How to Create a Website on WordPress

You are not a technologist, even don’t know anything about technological knowledge? But you want to own a blog or website to share the information without hiring a developer? You’ve been going around in circles trying to create a website? It’s likely that you don't know where to start. Don’t worry, in this post, from the perspective of people who don’t understand IT, we’ll show you the step-by-step guide to create your own website based on the most popular platform for website building – WordPress.

You should know before creating any website

What is the platform for website building?

First of all, you must understand what it is. Put simply, when you want to draw a picture, you need to have a paper or anything to set up a foundation on which you’ll paint, right? Well, the platform to build a website is similar to that foundation.

There are a lot of platforms for building websites now. We’ve reviewed top 5 free website builders as well as compared WordPress with Wix, SquareSpace and Shopify in the previous posts; so, you can take a glance and choose the best one for you.

However, we choose the most popular platform to guide you in this post, it is WordPress.

To learn more about the platform, check out some of the online WordPress training courses here.

Hosting

Each website has its own data: posts, accounts, images, … You must put them all in somewhere in the air, not your computer, where anyone can view or access. Hosting is a kind of place to store this data. It allows anyone to access your blog in order to visit and read your public data.

Domain

A domain is your address of the website. Take our website as a typical example, our domain website is gretathemes.com.

To put it simply, if you have a store to sell something, you need a clear address which your customer can find then go to, right? Otherwise, no one knows to come there and buy your product. So does your website.

Theme

As developers, creating a website is all over in the blink of an eye. Only by coding, do they build a unique website exactly what they desire. But if you are a beginner who can’t code, what do you need for having an attractive and professional look to your website? The theme would help you do that one.

With a theme, your website has its own design as the theme provides, maybe including every module your need for the web. Your mission only is filling up content, or maybe take some adjusting (visually, no coding) to make your website fit with your expectation.

In terms of WordPress, there are lots of themes to choose from. It includes free and premium themes. Foremost, you could make the best use of free blog themes because they are also greatly beautiful.

5 steps to create a website on WordPress

Starting a website is very different among the website building platforms. In this post, we’ll guide you step by step through the process of creating your own website with WordPress.

Buy a domain for your website

You can access the pages providing the domain services and find a name which you want. After that, click purchase.

That step forces you to pay money. Each domain has a different price. That cost is only spent on 1 year. In the next years, if you still want to use that domain, you must pay a different fee.

You may try some following website providing domains: godaddy.com as the below image, namecheap.com, hostgator.com, domain.com, etc.

Tips for choosing a domain name:

• Choose a short one.
• Choose one easy to remember and type.
• In case you do not use your personal/brand name for the domain, chose something includes keywords, it may make your website popular easier.

Buy a hosting service and install your website on the Host

You can look for some free and premium web hosting services. For instance:

• Free hosting: see the list of top free hosting that we have reviewed
• Premium hosting: see recommended hosting or get huge coupons & deals.

After owning a hosting account, you’ll follow the step-by-step instruction in this post of install hosting and WordPress for your website. This step is quite complicated and may require someone that understands about IT to support you.

Finally, remember to save the user’s account created in the last step (or created automatically by the system). You will need this account to start using your website.

Choose and install a WordPress Theme

Choose a Theme for the website

Firstly, access the link: yourdomain.com/wp-admin, then log in user’s account which you saved in the last step to go to the web administration dashboard.

You may create a new user’s account for easier use. Next, go to Appearance > Themes and choose one theme among the default themes.

If you want to add the other free theme, you can seek one right in the admin dashboard (find Appearance > Themes > Add New).

However, free themes will have some restrictions. In case you want the well-coded, full-featured themes, try our WordPress themes. We have both the free and premium themes that provide you multi options to make an amazing blog. Spend a little time having a look at each theme’s live preview to get a real look at the reach page: subpage, category page, single blog page, etc.

Install theme

After choosing the desired theme, you only need to click “install theme” in the admin dashboard, or upload the theme’s .zip file to your website: go to Appearance > Themes > Add new > Upload Theme to upload the file.

Then, click “install theme”.

Most themes have the function named “1-click import”. If not, try to choose one that have this function that helps you to save a lot of time later. When you use this function, after the installing theme process is complete, there’ll have a notification asking whether or not you want to “import”. Right now, the best option is that you click “import” or “import all”.

This action means you import all the data from logo, content, images, even video, … from the theme to make your website have exactly the look of the theme’s demo.

Customize the website exactly what you want

Now, whether you choose “import” or not in the previous step, you still have to adjust something.

If you see any undesired parts, customize them. Which you can change or how to change will depend on the theme.

Every theme has its own documentation for instruction. So, let’s go to the provider’s website to read the guide.

Start blog now

Last but not least, delete the demo posts on your website which you imported. And, let’s start to write something and make your website full of interesting content.

Good luck!