1. Choose A Platform For Your Website

There are so many different platforms and website builders out there, and choosing the right one can feel a bit overwhelming.

WordPress, Drupal, Squarespace, Joomla, and Wix are just a few examples.

(You could also code a website yourself from scratch, but that would take much longer, and you probably wouldn’t love the end result.)

So which website builder should you use?

Well, let’s take a look at what other people are using.

The Most Popular Website Builders

According to BuiltWith, here’s a breakdown of website builders by market share:

As you can see, WordPress leads the pack with a solid 52% of the market, followed by Wix (7%), Progress Sitefinity (5%), Squarespace (4%), and Joomla (3%).

Why We Recommend WordPress

It’s no coincidence that WordPress holds such a strong lead—it offers a number of advantages over other website builders.

• WordPress is completely free. While you’ll still need to purchase a domain name and a web hosting account, there is no cost associated with WordPress itself (unlike many other website builders, which can be quite expensive).

• WordPress is extremely powerful. Whether you’re starting a blog, creating a business website, or building a full-fledged e-commerce store, WordPress can handle just about anything.

• WordPress is easy to use. Even if you’re a total beginner, it doesn’t take long to get comfortable using WordPress—and you don’t need any coding knowledge to build a great website.

If you’re just getting started, we strongly suggest going with WordPress.

With that said, you can always change your mind later! Most web hosting services offer one-click installations for a variety of website builders, including WordPress, Joomla, and Drupal—which are all free.

2. Get A Domain Name & Hosting Account

Before you can start your website, you’ll need a domain name and a web hosting account.

• Your domain name is your website’s unique web address, e.g. yoursite.com

• Your web host is the service that stores your website’s files and connects it to the public Internet

You can get both of these from BlueHost, which is arguably the most reputable and well-respected hosting provider in the industry.

—> Click here to head over to BlueHost and pick your hosting plan:

Choosing Your Domain Name

On the next page, you can register a domain name for your new website:

This is where people will find your site on the web—for example, yoursite.com.

How To Choose A Good Domain Name

If you haven’t decided on a name for your website yet, here are a few tips:

• Go for .com if you can. The extension doesn’t really matter, but many people still trust .com and .net the most.

• Make it brandable. This means your domain should be unique, easy to memorize and pronounce, and trustworthy.

• Use only words. Generally, you’ll want to avoid using hyphens, and only use numbers if they’re part of your brand name (for example: 9to5Mac.com).

If you’re having trouble coming up with good ideas that aren’t taken, here’s a process I like to use:

1. Make a list of random words related to your topic or niche.

2. Run each of those words through Thesaurus.com to get some synonyms, and add those to the list.

3. Throw in some other words that aren’t necessarily related to your topic: adjectives, prefixes, suffixes, words you just happen to like, etc.

4. Spend some time playing with different combinations of the words on your list to see what works and what doesn’t.

You can also look at other websites in your industry and draw inspiration from them.

If you’re really stuck, you can try using one of these name generators:

• LeanDomainSearch

• Shopify’s Business Name Generator

• Nameboy

• Wordoid

Once you’ve decided on a name, go ahead and enter it into BlueHost and click Proceed.

3. Install WordPress On Bluehost

When you log into the Bluehost customer area, you should see a welcome message inviting you to create or migrate your website:

To get started, click the Set Up Site button.

On the next page, select “Start New Website,” and choose WordPress as your application:

At the bottom, you’ll create your WordPress admin account by entering an email address and password. These are the credentials you’ll use to sign in and manage your website.

Next, click Continue.

🎉 Before we move on, let me be the first to congratulate you…

You just took a major first step. You literally have a live website up and running now. Seriously—open up a new tab and type in your domain name.

It’s not much yet, but it’s there!

Next up, it’s time to customize your new site.

