WordPress is a popular CMS, used by millions of bloggers, companies, start-ups, business owners, etc, to make their online presence strong in a short time span.
Now, WordPress powers more than 20% of total websites available on the Internet. But, still, there are many people who are new to WordPress and don’t know how to sign up and use it properly. For such people, this article is worth readable.
1. Choose between WordPress.org and WordPress.com
As WordPress is available in two formats – WordPress.org and WordPress.com, you need to choose any one of these two.
You can host your own website or blog with WordPress.org. You can create a blog at WordPress.org absolutely free of cost. just install it and start using it. It takes just a few minutes to set up WordPress.org and you have options to use up to 1500+ themes and approx 15,000 plugins. It has unlimited storage and you can monetize your blog easily and add different advertisements. It supports mobile blogging easily.
On the other hand, to use WordPress.com, you don’t need to worry about web hosting as it allows you to start blogging on its server. Its basic version is free of cost and you need to spend $99 per year for premium membership. You can use up to 200 themes and 20-30 plugins. If you get more than 25,000 page views per month, you can monetize it. Its storage capacity is 3GB. You can use numerous free and premium themes available. It supports Android and iOS, when it comes to mobile blogging.
Have a look at these main points carefully and choose any one of them according to your needs.
2. Choose a suitable Domain Name
Website domain name is one of the most important factors that helps you build your brand recognition easily and quickly. Just spend some time to research and find out a domain name that is easier to remember. A good Domain name helps you build online reputation quickly and generate leads. But, choosing a Good Domain name is not an easy task as in 99% cases, you don’t get the desired domain names. In that case, you have to make a compromise if your budget is restricted.
Key ways to choose a Good Domain Name:
a. Use domain Name Suggestion Tools
There are numerous tools for domain Name suggestion tools to come up with a good domain name. Some tools are DomainsBot, Name Tumbler, Domainr, etc.
b. Take Note of HEO, not SEO
HEO stands for Human Eye optimization. You need to pay attention on humans, not on keywords in domain while choosing a Good domain Name. Most of the Internet users type your site’s domain name to land on your site. That is why, it is important for you to come up with a domain name that is easy to remember. So, you need to be creative while selecting a domain name and try your level best to choose a domain which is easy to remember.
c. Keep Your Domain Name Shorter
You should have at least 10-20 domain Name suggestions before finalizing the domain. Always try to come up with a simple and short domain name that is easy to type and remember. Don’t use hyphen and shun using numbers in your site’s domain name as users might get confused with the number (for Example-3 or three)
d. Always look for .com first
When you try to register domain for your site, always look for .com domain first because credibility and recognition comes easily with a .com domain extension. But, finding .com domain name is not an easy task. Just find out a compelling and popular name for your site and book it in .com extension. In case, you don’t get a desired .com domain extension, then you can go for .net, .org, .biz, etc.
3. Select A good Hosting Company
WordPress bloggers and site owners always ignore the importance of choosing a good hosting company. Web hosting plays an important role in making a website popular and increase sales. There are three ways you can look for a good package:
- Shared Hosting
- VPS Hosting &
- Managed WordPress Hosting.
