We know and understand that starting a blog can be a frightening thought, particularly if you’re not a geek. Guess what, you’re not alone. Having helped over 40,000+ users create a blog, we’ve decided to create the most detailed guide on how to start a website without any technical or coding knowledge.
This guide is useful to users of all ages and skill levels. However, if you need assistance, you can contact our expert team to help you set up your website for free.
If you want to do this on your own, please continue to follow our step-by-step guide on how to make a website.
Here’s a rundown of all the steps we’re going to take you through in this guide from start to finish.
- How to find and register a free domain name
- Choosing the best web hosting option
- How to install your WordPress
- Installing a template to adjust the design of your site
- Creating WordPress Pages
- Customizing WordPress with add-ons and plugins
- Tools for learning WordPress and getting help
- Taking it further, create websites with more features
Before we start building a website, let’s cover some of the most frequently asked questions we get.
What do you need to start your website?
There are 3 things that you need to build a Website:
- A concept for a domain name (this will be the name of your blog i.e yourblogmaster.com)
- A repository for web hosting (this is where your website live on the internet)
- Your focus has been undivided for 45 minutes.
Yeah, you’ve read it correctly. You can start a blog from scratch in less than 45 minutes, and we’re going to walk you through the whole process, step by step.
How much does a WordPress website cost?
The response to this question really depends on what kind of website you’re trying to create. We’ve written a 2000 word guide describing how much it actually costs to create a website.
Typical company websites can cost as little as $100 a year and can cost as much as $30,000 per year.
We recommend that all our users start small and then add more functionality to your website as your company expands. This way, you save money and minimize future risks and prevent over-expenditure.
In this guide, we’re going to show you how to create a website for less than $100.
We’ll also show you how to take it further by adding more functionality to it in the future.
Which is the best website platform?
There are a lot of website builders available to help you set up a website. We recommend that you use WordPress as your website board.
WordPress is the world’s most popular website network. Almost 28 per cent of all websites on the Internet are motivated.
WordPress is free of charge and comes with thousands of website templates and plugins. It is highly versatile and integrates with almost any third party tool and service available to website owners.
We use WordPress to create all of our websites, including this one, Your Blog Master.
How to make the most of this website tutorial?
This is a step-by-step guide on how to make a website. We’ve split it into different phases, and we’re going to walk you through it from start to finish. Only follow the directions, and in the end, you’ll have a really professional website.
We will also guide you in the right direction to take your website to the next level on the basis of your needs.
Have fun making a website for you.
Remember, if you need help, you can get in touch with us and we’ll set up your website for free.
Let’s get started now.
Step 1. Setup
The biggest mistake that beginners make while creating a website is choosing the wrong platform. Luckily you’re here, so you’re not going to make that mistake.
For ninety-five percent of users, it makes more sense to use WordPress.org, also known as the self-hosted WordPress. Why?
Because it’s free to use, you can install plugins, customize your website design, and, most importantly, make money from your website without any restrictions.
WordPress is free to download and use to create any kind of website without any restrictions.
If WordPress is really free, then where does the cost come from?
WordPress is free but you’re going to have to pay for your own domain name and hosting, which costs money.
The domain name is the Internet address (i.e url) of your website. This is what your users are going to type in their browsers to get to your pages (For example, yourblogmaster.com or google.com).
First, you’re going to need a website hosting. Both websites on the Internet need to be hosted. This will be your website’s Internet address.
A domain name usually costs about $14.99 per year, and web hosting usually costs $7.99 a month.
That’s a lot of money for the beginners who’re just starting out.
Fortunately, Bluehost, the official WordPress hosting company recommended, has agreed to give our users a free domain name and over 60 percent off on web hosting.
Bluehost is one of if not the oldest web hosting companies in the world. They are also the biggest brand name when it comes to WordPress hosting since they host millions of websites, including many of our own.
To top it all, Bluehost has been collaborating with WordPress since 2005 and is committed to giving back. Which is why they promised us that if you can’t get your blog online within 45 minutes by following this guide, our expert team will complete the process for you at no cost. They’re going to pay us, so you don’t have to.
