Create a WordPress Website From Scratch
- WP Easify
- September 2, 2020
- 11:44 am
How to create a Website from scratch
In this guide you will learn how to create and publish your first website on the Internet in just 5 simple steps.
You will learn everything you need to customize your website to your taste and make it have any design you want.
You will see how to add desired functions like a contact form, booking system, or similar to your website. You will also see how to turn your website into a fully functional online store.
Don’t worry, you don’t have to know how to code to do so.
We will show you how to optimize this website for speed and make it load in under 1 second.
Everything will be done with the mouse and you will not need to learn or use complex coding like HTML or CSS.
At the end you will be surprised to see how easy it is to make a website when using the right tools.
Ok, it’s now time to start building your own website.
Ready?
Well, let’s go!
CONTENTS:
Step #1 – Choose a platform to build our website on
Step #2 – Register a hosting and domain
Step #3 –Publish our first website on our domain
Step #4 – Make the website have any design we want
Step #5 – Add desired functions to our website
Step #1 – Choose a platform to build our website on
There are two ways you can build a website.
- You can code it from scratch or
- Use a platform to build your website on.
Coding an entire website from scratch is just a never ending task and discarding this option is the best thing you can do to speed up your website creation process.
This means we have to use a website building platform like WordPress, Wix, Squarespace, Joomla… and the list just goes on.
But which one to choose?
For starters let’s see what are the trends in 2019.
W3Tech’s survey of the top 1 million domains shows that WordPress is by far the most popular website building platform.
It powers 33,9% of all the websites available on the Internet and it powers 60,7% of the websites made with building platforms.
We can also see that it’s the fastest growing content management system (CMS) in the world with 837 additional sites being published each day. This means it will have an even bigger market share in the future.
Why is WordPress so popular?
- Unlike other page builders WordPress is 100 % free;
- It’s user friendly and extremely easy to use;
- With lots of free tutorials like this one it’s the perfect choice for beginners.
So let’s now see how we can install WordPress on our domain and create our first website.
Step #2 – Register a hosting and domain
There are 3 things we need if we want to publish our website online:
1) A platform: In this case we will choose WordPress because there is probably no easier way to make a website than with wordPress.
2) Domain Name: a web address like mywebsite.com. Without a domain name our website wouldn’t have an address and would be impossible to find it on the Internet.
3) Web Hosting: a service that allows our website to be accessible on the Internet. Without a web hosting we wouldn’t have a place to store our images, content and website files.
In conclusion – without a web hosting and a domain name we cannot not have a website on the Internet.
Choosing the right hosting
In addition, we need a hosting service and domain name to be able to install WordPress. If you already have a domain name and hosting, you can skip ahead and see how to create your first website on your domain.
If you don’t have a hosting service, there are really many hostings out there and choosing the right one might be very difficult and confusing.
There are significant differences in performance between services rendered by each hosting provider, but don’t worry, any hosting you choose will be good enough to build a proper website.
We will further show you how to install WordPress and create a website with the hosting we have been using for all our websites and projects.
Interserver - A Super Fast Hosting
Since we will be creating a super fast website we need a super fast hosting. If our web host is not optimized for speed our website will always be slow no matter how much time and energy we spend optimizing it.
To create our 0.2 seconds loading website we will use Interserver Hosting.
Interserver hosting is among the fastest and most reliable hostings we’ve ever used.
They have a great customer support, available 24/7 to answer all questions.
And yet they are among the cheapest.
Using our promo code “WPEASIFY” you can get their the first month of hosting for only 1 penny. (Interserver doesn’t always allow the use of promo codes)
This is the only expense you will have to create your website. All other elements used during this course are 100% free.
You can find the detailed step-by-step instructions on how to register your hosting and domain name below.
Hosting registration - Step-by-step instructions
Disclaimer:
Since we believe the hosting company that we recommend here offers great hosting at a great price, we have become their affiliates.
So if you register a hosting plan using the link below, we will get a commission.
But, on the other hand, you will also get a discount with our promo code and the first month will cost you only $ 0.01.
We would also like to point out that the commission is not the reason for our recommendation because most hosting companies offer affiliate commissions, but none are so fast for such a price.
Step 1
To qualify for a discount and get the first month of hosting for only $ 0,01 click the link below:
Step 2
This will take you to the following page. At the top of your screen on the orange stripe, you will see your promo code “WPEASIFY”. Please copy it since you will be needing it later to get your first month at $ 0,01 if coupons are allowed by Interserver at that time.
