Introduction WordPress is one of the favorite choices for starting a website especially if you are a newbie and has no experience whatsoever in creating a website. However, making a website is not as easy as it sounds when you do not know anything about php, html and other programming language. Just like you are, I have no idea how to do WordPress sites and so I take time to study every bit of it and created a tutorial so people with no coding experience like me can create their own websites by themselves without paying someone to do it for them. In this Book we will teach you to set up your WordPress website from scratch starting on choosing your own domain, setting up your hosting and finally installing and customizing your WordPress. Our Tutorial is so simple that even your Grand Parents can do it. All you need is common sense and a very wild imagination and some designing skills. We will even help you set-up a practice website that you can play with before setting up the real one and its FREE! Here are the lists of topics we will discuss on this Book: 1. Registering your own domain 2. Forwarding your domain to a hosting (if you use another provider aside from you use at your hosting) 3. Setting up your hosting 4. Installing WordPress 5. Exploring your WordPress Dashboard 6. Customizing your WordPress site 7. Adding functions to your site You would also get this on our Book: 1. YOUR OWN FREE PRACTICE WEBSITE!! Yes we will teach you where and how to set up a practice website with your own free hosting and domain. 2. Helpful Tips in creating your site and making it successful plus links to useful FREE
MARKETING EBOOKS!!
Registering your own Domain Domain name is very important. This is where people will know your site. Your domain must be simple yet meaningful and must explain your website as a whole. I’d say this is the hardest part in making a website. Once you have a domain name chosen you must check if it is still available. As you can see, other people might already have that same name registered. You can check it by going to www.whois.com and then typing your domain name. By the way, the domain name is in this format (www.yourdomain.com) Now that you have checked your domain name’s availability, you can proceed to registering it. I would highly recommend that you purchase your domain from Namecheap. They offer domain registration for $8.89 a year with free whoisguard for the first year and they register it so fast. I have registered from one of my hosting before and it took quite a while. I can’t remember how long but on Namecheap, it took just seconds. Here is an illustration on how the process would look like. 1. Go to the Namecheap and register. Once registered, check for you domain’s availability. You will see something like this.
Once you have checked your domain, you can now purchase it by following the instructions that would appear on your screen. After the purchase is done, you will be directed to your Dashboard. From there, you will be able to see all your Domain options and you can direct your domain to your hosting (we will discuss this later) The image below would show you how your Dashboard would look like.
Setting up your Hosting Your hosting is the one where you will upload your website so that it can be accessed by your users for 27/7. It is also where your domain is parked or forwarded. On buying your hosting, you will need to consider the following: 1. Uptime – You must be sure that your hosting is always online so as to ensure that you won’t lose customer. 2. Price – You need to get the best out of the price you pay for your hosting. Some hosting are expensive but you get less from them. 3. Bandwidth per month – Some says they offer unlimited bandwidth but in reality they offer a limited bandwidth per month. Be sure to check a hosting’s review by Googling it. 4. Storage – You need to make sure that you have enough space for your files as some hosting limits the amount of file it can host. 5. Number of domains it can handle. Some hosting limits the number of domains it can handle so you better choose the one that offers unlimited. That way, you won’t have to buy another hosting. Another thing to consider on choosing your hosting is to know what kind of hosting your website will need. Here are the most common hosting plans:
Shared hosting - Usually recommended for new websites, as it's the most economical way to start a website. Your site is placed on a server with other websites to share the resources.
VPS hosting - Recommended for more advanced users, and those needing to install specific packages or software not provided by shared hosting. Your website is placed on a server with other websites, like shared hosting, but usually there's less websites per server. Also includes root or admin access to its own operating system installation in a virtualized environment. Dedicated servers - When you get a dedicated server, your website(s) get access to the full server, since it's not shared with any other users. Also includes full root or admin access like a VPS. This is the recommended route for websites with lots of visitors (traffic) or custom requirements not available in a shared hosting environment. Reseller hosting - This service is geared for webmasters, or others, who want to resell their own web hosting service. It's also a good option for those with multiple websites, as it makes it easier to manage many websites under one control panel.
