to start with an expensive hosting plan if you are a beginner. You can always upgrade to a larger plan later if you need to.
Most importantly, do not choose the cheapest hosting provider always, but make sure you get good value for your money, and read the terms of service carefully before subscribing to any hosting plan.
Having successfully chosen the right hosting company, the next step is to install WordPress. You can do this either by watching the hosting company’s tutorial video or by searching for instructions on Google or YouTube.
Install WordPress On Your Personal Computer
Have you ever wanted to explore and work with WordPress without spending a dime? Look no further than DevKinsta, a free and user-friendly tool that allows you to seamlessly install WordPress on your computer. This remarkable tool offers a plethora of benefits for beginners and experienced users alike:
- Unparalleled ease of use: DevKinsta’s intuitive interface makes it a breeze to navigate, even for those with limited technical experience.
- Lightning-fast installation: With DevKinsta, you can get WordPress up and running on your computer in a matter of minutes, saving you valuable time and allowing you to focus on what matters most: building your website.
- A suite of essential features: DevKinsta provides everything you need to get started with WordPress, including a local development environment, a database, and a one-click install process.
Once you’ve familiarized yourself with WordPress and its inner workings, you may decide to take the next step and create your own website or online store. At this point, you’ll need to choose a hosting company provider to ensure your website is accessible to the world, as mentioned earlier.
Get To Know The Dashboard
This powerful WordPress dashboard, which serves as the central hub of your website, boasts a sidebar that houses a myriad of distinct sections.
Indeed, each section is meticulously designed and tailored to cater to specific tasks and functionalities, empowering you to take full control of your online presence with ease and efficiency.
- Dashboard: Overview of your website.
- Posts: Create and manage blog posts.
- Media: Upload images, videos, and files.
- Pages: Create and manage static pages.
- Comments: View and moderate comments on posts and pages.
- Appearance: Change your website’s theme.
- Plugins: Install and manage plugins to extend WordPress functionality.
- Users: Manage users and their permissions, create new user accounts, and define user roles and capabilities.
- Tools: Use advanced WordPress tools.
- Settings: Customize general website settings.
Start Your Success Journey
Now that you have familiarized yourself with WordPress, the next step is to start achieving the goals you have set, whether it is creating a non-profit website, or creating a source of income online such as starting an e-commerce business, affiliate marketing, and other amazing things.
In conclusion, WordPress emerges as a versatile and user-friendly platform, empowering individuals and businesses to create and manage stunning websites with ease.
Embrace the power of WordPress and embark on a journey to create a website that not only meets your needs but exceeds your expectations.