Once you have copied the code, click the “Buy Now” button shown on the image below:
Step 3
Now a very short and simple registration process begins:
1) Select whether you want to register a new or existing domain;
2) Type in your domain;
3) If you plan to register a new one, check the box that shows “Yes”;
4) Click “Continue”.
Step 4
Create your Interserver account. You will use these login credentials to access your hosting dashboard in the future.
Step 5
Enter your details and click “Continue”.
Step 6
Hosting packages of 6 months or more attract a discount on the domain price.
- Choose your billing interval (in this case 6 months);
- Whois Privacy: you don’t need it unless you want no one to know who your domain belongs to;
- Choose a payment method;
- Agree to the offer terms;
- Click “Place Order”.
Congratulations!
You’ve just become a proud owner of a hosting and a domain!
The hard part is now behind you 🙂
Step #3 – Creating your first website
To create your first website you now simply need to install WordPress on your domain.
In parallel with WordPress a simple website will be installed on your domain as well.
This will be the first website that you will create.
And you will do it with just a few mouse clicks.
How to Install WordPress
WordPress is is the most popular website-building platform out there, and it powers about 30% of the web. It allows beginners to create professional websites without any coding or design skills. Now that we have our domain and hosting, we can start the installation of WordPress for free with just a few mouse clicks.
In order to create a WordPress website we first need to install WordPress on our domain.
Don’t worry, this is very easy and it can be done with just a few clicks from our c-Panel.
First, we have to make sure our DNS are set up correctly and our SSL is activated.
We can then access our cPanel and scroll to the bottom where we will find the WordPress icon:
After clicking the WordPress icon we will be redirected to the following page where we need to click the “Install Now” button:
We now have to choose 4 things:
1) WordPress version (always choose the latest version);
2) Protocol – if you have a SSL certificate installed choose Https (recommended), otherwise choose Http (not recommended);
3) The domain where we want to install WordPress;
4) Directory – If you want to install WordPress directly on your domain delete the “wp”. Otherwise WordPress will be installed in the WP directory on your domain and your WordPress installation link will look like this: https://yourdomain.com/wp.
We have to type in our website’s name and description on the lower part of the same page, as well as the username and password to our WordPress dashboard:
And finally, at the bottom of this page we have to click the “Install” button.
And that’s it! WordPress is now installed on our domain and we will see the link to our new website, and the link to our WordPress dashboard.
Congratulations!
You’ve just created and published your first website!
It wasn’t hard, was it?
Our new website currently looks like on the image below, but don’t worry we will now show you how to style it anyway you want:
Just a few more things…
WordPress websites are managed from the dashboard and the image below shows us how to access our dashboard.
To access our WordPress dashboard we need to click the link that we received with the installation, or type our domain address followed by “/wp-admin” in the address bar. After that we will have to insert our previously selected username and password:
Finally, this is how our WordPress dashboard looks:
We are now ready to start styling our website.
WordPress Themes – Installation and Customization
To change the theme and give our website a unique look, we need to install a new WordPress theme – a design template that defines the look of our WordPress website.
This is usually done from our WordPress dashboard.
We need to click on “Appearance” > “Themes” > “Add New”.
This will open a list of over 1500 professionally designed themes you can choose from, and customize to best fit your needs. You can browse through the themes using the Most popular, Latest and Featured tabs:
We will select a theme we like, and simply click “Install” then “Activate” to activate it on our domain. Our website now looks like the theme we have chosen:
See how nice our website looks now after just a few mouse clicks. We now just need to replace the dummy text and images with our own, and we will then have a unique and professionally designed website.
To do so just click “Customize” in the upper left corner.
This will open a list of all the customizable areas of our website:
For example, if we wish to change the “Our Service” part, we just need to click on the “Service” tab and replace the texts with our own.
Now, every WordPress theme is a bit different so we cannot show you exactly how to customize the one needed, but as you have seen everything is very simple and straightforward.
Many WordPress themes come with instructions and tutorials. Simply follow them and customize your website.
You just need to go through all the available options and change all the texts and images you wish.
There will be a simple upload button that will allow you to replace existing images with your own.
No coding or any skills are required to do any customization on our WordPress themes.
Now it’s time to learn about plugins and speed up your website.
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