NOTE: We believe in accountability at Your Blog Master. If you sign up with Bluehost using our referral connection, we’ll receive a small commission at no extra cost to you (in fact, you will save money and get a free domain). We will get this commission to recommend just about every WordPress hosting company, but we only recommend items that we personally use and feel would bring value to our readers.
Let’s go ahead and buy your domain + hosting.
Open Bluehost in a new window and follow it.
This will take you to a pricing page where you will need to select a pricing package for your website. Basic and plus plans are the most common options of our customers.
You’ll need to click on the right button to pick the plan you want and proceed to the next level.
You will be asked to pick a new domain name on the next screen.
Ideally, you can adhere to the.com domain name. Make sure it’s related to your business, simple to pronounce and spell, and easy to remember.
Do you need help selecting a domain name for your website? See these tips and methods for selecting the right domain name.
After selecting your domain name, press the next button to proceed.
You will now be asked to provide your account information, such as your name, address, email, etc.
You’ll also see optional extras that you can buy on this screen. Generally, we don’t recommend buying these extras. If you decide you need it later, you can always add it.
Next, you can add your payment details to finish your order.
Upon completion of your order, you will receive an email with information about how to log in to your web hosting control panel (cPanel).
This is your hosting dashboard where you handle anything you need, such as having help, setting up emails, etc. Most importantly, this is where you’re going to install WordPress.
Step 2. Install WordPress
You’ll find lots of icons to do various stuff on your hosting account dashboard (cPanel). You’re never going to need to use 95% of them, so you can easily disregard them.
Scroll down to the cPanel portion of the website and then click the WordPress icom.
You’ll see the Bluehost Marketplace Fast Install screen for WordPress now. To proceed, press the ‘Get Started’ button.
You will be asked to pick the domain name on the next screen where you want to install WordPress. Choose your domain from the drop-down drawer, and then select Next.
You will now need to enter your website name, admin username, and password for your website. Don’t worry, if you need to, you can change them later in WordPress settings.
You will also need to check all the checkboxes on the screen and then press the ‘Install’ button to proceed.
Fast Install is now beginning to install WordPress on your website. In the meantime, it will show you some models of the website that you can install on your site.
You don’t need to do that right now, because we’ll show you how to find and install a free WordPress template on your site later in this guide.
When the installation is done, you’ll see a good message in the top of the header.
Now you need to click on the ‘Full Installation’ page, and it will take you to the screen with your WordPress login URL and password.
Congratulations to you! You created your first WordPress blog.
You can now go to the WordPress login tab. Your login URL looks like this:
http://www.yourdomain.com/wpadmin
You can login to your WordPress account using the admin username and password that you entered earlier.
Wasn’t it easy?
Now let’s move on to the next stage and choose the style of your website.
Step 3. Select Your Theme
This is not really desirable to most people.
Customizing the look and feel of your website is by far one of the most exciting and satisfying aspects of your WordPress website journey.
There are thousands of pre-made WordPress themes that can be built on your web. Some of them are free themes, while others are paid.
You can change your theme by going to your WordPress dashboard and pressing Appearance » Themes.
On the next screen, you will be able to browse for 4,400+ free WordPress themes available in the official WordPress.org theme directory. You can sort by common, new, featured, and other function filters (i.e industry, layout, etc).
We’re going to use Bento for the sake of this guide. It is a common multi-purpose free WordPress theme with customizable design options for all types of websites.
If you know the name of the free theme you want to use, you can check for it by entering its name in the search box.
WordPress will show you the theme of the search results. You’ll need to move your mouse over to the theme, and then press the Install button.
Once you have enabled your theme, you can customize it by clicking the Customize connection in the Appearance menu.
This will activate a customizer where you will be able to change your theme settings with a live preview of your website.
You don’t have to finalize all theme settings right away. You will be in a much better place to customize it once you have some material on your website.
Let’s see how you can add content to your WordPress website.
Step 4. Add Content to Your Site
WordPress comes with two default types of content called posts and sites. Posts are part of the blog and appear in reverse chronological order (newer items displayed first).
