When you start a business, creating a blog and website is one of the most important steps to take and something that is on the top of your to-do list. Thought of having a website, a hub for your target audience is amazing, but at the same time, a bit scary, especially if it’s your first business or if you aren’t really tech-savvy.
Today, I wanted to get back to my WordPress 101 series (you can see the last post on how to create a page in WordPress here) and show you that starting a WordPress blog & website doesn’t have to take a long time (in fact, it can take 10 minutes or less) and doesn’t have to be hard and scary if you have the step-by-step guide. Let’s dive in:
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HOW TO START A WORDPRESS BLOG & WEBSITE IN 10 MINUTES OR LESS
First, there are few things that you need to start your blog and website on self-hosted WordPress:
1. Web Hosting & Domain – hosting it’s the place your website is hosted with all the files and where the WordPress is installed and domain it’s your website URL/blog address like I have www.mintswift.com
2. WordPress installation – with SiteGround*, you have super quick 1-click installer or you can ask the support team to do it for you – for free!
3. Theme – it’s responsible for how your website would look like and you can customize it or create a theme from scratch if you have the coding skills. We’ll talk more about themes in a different post
1. WEB HOSTING & DOMAIN
There are hundreds of hosting companies out there and it’s hard to pick the best one if you’re just starting out with WordPress and you have no experience with that. When I started my blog over 1,5 years ago, I didn’t do a lot of a research and honestly wanted something cheap (which of course turned out to be bad). I was desperate to start my blog & website and didn’t think at the moment, that the hosting matter that much. Well, it does …
My website was slow, it went down few times a month and the customer support was terrible. I knew I had to find a better hosting provider and this time I did some research and I found the perfect website hosting – SiteGround* and it was the best decision I’ve made!
Since using SiteGround*, my website speed improved exponentially (over 70%), my site wasn’t down EVER and I have a free SSL certificate (HTTPS), so my website is more trustworthy and secured, which is now super important Chrome, since October 2017 is showing the “Not secure” warning when you enter a site without HTTPS
SiteGround’s*customer service is the best! They helped me move my site from the other host, moved my domain name from another site, helped me deleted my Up Your Pinterest Game site, which I no longer need and it’s all for free! They always reply to me really fast, when I have any technical questions or difficulties. The plans start at $3.95/mo. for a single site, which is super affordable!
What I love about SiteGround* is that you can not only host your website there but also purchase the domain name. No worry, if you purchased your domain on different website (like I did, again zero research) they can help you move the domain to SiteGround* and you’ll probably pay less a year than on other sites (my domain now cost 2-times less a year on SiteGround* than on the other hosting provider)
HOW TO START A WORDPRESS BLOG & WEBSITE WITH SITEGROUND*:
1. CHOOSE YOUR HOSTING PLAN
Go to SiteGround* website and click on See Plans. You’ll see three options to choose from:
StartUp – perfect if you’re just starting out and that you have only one website)
GrowBig – great for you if you have more than one website),
GoGeek – it’s perfect for people with e-commerce and larger site)
Again, if you’re just starting out with your blog and website, I recommend the StartUp plan. It’s worth to mention that you’ll be charged annually for your hosting plan (so no need to remember to pay for your hosting every month) and that you can always upgrade or downgrade
2. CHOOSE YOUR DOMAIN NAME
As I said, a domain is your blog & website URL, it’s the www address, so how your readers will going to visit your blog – so you would type www.mintswift.com into the address bar on the browser to visit my blog & website.
Again, you can use the domain address you’ve purchased elsewhere or bought your domain on SiteGround*. There’s also a free website transfer included in the SiteGround* hosting service.
For the domain, choose something simple and short; use the name of your business. Also, check out if the social media handles for that name are available and if the name isn’t trademarked. I highly suggest purchasing domain name ending with .com extension.
3. REVIEW THE ORDER AND PURCHASE
Now, fill out your details and choose the hosting plan. It’s worth to mention that you’ll get the first year discounted, not just one month like on other hosting sites. How awesome is that?!
HOW TO INSTALL WORDPRESS ON SITEGROUND
We covered hosting and domain, now it’s time to install WordPress on your hosting account. As I’ve mentioned, you can use the easy 1-click installer or ask SiteGround’s* support to install WordPress for you. Below, you can see a step-by-step instruction on how to install WordPress on SiteGround* with the 1-click installer:
1. Login to SiteGround* > click on My account tab > click red button Go to cPanel and find the WordPress icon under the Autoinstallerssection
2. Click on Install now and then fill out your details and click Install at the bottom of the page. Once WordPress is installed, you’ll get the Administrative URL yourdomain.com/wp-admin/ and it’ll log into your site
If you’re looking for brand & website designt, check out my brand & website design package at this page, or click the image below.
Woohoo, you just started your WordPress blog & website in a matter of minutes! Now it’s time to pick a Theme and start to design your website.
Let me know in the comments, what other WordPress tutorials would you like to see in this series?
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Brand identity, five brand collaterals + WordPress website design