4. Log Into Your WordPress Dashboard

From now on, you’ll be managing your website from your WordPress dashboard, which you can find by adding /wp-admin/ to the end of your domain name. For example: yourdomain.com/wp-admin/

Log in using the email address and password you chose in the previous step.

The first time you log into your dashboard, BlueHost will provide a wizard that walks you through some of the initial setup stuff.

You can go ahead and choose a theme:

Don’t worry about picking the perfect theme just yet. You can always switch later.

In the next two steps, BlueHost will suggest some popular free plugins that you may want to install:

Plugins are essentially addons that extend the functionality of your website.

You can feel free to add any of these—but we’ll also discuss plugins more in a later step, so don’t feel obligated to install anything just yet.

Once you complete the onboarding wizard, your WordPress dashboard will look like this:

This is where you’ll manage every part of your website, from your theme and appearance to your pages, blog posts, settings, and so on.

At first, you may feel overwhelmed by all the various menus and options—but don’t worry, it doesn’t take long to get comfortable with WordPress.

Remember: you can always access your WordPress dashboard by going to yourdomain.com/wp-admin/.

5. Customize Your Basic Site Settings

Now that your website is up and running, there are a few basic settings you’ll want to customize to your liking.

Start by navigating to Settings > General in the main WordPress Menu.

On this page, you can change your site title from the default placeholder.

You can also add a short tagline, which may show up in various places on your site. This is optional—you can just delete the placeholder text if you’re unsure.

Finally, be sure to set the timezone to match your local time.

When you’re happy with these settings, scroll down and click Save Changes.

6. Install A WordPress Theme

Now it’s time to make your website look beautiful.

One of the reasons I love WordPress is because it’s ridiculously easy to customize your website and build something truly unique. That’s made possible by themes.

WordPress themes determine how your website looks. They don’t change your content itself (posts pages, etc.), but they do change how that content is displayed on your site.

WordPress comes with a default theme that gets an overhaul about once a year. As you’d expect, it’s compatible with most of the things you’d want to do with a WordPress site.

However, I would advise most people not to use the default theme that comes with WordPress. That’s not to say it’s a bad theme—it’s just hard to stand out and brand your business/project if your site looks the same as thousands of others.

Free Themes From WordPress.org

WordPress has a massive community of theme developers, many of whom release their themes for free on WordPress.org.

There are thousands of free themes available, and many of them are quite good.

You can view and install free themes through your own WordPress dashboard by going to Appearance > Themes, and clicking the Add New button at the top:

There are themes for just about anything, whether you’re building a business site, a blog, an e-commerce store, or something else entirely.

When you find a theme that piques your interest, you can click on it to see a more detailed description and a rough preview. If you like it, you can click Install to add it to your site, and then Activate to immediately make it your active theme.

Premium Themes

In addition to the free themes from WordPress.org, there’s a whole world of premium themes that you can buy from third-party sellers and marketplaces.

Again, there’s nothing inherently wrong with free themes, but a premium theme can be a great investment if you want a high-quality design and ongoing support from the developer—which is usually included in the purchase price.

Here are a few of my favorite places to get premium WordPress themes:

• ThemeForest — A huge marketplace where independent developers sell their themes

• StudioPress — One of the most reputable theme vendors in the business

• GeneratePress — A lightning-fast multipurpose theme that can be customized for nearly any purpose (check out their demo sites)

When you purchase a premium theme, it will usually be delivered as a .zip file, which you can install directly through your WordPress dashboard.

Just go to Appearance > Themes, click Add New, and then click Upload Theme:

From there, just upload the .zip file, and you’ll have the option to preview or activate your new theme right away.

7. Customize Your Theme

Chances are, even the best theme won’t look exactly the way you want right out of the box. You’ll need to do some tweaking.

Luckily, WordPress has a great feature where you can customize your site’s appearance while viewing a live preview, so you can see the effects of your changes in real time.

After you’ve chosen a theme, go to Appearance > Customize to open the WordPress customizer.

