Last Updated on August 26, 2019 by Timothy Ephraim
Are you passionate about blogging? Blogging is a good money-making idea and a great hobby too. If you are someone who is wishing to create your website or blog for the first time, this article is for you. Here we have described everything in 6 simple steps along with a bonus tip. This article will help you to go online in less than 30 minutes.
To give you an overview, I will list all the steps included.
- Register a domain name
- Get web hosting
- Install WordPress
- Install a WordPress theme
- Install necessary plugins
- Create great content
- Implement SEO (Search Engine Optimization) techniques
Register a domain name
The first step is to register a domain name. This is very first and an important step. Most probably the domain name you are looking for is already taken and you will be forced to change the different combination of words to get your desired domain. For example, imagine you are going to start a recipe blog or website and the website recipce.com is obviously taken and is not available to use and you have to change it to something else like recipeonline.com or myonlinerecipe.com until you get a domain name which is not registered yet. It is better to use a .com domain rather than a .net and a .org domain as .com domain is best for commercial use and widely used domain extensions. .net is usually used by service providers and .org is usually used by organizations. So do your research and find the perfect domain name for your website or blog. This is very important to choose the most suitable name as we can not change or alter domain names once registered. For registering domains, we suggest Go Daddy or name cheap.
Find your web host
This is probably the most important step while publishing a website or blog. If you simply do a search for web hosts you will get thousands of results. If you read reviews online, you will get both positive and negative reviews as well. So how to choose the best web hosting for your blog? This is a hard question to answer as there are many factors to consider. While choosing a web hosting, we have to think about three main factors.
- Performance
- Support
- Value
All these three factors go hand in hand you should give importance to all these three values while choosing a web host. Here we are using Bluehost which performs well in all these fields. In this article, we will be using Bluehost to show you how to setup your website or blog.
Read | Our list of best-shared hosting
Read | Our list of top 10 WordPress hosting
Whichever hosting you choose, you should be discreet and smart as moving from one web host to another is not an easy process. (Some web hosts offer free website migration but you may face some downtime during this migration).
In this tutorial, we will use Bluehost to make a website because they are the best, affordable and officially recommended by WordPress.
Other Best web hosts
Siteground: Experts who provide Fast WordPress hosting. You can avail 60% off if you use this link to purchase.
Hostgator: Another great web host who offers incredibly shared hosting. You can avail 60% off with the Coupon code ‘INFOLYTE60‘ click here to visit Hostgator.
A2Hosting: Known for the incredible speed servers and solid uptime: Click here to avail 51% off.
Fastcomet: Incredibly fast shared hosting with multiple levels of caching and the same price for renewals. Click here to visit.
We recommend you to use an SSL certificate. Find why your blog needs an SSL certificate.
Install WordPress
Navigate to Bluehost
Select a plan. IF you want to make only one website. The basic plan will suffice. If you want to make more than one website or blog, go with plus or prime plan.
Register a domain or enter one if you have already. Bluehost offers a free domain with their hosting package. You don’t need to purchase a domain when they provide it for free.
Enter your details to create an account.
Make your payment.
Set a password for your account.
Upon successful creation of your account, Log in to your account.
Pick a WordPress theme for your website/blog
Login to your WordPress to start building your website/theme.
Within your WordPress dashboard, follow the on-screen instructions to build your website.
Use Bluehost tools to further modify your website. Start by adding posts and pages. Build a menu to make it easy for your readers to navigate through your website. If you want to build an e-commerce website, start making an online store using Woocommerce.
Go to your Bluehost control panel to add more websites or to manage one your existing websites and to manage other features of your website. You can also add additional websites by following the same method.
Install a theme
Now you have installed WordPress on your domain successfully and next thing you need to do is to install a theme. In fact, WordPress comes with a default theme and it is good to get started as a beginner. But if you don’t like the look of the theme and needs a design overhaul or more features, you need to install another theme. Otherwise, you can skip this step.
You can find a good theme from one of those theme developers. We have an article that lists out a few great theme developers and also explains how you can get a great deal.
Read | Best WordPress theme developers
You can grab a good looking theme from one of these guys and install it on your website or blog. Here is a tutorial that explains how to install a theme.
Read | How to install a WordPress theme
Install the necessary plugins.
So you installed WordPress and a beautiful theme, next thing to do is to install necessary plugins. Installing a WordPress plugin is easy and just like installing a WordPress theme.
Here is a list of some must-have plugins that you must use on your WordPress blog/Website.
Create great content
Now that you made a blog or a website and the next thing which you need to do is to create great content. You must have something to give to your visitors and they must have a reason to come back to your blog for more. Create some great content with great value so that your readers will come back for more.
You need to consistently provide new stuff and keep your content updated and fresh. This is good for both your users and SEO.
Implement SEO
You created a blog and you purchased a beautiful theme and curated some great content whats next? SEO! Your new content will have to reach more and more users. Your primary source of traffic should be search traffic and SEO (Search engine optimization) Will have an important role in it.
In fact, SEO is not an easy process, you need to follow best SEO practices and keep learning and needs to stay updated about SEO.
Here is our article which teaches the basics of on-page SEO and gives you a very basic idea about SEO. For more advanced lessons, you can try MOZ, they have a fantastic tutorial that teaches SEO from scratch.