We recommend iPage hosting. They offer cheap hosting but they live up to your expectations. There are some drawbacks but nothing intolerable and even the high pricing hosts have their own sets of drawbacks. Let us set up a sample hosting and domain so we can practice. Here’s how: 1. Go do www.nazuka.net and register from this link: http://nazuka.net/signup/ Once you are registered, you will be directed to this page:
Activate your account by following the link sent to your email, then you’re good to go. 2. After your account is activated, click on “Hosting” then “Create new account”. You will be prompted to choose a hosting plan. Choose Unlimited Free hosting like so:
3. After choosing the hosting plan, you will then create a domain. Choose subdomain then from the dropdown list choose a TLD (.com, .net, etc.) In this case, you will select from their preset TLD because it is free. However, these subdomain and free hosting renders a lot of ads and that is why never use this for Business purposes. Just use it to practice. Here is how it looks like:
Once you are done, we can now start installing your WordPress. Remember that this is just to show you how to work these things. When you set up the real one then it would be much easier. If there are any differences, it’s just minimal especially if you are going to use iPage. Pointers: if you have your own domain purchased from another provider then you have to point your domain into your hosting. This can be done by going into where you bought your domain which in this sample we bought from Namecheap. So from there we are going to point it to our hosting. This is how it would look like from Namecheap:
Looking at the illustration above, you can see the encircled option that says “Domain Name Server Setup”. Then from that set your name server information. You will get this from your hosting. On the example above it is “ns1.ipage.com” and “ns2.ipage.com”. If you bought your hosting from other provider and you are having trouble on finding your name server then you can ask you’re hosting about it. The forward would usually take 1-2 hours so keep checking. 4. Getting back to our nazuka hosting, and given that you have chosen your domain, you can now press “switch”. Doing this will forward you to your hosting’s dashboard. The Dashboard looks like this:
Most of the hosting out there has a dashboard looking like the one on the picture. Here you will see all the tools you will need on setting up your website.
Installing WordPress Now that all is set, we are going to start installing WordPress on our hosting. Here are the instructions: 1. Go to you hosting’s dashboard. 2. Locate an option that says “WordPress” or “Installers” or “Auto Installers” then choose WordPress then Install. a. As an example we will use our nazuka hosting the WordPress installer can be found on “Auto Installers” This is how it looks like:
b. You will then be asked for the directory on where you would want WordPress to be installed. Here is what it lookslike in nazuka:
It would be best not to add anything on the directory as it will be directed to your domain properly but in the event that you did something wrong on adding the directory, you can always contact your hosting provider and they will help you especially if you are using iPage. After that, you can press “Install WordPress”. c. You will be forwarded to the page below once the Install is done. Remember that this is not the standard format and we are just using it as a sample. On other hosting, you will only see a prompt saying that the Installation was successful and on other cases you will be forwarded directly to your WordPress dashboard. However, you can manually access your WordPress dashboard by writing the name of your site then adding “wp-admin” on the end part of the address like so (www.test.com/wp-admin). You’re WordPress Dashboard would look like this:
You can choose to upgrade your WordPress to the latest version. This depends on you. However, there are not much changes on the Dashboard so I recommend that you upgrade your WordPress so it can handle all the latest plugins. Note: You can now visit your address at this stage. You can already see a very basic template with a “Hello World” message this is the fun part on my opinion. Makes me feel I accomplished something for my site already.
Exploring your WordPress Dashboard Your Dashboard contains all the tools you need to get your site started. Here are the functions of each Menu on the dashboard: 1. Posts – This is where you add new post on your site. This is how you get your contents available on your site.