Let’s elaborate these:
Shared Hosting
Shared hosting is an affordable option for you if your budget is restricted. In this hosting, a single sever can host several websites and cost is divided between all users of the server. But, you must consider the disadvantages of it also. When hundreds of websites run from the same host, it may happen that a coding bug in one of the hosted websites might consume high % of available memory and several other websites will either come to a halt or become unavailable. Additionally, if a single website is hacked, it affects all websites because of the same sever. The security of your website is decreased and results in poorer up-time. When you site goes down because of these technical glitches, there are high chances that you face heavy loss in online business coming out from your clients and customers. For shared hosting, you can use these trusted brands:
- Bluehost
- Godaddy
- Siteground &
- A Small orange
VPS Hosting
VPS (Virtual private server) is a dedicated as well as shared hosting service with minimum flaws. Although the hardware is shared, but restricted to some users only and hardware is divided equally. One of the biggest advantages of this hosting service is that accounts hosted on it can’t consume up to 80% of resources alone. All accounts hosted on it get equal share of resources. Hackers find it difficult to break into other accounts on the server via a single website. As you have your share, you can easily use your share of resources and take steps to run your site smoothly. There are a number of VPS providers. A few of them are mentioned here below:
Managed WordPress hosting
Managed WordPress Hosting is created especially for WordPress operators and it aims to offer faster loading times, better security, and expert WordPress support. Here, the hosting company takes cares of all the technical aspects of WordPress for you so that you ditch worries related to technical issues and focus your attention on creating high quality contents. This makes your website fast and secure also. Truly professional WordPress-specific support, server-level caching and automatic updates are some of the main benefits of managed WordPress hosting. The disadvantage of this hosting is that you can’t install any other platform on it and hosting provider may disable some plugins for the security of your website.
4. Installing WordPress
When you have a domain name and a good web hosting company, you can start installing the WordPress on your web server. The installation steps depends on the choice of your hosting company and most of them will set it up for you automatically or have a handy guide to help you through the installation process. You may refer to this WordPress installation guide in case you are doing it on your own.
5. Careful selection of WordPress Plugins and themes
There are numerous plugins and themes for WordPress which you can use to improve the functionality of your website and gain more traffic to your website. Depending upon your needs, you can choose them easily. Some useful plugins are listed here below:
- Woo-commerce (For E-commerce business)
- All in One SEO Pack (For assistance in SEO)
- Backup & Restore Dropbox (For work Automation)
- VaultPress (For backup of your site and security).
- Akismet (To keep your Site safe from Spam and online Attacks)
Note: You should use plugins depending on your requirements. These are some basic plugins you may require while using WordPress as a novice blogger.
When you have to select your theme, there are numerous options. But you should select WordPress themes keeping following things in mind:
- Good design,
- Easy navigation,
- Compatibility with the newest version of WordPress,
- Compatibility with Plugins
- Support and documentation,
- Easy and active development
6. Safeguarding your site
As WordPress is frequently targeted by online hackers, you need to follow some tips to keep your website safe from online security breaches:
- Use security plugins for WordPress,
- Use random Login ID & strong password,
- Use Two factor authentication,
- Keep changing your password from time-to-time, etc.
7. Required pages on your site
a. Homepage:
Creating Homepage for your site a time-taking work. On WordPress, you can create a static page or a dynamic page. A dynamic page is default page that displays your ten most recent contents. If you are making a site for corporate companies, start-ups and business owners, etc., you need to write some details about them.
b. About Us page
An About us page is must for all websites as it helps Internet users to know more about the business of websites. Don’t ignore its importance. Write a precise and emphatic about us page to generate trust among your site’s visitors.
c. Contact Us
When your site starts to receive traffic, users want to contact you to communicate with you and tender their suggestions, feedbacks and queries. Just create a Contact Us page and provide your Email Id and contact numbers so that users may contact you immediately for the solution of their quarries.
In case, you create a WordPress Website for E-Commerce, it should have following pages:
- Contact details,
- Privacy policy
- Refund policy,
- Terms of service
d. Cookie page
You should create this page on your WordPress site and inform your site’s visitors how you will use cookies to deliver information to them.
e. Website Tracking
You must use Google Analytics to track your site’s traffic and make changes in your site accordingly. This tool will help you get the latest details of traffic on your website like user’s behavior, popular products and services on your site and many more.
Launch Your Site Now
Now, you have completed all basics of a WordPress website. You should launch it ASAP and start blogging to make a solid online presence and monetize them when it becomes popular.
Final Thoughts
Creating a perfect WordPress website and making it popular is not an easy work at all. It demands sufficient amount of time, dedication and joint effort of a designer, developer, SEO expert and online security Experts. You may face problems while placing content on your site, installing theme and plugins, performing customization, etc. Just take the help of expert WordPress bloggers to run your site smoothly and make it a success.
