• First steps
• Domain name
• Hosting
• Point domain
• Install WP on your hosting

How to make a wordpress website for beginners 2018

Creating your own website from scratch can be a daunting task for anyone, even for someone who is slightly computer savvy. Thats why I will be showing you how to do this from the start, step by step.

When I first starting out my business I didn’t know much about web design just over 4 years ago, I took the plunge and decided to learn WordPress and build my own website.

So what should I do first ?

Decide on what domain you want to buy, you can find various online vendors who offer free domain when you sign up to hosting account or just buy them without hosting starting from 0.99 to £15.

Bare in mind that you cant really buy a domain outright so you will have to pay a fee to keep your domain on a annual basis.

Next you need to find a hosting company you want to host your website on.

There are loads of companies out there offering you different packages. Since your just starting out just choose a basic plan, and if your website gets really popular then you can always upgrade in the future.

Most hosting companies let you do this without any issues. Hosting can vary in cost from £3 a month to £30 +, but as said before just go with a basic package to start with.

So whats next ?

Point your domain

Once you have your hosting and your domain organised the next step would be to point your domain to your new hosting. When you sign up to your hosting account they will send you an email giving you all the info you need, look for a section about server information, nameservers wil be mentioned here. (see below)

Nameservers

You then need to login to your domain account and find the section called Manage Domain, and then Namesrvers, there you should have option to change this to what you want.

Once you change this it can take a while to update, sometimes 24 hours.

Install WordPress

To install wordpress on most hosting all you need to do is access your cpannel, or some hosting offer one click installs

If you have cPannel you will see a section called softaculous apps installer near the bottom of the cPannel area.

Choose the App you want to intall, in this case we choose WP.

You then click install and make sure you have selected your domain if you have more than 1. At this stage it installs WP on your hosting and you will have to provide a user name and password you want for your WP website.

Thats it you now have installed WP and your domain is linked to this. In order to login to your WP site, the common way to sign in is www.yourdomainname.co.uk/wp-admin.

Hope you enjoyed this quick step by step guide of how to get started with setting up your website, see a small clip below of what do do next before installing your first theme.

Check out my other blog post on the must have free wordpress plugins

Need Help ?

If you would like some help with anything mentioned above or just any web related questions , please contact us via the form below.

We offer web design, graphic design and photography services.

Helpful Hints About WordPress

Do you want your own blog? Do you have one on WordPress, but not sure how everything works? You can do many things to make you blog more inviting. Use the tips below to create an awesome WordPress site.

If you plan to start a WordPress blog, make sure that you offer readers more than just content. Even if you say many useful things, it may be quite difficult to engage readers with text. It would be a great idea to implement videos and pictures since this is a great attention grabber.

If you dont want to create a website yourself or just don’t have the time, we offer affordable WordPress website design using the latest and best themes.

Choice

With WordPress you have lots of choices in themes so you can have a really good looking blog. Take plenty of time to peruse all of your choices so that you can select just the right one to suit your style and your topic. For a truly unique theme, select a premium theme. This will really help your blog stand out from the crowd.

If you want to easily be able to search through the media you upload, such as videos or photos, put it all into a single folder through WordPress. To do this, go into Settings & Media and then uncheck the box which sets WP to sort your media into folders based on the date.

Download Akismet immediately with a fresh WordPress install. Akismet is a plugin for WordPress that basically blocks spam comments as they come in. If you don’t have it installed, you may be inundated with tons of spam. You’ll need to get a free key from the Akismet website to finalize the install.

Make use of a landing page. Instead of coming directly to current posts, users will pass through this landing page first. You can use this for a variety of reasons, whether for promoting a product or promoting yourself. Many themes feature a landing page; however, there are also paid options.

Load Time

Make sure that your wordpress site loads as fast as possible for your visitors. This is vital, as a site that crashes or takes too long will discourage your users from visiting it. A fast site will put your users in a good mood when they come there on a daily basis.

Are there lots of people commenting on your posts? If you do, it can be cumbersome to sift through all of them. Include a plugin which will add numbers to the pages in this section. This makes for a more organized site that is easier to navigate.

Protect Your Site

Be sure to choose unique, difficult to hack passwords and keep them secure. It doesn’t matter if you are a free WordPress blogger of a paid, self-hosted WordPress blogger: it is important to keep your passwords strong and secure. In this way, you will not have to waste valuable time cleaning up sabotage and changing passwords. This will help ensure that your blog is a success.