On this screen, you’ll see a number of appearance options in the left sidebar, with a live preview of your site on the right.

Every theme has its own unique options in the customizer, from typography to colors, layout options, and more. You’ll definitely want to spend some time going through these settings and tweaking them until your site looks just right.

Note: If your site doesn’t have any content yet, it may be hard to visualize exactly how the end result will look. You may want to come back to the customizer later, after you’ve added some posts and pages.

8. Add Content To Your Website

While design is important, the most crucial part of any website is its content.

By default, WordPress supports two main types of content: pages and posts.

• Pages are typically used for permanent, static content such as your “About” page and “Contact” page.

• Posts are displayed on your blog in reverse-chronological order, and they usually have a date, categories, and tags associated with them.

Creating A Page

Let’s start by creating a page.

To do this, open up your WordPress dashboard and go to Pages > Add New.

You’ll see a content editor that looks something like this:

It may look slightly different depending on your theme, but the functionality is the same.

Go ahead and enter a page title and some content. It doesn’t have to be perfect yet—you can always edit it later.

The editor divides your content into “blocks,” which are basically little chunks of content like paragraphs, headings, images, tables, etc.

By default, every time you press enter/return, a new paragraph block will be created. This is exactly like writing in any other text editor.

However, if you’d like to add some other type of content, such as a heading or an image, you can click the + icon on the left side to choose a different block:

Notice that the sidebar on the right side provides various options for each type of block.

The sidebar also has a “Document” tab where you can edit a few settings for the page as a whole:

When you’re ready, you can click Publish to publish your page immediately, or Save Draft if you want to come back and finish your work later.

If you click Preview, you’ll see a live preview of what this page will look like on your website.

You can view and edit your existing pages at any time by going to Pages > All Pages.

Creating A Menu

Once you’ve created one or more pages, you may want to add them to your site’s navigation menu.

You can manage your menus by going to Appearance > Menus in your WordPress dashboard.

From there, click “create a new menu” and give it a name, then use the options on the left to add whatever items you want:

You can also edit the display labels of any pages you add to the menu.

Once you’ve added some pages to your menu, be sure to select at least one “Display location” at the bottom. This determines where the menu will actually appear on your website.

Creating A Post

The process of creating a post is very similar to creating a page.

Go to Posts > Add New to create your first blog post.

As you can see, the post editor is nearly identical to the page editor.

The main difference is that you have the option to add categories and tags, which are used to organize your blog posts by topic.

See also: How To Start A Successful Blog: The Definitive Guide

This is our all-inclusive blogging tutorial where we discuss not just how to build a website, but how to create amazing content, drive traffic, and make money. 📈

Setting A Static Front Page

By default, your website’s homepage will show your latest blog posts in reverse-chronological order.

If you would prefer to have more control over what people see when they first land on your site, you can opt to use a static homepage instead.

To do this, you’ll need to create two new pages:

• A homepage — This will be your actual custom homepage. Feel free to customize it however you like.

• A blog page — Because your homepage will no longer show your blog posts, you’ll want to create a separate blog page. You can simply create a blank page and title it “Blog” or something similar.

Then go to Settings > Reading in your WordPress dashboard:

In the section that says “Your homepage displays,” select “A static page.”

Then specify the homepage and blog page that you just created, and save your changes.

Once you’ve done this, your custom homepage will be the front page of your website, and the blank “Blog” page will now display your latest blog posts.

9. Customise Your Sidebar & Widget Areas

If your WordPress theme has a sidebar, you can customize what shows up there by using “widgets.”

Widgets are small blocks of content that perform a specific function, such as displaying your latest posts, archives, social media profiles, a search box, or even just custom text:

They are most commonly used in sidebars, but many themes also have widget areas in other locations, like the footer.

You can manage your widgets in the WordPress customizer by going to Appearance > Customize and navigating to the “Widgets” section.

Frequently Asked Questions