How to build a WordPress website: A step by step guide

If it’s a free plugin that we’re dealing with, then all you need is the plugin’s name. Out of the options proposed there, let’s go with only “Orbit Fox Companion” for now. You’ll see your main Hestia panel, from which you can learn about the theme and extend its out-of-the-box features with some extras and integrations. To fully enable it on your site, click on the “Activate” button that will appear in place of the “Install” button. On the one hand, letting readers leave their opinions and questions under your articles/pages can be great for building a community around the website. But, on the other hand, you’ll also have your hands busy dealing with spam and making sure that there’s no trolling.

It’s one of the best website builder platforms and free to use. Many themes are also highly customizable, allowing you to change colors and backgrounds with ease. This can help you achieve a more unique look that better suits your website design idea. While the most critical piece of building a WordPress website is the content, you should also give careful attention to your theme. The theme affects how your website is displayed and the overall impression it gives to your visitors. Now that WordPress will create “pretty” links when we add content, we can start focusing on the website display.

WordPress Tutorial: Why Choose WordPress?

Finally, click on the save menu button to store your navigation menu. You can click on the Save button to store your post as a draft or the Publish button to make it visible on your site. You can even create a fully custom WordPress theme without any code. You will need to take your mouse over to the theme and then click on the Install button. If you know the name of the free theme you want to install, you can look for it by entering it in the search field. On the next screen, you can search from 11,000+ free WordPress themes available in the official WordPress.org themes directory.

A WordPress website is slightly different from what we used to think of as the “standard” site. Back when the internet was new (you know, when dinosaurs roamed the earth), websites were only a collection of files stored on a computer. Many hosts will offer a one-click option or simple directions to install WordPress directly from their control panel. If WordPress is already installed, you can skip the next section. WordPress is one of the most popular content management systems (CMS) available, powering 43% of all websites.

Is a WordPress Theme Required if You Use a Theme Builder Plugin?

Most users are familiar with this (even if they don’t know the technical term for it). Let’s say your business name is John’s Pizza – then you would ideally have a domain name johnspizza.com. Invent the world’s greatest cat food, save a rainforest, start a needlepoint club. Whatever it is, it’s going to need a website—that’s where we come in. It’s also important to note that your content may vary greatly depending on its purpose.

When using Ashe, you can decide whether you want categories and authors to exist. On top of that, you also have the option to adjust how text looks on your screen. Another benefit is the theme looks excellent on mobile devices—meaning that you’ll be able to attract traffic from multiple sources. There are more than 59,000 free plugins available in the WordPress plugin directory alone. More plugins are available from third party websites as paid plugins.

Start With These Free WordPress Themes if You’ve Just Started a Blog

The real power of WordPress comes from the massive collection of plugins. They are like apps for your WordPress site, allowing you to extend functionality and add new features to your site. We regularly publish lists of WordPress themes that we like in our Showcase section. Now that you have successfully installed WordPress, here are a few things to get started with your new WordPress site. WordPress is also used widely to create bilingual and multilingual websites.

We recommend you look at some plugins for security and website speed optimization. You should also consider Yoast SEO to improve the search engine optimization of your website. To add additional features and get some help with running your website, consider getting plugins. You can access them by going to your Plugins tab from your site menu. The Discussion section is also where you can change your email notification preferences and other post settings.

Free Website Hosting Services For WordPress in 2023

Doing so will make it easier for you to make the right long-term decision. Millions of people from all over the world use it every day. You can now click on the Log in button to sign in to your WordPress site. If it is in the main domain, then enter your domain name in the browser window, like yoursite.com or On the other hand, If you want to install WordPress in a subfolder (like example.com/blog), then upload it in a folder /public_html/blog/.

Once you find the best theme for you, purchase it, and then download the theme files. Note that this process can take a few minutes and the steps will vary slightly by web hosting provider. Wix is a user-friendly platform that is perfect for beginners.

Step 3. Familiarize yourself with the UI

You can choose a language during the WordPress installation or change it by visiting Settings » General page in the WordPress admin area. With that being said, if you do want to create a private WordPress blog or website then we recommend using Local by Flywheel. This is a local web software that lets you install WordPress on your Windows, Mac, or Linux computer with a single click. If you want people to visit your blog, then you shouldn’t install WordPress on your computer. Instead, you need to buy web hosting and install WordPress using one of the methods we showed above. Many of our users ask if they can install WordPress on their local Windows, Mac, or Linux computer.

• The “catch” is that, in almost every case, the web host only pays for the first year of the domain.
• For now, though, let’s just remember that what we want is at WordPress.org, since it’s a more versatile and cheaper-to-use version of the platform.
• To put it simply, web hosting (aka. web server) is something that no website can live without.
• We recommend you look at some plugins for security and website speed optimization.
• If you are wondering which plugins to install, then take a look at our expert pick of the essential WordPress plugins for all websites.

Enter a username, password, and email address for your WordPress admin account. QuickInstall is another popular auto-installer used by many hosting companies like HostGator and others. We will be using HostGator’s cPanel dashboard in the screenshots here, but it wouldn’t be much different https://wizardsdev.com/en/news/how-to-create-wp-site-for-beginners/ if you are using some other host that has QuickInstall. Next, you need to choose an admin username, password, and email address. Softaculous will automatically fill in the username and password fields for you. It will use a non-dictionary word for username and a strong password.