On the other hand, pages are intended to be static “one-off” content, such as your website, contact page, privacy policy, etc.
By default, WordPress can view your blog posts on the front page of your website. You may modify it, and we’ll show you how to do it later in this book, so that WordPress displays any page as the front page of your website.
You can set up a separate page for your blog or news section. In reality, you can build a website without a blog section at all.
Having said that, let’s add some of the material to your website.
Start by adding a few pages to your WordPress account. Don’t worry if you don’t have enough material on these pages right now. You can still change and refresh them.
Head over to Pages » Add a new page to the WordPress admin area. This will bring you to the page editor screen, which will look similar depending on your theme:
First you need to give a title to your post, please name this page ‘Home.’
After that, you can add material to the text editor below. You may add text, links, pictures, videos, audio, etc.
After adding content to your blog, you can click the Publish button to make it live on your website.
You may repeat the process by adding more pages to the various parts of your website. For example, a website, contact us, and a blog page to view blog posts.
Now let’s add a couple of blog posts as well.
Head over to Posts » Add New to your WordPress admin area, where you’ll see a screen like you’ve seen before when adding pages.
You should add a title to the post and then add material to the visual post editor. You can also note some additional choices in the sidebar, such as post types, categories and tags.
You can click the Save button to store your post as a draught or click the Publish button to make it available on your website.
Step 5. Customizing and Tweaking Your Website
Now that you’ve created some content on your website, you’ll be able to customise it and put it all in a good, presentable form on your website.
Let’s start with the setup of a static front page.
Setup of a Static Front Page
You need to visit the Settings » Reading page of your WordPress admin region. Under the ‘Show Front Page’ option, click on the static front page, and then select the ‘Pages’ you generated earlier for your home and blog pages.
Don’t forget to press the ‘Save Changes’ button at the bottom of the page to save your changes.
WordPress will now use the ‘Home’ page as the front page of your site and the ‘Blog’ page to view your blog posts.
Adjust the title and tagline of the site
You get to pick the title of your site during the installation. WordPress will automatically add a tag line to your site title that says ‘Just another WordPress site.’
You can change both the title and the tagline of your site at any time by visiting Settings » General tab.
The title of your site will be the name of your domain, such as Your Blog Master. Typically, the tag line is a single line that defines the website. You can also leave the tag line field blank if you want to.
Don’t forget to press the Save Changes button to save your settings.
Set Comments Settings
WordPress comes with an integrated comment system that allows your users to leave comments on your posts. This is perfect for user interaction, but it is also aimed at spammers.
You’ll need to allow moderation comments on your website to deal with this.
Go to Settings » Discussion page and scroll down to the section ‘Until a comment appears.’ Select the box next to the ‘Comment must be manually accepted’ option.
Don’t forget to press the Save Changes button to save your settings.
You need to create menu navigation
Navigation menus allow users to access various pages or parts of your website. WordPress comes with a powerful menu navigation system, and your WordPress theme uses this system to view menus.
Let’s give your website a navigation menu.
First, you need to visit the Appearance » Menu page. Enter the name of your navigation menu and press the Build menu button.
WordPress can now create a navigation menu for you. But it’s going to be empty at the moment.
First, you need to pick the pages that you want to see in your menu, and then press Add to the menu button.
You will see that your selected pages fill in the empty area of your navigation menu. You can shift them up and down to change their place in the menu.
Now you need to pick the location of the show. These locations are described in your WordPress theme. A primary menu typically displays at the top of WordPress themes.
Finally, press the Save menu button to store your navigation menu.
You can now visit the website to see the action menu.
Step 6. Installing Plugins
WordPress plugins are just like applications for your WordPress blog. They let you add features to your WordPress account. Think of the communication type, photo galleries, etc.
There are currently more than 49,000 free WordPress plugins available. Payable plugins are also sold to third-party websites and developers.
With these many plugins, how can you find the plugins you need to install(coming soon) ? We have got you covered, see our guide on how to pick the right WordPress plugin.
We hope you’ve found our tutorial on how to start a WordPress website to be helpful.
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