You are unable to change the images sizes yourself if your site has its own gallery plugin. The gallery plugin automatically sets the sizes of the images, and you don’t actually have any control over this. If you really need the image sizes changed, ask your developer to help you change the settings.

Control unruly spam not by turning off comments, but by installing the right plugin. Aksimet’s anti-spam plugin is exceptional at keeping your site on the up and up. You can also add Recaptcha which adds a captcha to the comments box on your site, ensuring no bots can leave a message.

PlugIns

Your WordPress is nothing without plugins, and lucky for you, there are plenty to choose from. However, it is very important that you use caution when installing plugins and keep in mind that they aren’t disposable. You can uninstall them, but most of the time they will still affect your content and leave shortcodes behind.

Use images properly on your WordPress site. They can add everything from beauty to interest to your pages. Use their alternative text tags and title tags properly. Don’t settle for generic descriptions. You need to make them specific so that your visitors know exactly what they are. This also helps them figure out what your site is about.

Keep your WordPress updated. Updates contain security patches that eliminate vulnerabilities. Malware is often able to infiltrate WordPress sites that do not have the latest updates. Install every update possible that you can.

SEO

Include your SEO-based keywords in the titles of your posts. In fact, make them the first few words of the title. For example, if your key phrases is “best pizza in Toronto”, you could create a title such as “For the Best Pizza in Toronto, Only Spring Water Will Do!”

Want to create a new link in your post? There is no need to click the link icon any longer. Use ctrl-shift-A instead to start the link creation process using the keyboard and not the mouse. When you create many links within your content, this can shave time off the creation process.

Read user reviews prior to installing a plugin. Keep in kind that these plugins may be created by any person that can program. Avoid plugins with a lot of reports of bugs, flaws and security holes. The best thing to do is to use those that have high ratings and many downloads since this signals that they are safe.

When you are designing your WordPress site, it is a good idea to take out any display of the word “WordPress” in the footer area or in the header of your code. A lot of bad web bots troll the web for WordPress blogs and find security holes. If you remove the word “WordPress” from your site, you have another layer of defense against these bots.

Running a great blog involves a blend of various tasks. Knowing the right content and plugins can make all of the difference between an average blog and one that stands out. This article should have given you some great ways to use WordPress. Use what you have just learned to increase the traffic to your site.

Visit our homepage for more info on web design, graphic design or photography services

What are the must have WordPress plugins 2017?

This page has a list of some of the best WordPress plugins 2017 out there. Find out which plugins you should have installed on your site which will help your SEO, site performance and security.

So what are the essential WordPress plugins for 2017

1. W3 Total Cache – This plugin basically helps speed up your site with various website performance enhancement tools. This helps with your SEO and the overall user experience that Google and your visitors will count on once your site is live. This is a must have for any new website, as the speed of your website is one of the major SEO factors.
2. Sucuri – Security is important for any new business website in 2017. It’s an application firewall which monitors and protects your site from DDoS, malware threats, XSS attacks, brute force attacks and every other attack. 
3. Yoast SEO – This one of the best free SEO WP plugins there is. It’s vert easy to use and will help you optimise your website for all the major search engines out there. I particularly like the traffic light analysis it uses to highlight areas you need to improve you’re on page SEO.
4. AddToAny Share Buttons – This helps people share your posts and pages to any service, such as Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, Google, WhatsApp, LinkedIn, Tumblr, and over 100 more sharing and social media sites & apps.  It’s really easy to set up and makes your blog or website sharable from any page on your site at a click of a button.

5. Jetpack – Another great plugin, this give you site stats and analytics, brute force attack protection, downtime and uptime monitoring. Too much to list here, visit the link to find out more.BONUS

6. Updraftplus – UpdraftPlus is the highest-ranking backup plugin on wordpress.org, with over a million installs. It’s Widely tested and reliable. It is a very simple backup tool you can use to backup your website.

Get all these WordPress plugins free from WP.org

Conclusion

I understand this is a very short list of what WordPress plugins 2017 I recommend. I hope it gave you a basic snapshot of what I choose.

Another recommendation is to set up Google search console and analytics for your site, this is excellent for monitoring your website traffic amongst lots of other tools.

Please feel free to comment and provide feedback with any other plugins you recommend.

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Mark Johnstone Photography & Design