How To Build a Blog or Website

In the previous post we outlined how to register your domain name and to set up your website hosting account for this new domain. Now it’s onto the topic of how to build a blog or website.

 

In this post we will go into detail of building a blog or website using WordPress and having this hosted with your new website host.

 

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WordPress is a free content management system that hosts a large percentage of the worlds websites. It is simple to use and has a ton of support available through add-ons such as themes and plugins which make your WordPress website run that much better.

1. Login to your Bluehost control panel

The first step we need to do is to install WordPress onto your new domain. To do this you will need to login to your Bluehost control panel (or the control panel of the website host that you have selected).

To login at the top right corner of the Bluehost homepage select login.

 

Enter your new control panel login details as per the recent email you would have received from Bluehhost and login to your control panel.

You should now have a screen that looks something like this.

2. Download WordPress

On the Bluehost control panel under the Website section you should see the icon Install WordPress a little down the page, click this.

 

You should then have been directed to the mojomarketplace website looking something like this. Here you have two options, install WordPress yourself or pay an “expert” to do this. Don’t waste your money, do it yourself.

 

Select the domain that you are looking to install WordPress on (from a drop down menu in the domain section), then click next.

3. Add a title to your site (you can change this later if you wish), and other relevant information (username and password) as shown below.  Then select next and you have nearly set up your WordPress basic site!

 

4. Now login to your new WordPress site

Now it’s time to login to your site and start writing your blog or building your site!  Use the previously created username and password to login (remember to keep these handy).

I would also delete any default posts (ie “Hello World”) and any other pages so you are starting with a clean slate.

(Here’s what your blank website will look like below).

5. Blog Basic Settings and Themes

Once WordPress is installed, there are some recommendations that I suggest you go through before you start building and marketing your site.

Let’s start with the General Settings firstly. I recommend adding your site name and adding a tagline.  The general settings area is shown below:

The next setting menu you review is the “Discussion” section.  These settings give you options about comments on your blog.

Select the boxes you feel comfortable with, there are a lot of options suitable here for your blog or website.

Review these settings, make the selections that suits your site. Any question on this I would suggest you look at a site like WPBeginner or just use Google.

The next setting you should look at is the “Reading” menu.  If you want Search Engines such as Google to find and index website make sure you unselect the box that says “discourage search engines from indexing this site” is unchecked as per the image below:

Also look at the “Permalinks” menu and just double check how the structure is set up there.  The default selection is the setup you should be using.

I would also urge you to select the “Post Name” option as per the image below:

 

And make sure that you aren’t seeing a “Coming Soon” message. If you are then click the link to launch your site.

6. Themes

You’ve installed the platform to run your website, now you need to find a theme to build your website. To make your website pop, we need a great theme that is suitable for what you want your website to achieve. A theme suitable for a blog or article site will be different to a theme suited for an e commerce or services site. The theme needs to be functional and needs to be fast.

If you go to your live website, it looks very basic. We will fix this very shortly!

Selecting and installing a WordPress theme is very simple and you can do this through your WordPress dashboard under the Appearance section. ‘There are hundreds and hundreds of theme options available, both free and paid so take some time out thinking what you want your blog or website to do. Take notes about website you’ve visited or websites in your niche that you like or dislike and look for any take outs to add to your theme choice or design.

Once you are inside you WordPress dashboard and clicked on Appearance and then Themes you will see some of the default options.  These are a great place to get to get started, so have a look at these.

For other free theme options click on “WordPress.org Themes” as shown below.

If you wanted to you could get by with one of these free themes. There reason that I prefer the paid themes is that the support is a lot better plus the themes that I recommend come with other options that allow you to make easier changes to your selected theme. If you are budget, a free theme will be fine, If you have a spare $100 or so I would recommend a paid theme.

The theme I recommend is Thrive Themes. The reason I recommend them or more specifically Thrive Membership (approximate cost $240 USD per annum) is they have a great selection of about 10 themes plus they have these additional plugins to help tailor their themes even more to your liking (using a plugin called Thrive Architect) plus they have a range of other plugins to maximise the functionality and performance of your website (which we will discuss later).

Again, if you are on a budget a free theme is fine, once your website or blog starts making money then you can look at updating your blog or website or theme.

If you think you are ready to look at some more advanced options right away, you can see what Thrive Themes has to offer right here.

That’s it for how to build a blog or website. In the next post we will look at what plugins you need to add to your WordPress site and the post after that will do into details what content you need and should be adding to your website.

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