2. Media – When you upload any picture or videos to your site, it will be available on this menu. You can then link all this media items to your post or anywhere you want. 3. Links – The name says it all. When you want to add a link or want to check all the existing links then this is where you would want to go. 4. Pages – These are your site’s pages. Oftentimes people would do mistakes in creating Pages and thinking that these can be place on their site as “Menu”. I will teach you the proper way on this one. 5. Comments – When people comments into your posts then it will be compiled in this column. That way, you can easily delete them if you want. 6. Appearance – Here are options in editing the look of your website. Under this are other sub-menus: a. Themes – You can choose your theme from here. Please note that when choosing a theme you must be aware on how many columns you want your site to have. You can search for a theme here. b. Widgets – Do you notice those little menus you see on websites? The one that has the “recent comments, recent posts, calendar, search” on it? Those are widgets and can be found here. The number of widgets and the places where they can be placed greatly depends on the theme you use so choose wisely but I would say that it’s a trial and error. If you don’t like something then remove it and look for another one. That’s what I love about WordPress. c. Menus – These are the options where you edit your Menus. You can arrange, rename and add menus in here. d. Background – You can edit your site’s background from here. Add a background image and other useful stuff. e. Editor – Editor is for Advanced user. From here you can edit your site’s function using codes. 7. Plugins – These is one of the most important things you will use in making your WordPress website. Here you can search for useful applications that you want on your site. You will be using a lot of these to achieve the functions you want on your website. An example is if you want to Contact Form for your site then you can search for it here and install it. 8. Users – This is where you add and edit users in your website. You can set an account for someone to do posts or edit the site in here. 9. Tools - As of now, I haven’t even used this part of the Dashboard. I am not an advance user too. 10. Settings – You can adjust your site’s settings in here. It is also here that you can edit the settings of your plugins. However, some plugins will appear directly on your Dashboard
as a Menu and it is normal. No need worry or anything. You can edit their settings from there. Customizing your WordPress site Now that we already have our WordPRess site and we already know what each Menus on the Dashboard do then we can move on to Customizing our WordPress site to meet the design we want. We know that we need to choose a theme and so this instruction will apply if you already have your chosen theme installed. First thing we do is to edit our site’s information by Going to Settings and then choose General. From here, we will edit our site’s information and so on. Once done, save it then view your site. I’m sure you would love the idea of seeing your Company Name or Website Title on your site. Second is setup our site’s Menu. What are the parts that we want our WordPress site to have? Let’s say you want 5 Menus namely Home, About Us, Product, News, Reviews. On default, your site already has a Home Page and therefore you don’t need to do any Home Page. Here’s how to add the other Menus. 1. First go to “Menus” under the “Appearance” tab. You will then see a Form there. Fill it up naming it “Home” and As I mentioned earlier, your site already has a Home page and what we need to do is just link it to our Menu. Here’s how it looks like on a WordPress 3.9.1. Other version looks different but almost the same.
On the URL, place the link to your Home page. Just place your exact site address as it is the default page. So if your website is www.test.com then you should place that on the URL field. Once done, hit save. 2. Create Another Page by going to the “Page’s” Tab. Everytime you are going to create a static Menu then you must go the Page tab and create a page for that. Static Pages are pages that do not move or pages that stays the same forever unless you change it just like the “About Menu”. Once you created a Page you must then go back to the “Menus” tab and Add the Page by going into the “Link” dropdown and then write the Menu Name you want. On this example it is “About Us” you can then add the URL which you will find on the Page when you created it. Here is how it would look like: Link of the Page that you created you will see this when you hit the Publish button on the right side of the screen:
Adding the “About Us” menu
Do the same procedure when adding more static pages. You can then edit the Content of each pages by going to Page Tab and choosing the appropriate title. 3. After placing all the Static Pages you then want some Menu that automatically moves as you place content to your site. One example is the “Product” menu. You would want all your products to be available on a single Page right? And you might want some Categories of Product to be on another page. Here’s how it is done. First, you go to Posts tab Categories. Create a category that you want on your “Product” page. Let’s use the category Product for the Menu Product. That way, it would be easier. Here’s how it would look like:
Once you are done inserting all the information asked, hit save and go back to Menu Tab. Then “links” Add the Menu name which is “Products”. Then on Categories choose “Products” then Press Add to Menu then Save Menu. Check your Page if you see the new Product Menu. All the Posts that you will post with a category “Product” will now be available on the Product Menu which you created. You can test this by Adding new post. 4. Do all the procedures on top until you have the desired number of pages.
Adding Functions to your site You can add different functions to your site by installing Plugins. A plugin is like an app that you install to your cellphone for additional functionality. The most important plug in that you should install is the “Jetpack” by WordPress. It contains a lot of options. You can install a Plugin by going to the Plugin tab on your dashboard and then search for “Jetpack”. Once you found it press install then you need to go to Plugin tab and activate it. Here’s how it would look like:
Then after activating, change its setting by looking for “Jetpack” on your dashboard. Here are some Plugins I use: • •
For Contact Forms – ContactForm by Contact US Ultimate Category Excluder – This would help you in segregating your categories so some would not show in the Menu that you set.
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W3 Total Cache – It improves your website’s page.
At this stage, your website is almost complete and all that’s left to do is Post all the info you want or the products you need. If you want additional function just go to Plugins and search for it. Please note that not all plugins are compatible to your site theme so read carefully before installing.
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