OK! Do you want to start your own professional blog? But thinking it would cost thousands of dollar, but you don’t have or you don’t want to invest so much on the very first day. Then this post is going to help you start and create a WordPress blog without touching a like of code.
Things Require to Create a WordPress Blog.
In this guide, you will need following basic start a blog. Please make sure you ready with these things before you will start.
- Name of your blog- Sweet, Simple and Magnetic, will be used as domain name also.
- A Credit Card to make payment for hosting fee
- 30 Minutes without any other parallel task.
What Will You Learn in This Simple Guide?
- How to Select and Register a domain and
- Select and Buy Web Hosting
- How to install and run WordPress
- Basic WordPress Settings
- How to Select and install theme
- Select and install Recommended plugins
- How to Install Google Analytics to measure the performance
- Customise Your Blog For Tight SEO
- Create and Connect Webmaster Tool Account
- How to Submit Your Website to search engines
Ready? Let’s get started with:
WHY WORDPRESS?
First thing first, WordPress is the No. 1 blogging platform not because it’s free, secure and cheaper, but also because anyone, even first time user, can use it like a pro. If we ignore its simplicity and ease of use, there are so many other reasons for using it:
- It is always updated and maintained by the most active team for security & features.
- It is a free software that you can customise and tweak without any permission.
- Automatic update option just like you update smartphone apps without losing data.
- According to a case study, it’s the most secured blogging platform.
- The largest community that can help you without paying a single penny.
- Millions of tutorials and guides to using it efficiently.
- 26% percent of total websites are using WordPress.
- It has the largest collection of professionally designed themes.
- Biggest collection of plugins to enhance its functionality.
- Cheaper to host and manage.
- No need to sit behind the website to manage it.
- And much more…
Let’s go ahead and create a professional WordPress blog from scratch. Ready?
Create it: Domain. Hosting. Installation.
So far you have learned why you should use WordPress for your blogging project. Now, let’s go ahead and create WordPress blog without touching a line of code. No matter if you don’t know anything about WordPress, you can create a fresh new blog like a pro just in next 30 minutes.
The process is extremely easy just like buying something on Amazon. At the end of this post, you will have a complete professional WordPress blog look like it was created and designed by a geek.
Requirements to create a WordPress blog.
Before we will start to create a professional WordPress blog, here are few requirements that you will need throughout the process.
- A Credit Card: To purchase domain and web hosting service.
- Name of your blog: A short sweet simple name that will be the name and domain of your blog. If you already have a domain, that’s great, if not, don’t worry I will tell you how you can get it free with BlueHost hosting service.
- 30 minutes attention for the process.
- One cup hot coffee (optional).
Step 1: Select the domain
Start with selecting short and easy-to-remember domain name. Technically, domain is the web address that people will use to visit your website, so it should be catchy and sweet. Don’t worry if you don’t have, you will get it free with BlueHost in step 2. Just note down a sweet, simple and catchy name.
Step 2: Get Web hosting- A Server to host your website.
This is where you will pay a small rent for space (server in the cloud) to host your blog. There are hundreds of web hosting services available. However, based on my experience and research, I use and recommend BlueHost. As its official WordPress recommendation, a great option for the newbie to kick start with at an affordable price.
Why is BluHost: A Great for First Time Bloggers?
Apart from its official WordPress recommendation for a newbie, here are the following reason why should you start with BlueHost:
#1 Support: BlueHost has great 24–7 support via phone, e-mail, or chat. I have personally used it several times and found the support staff to be quick responsive, knowledgeable and WordPress experts. Nothing is ideal, but it comes first among all other shared hosting providers.
#2 Reliable: When it comes to the web hosting reliability, again BlueHost comes first among all shared hosting players.
#3 Ease of Use: It has a quite simple minimal control panel with one click option to install and manage WordPress.
#4 Affordability: The reason it’s cheaper is only that BlueHost makes money on volume instead of large profit margin and keeps in mind what may be the reasonable price for beginners. Also, the longer you are willing to commit, the cheaper it is.
Apart from those solid reasons, BlueHost offers a thirty-day, money-back guarantee, which is written into their Terms of Service. If you are not happy, they will refund your money without any a headache.
Click here to avail Best BlueHost Deal.
Note: If you buy hosting service using my link, I will get some commission that will not cost you anything, however, you will get some discount too. Perhaps it would be your support to keep me busy in writing such contents.
Now go ahead and select the most suitable plan as per your requirement.
Now, on the next page, you will need to enter your domain name to register it for free with the hosting plan and click next.
In case if .com domain is not available, you can select .in, .me or any other that you want. Otherwise, if it’s available you will be redirected to the next billing page. Keep in mind, you will be required to pay the annual rate in advance. That’s how BlueHost is able to offer the super low prices.
Now fill the account and billing information, confirm your billing plan, deselect any add-on that you don’t want to buy. Then finally complete the process and get account information right there and in your inbox.
Login to Bluehost control panel and get ready to create WordPress blog now. If you are using your existing domain/subdomain you have to change DNS setting in your domain, otherwise just go to the step 3 and install the fresh new WordPress blog.
Step 3: Install WordPress
OK! now you are just one step away from creating a new WordPress blog. Click on WordPress Tools, one new page, select new install, then select the domain, fill the necessary pieces of information and hit install WordPress.
After few minutes it will be installed and it will show installation complete.
Hit Refresh Now. Next, go to yourdomain.com/wp-admin sign in to your fresh new WordPress blog username password that you have selected in the previous step.
Isn’t easy? Absolutely easy of course! If it shows: Your site is currently displaying a “Coming Soon” page. Click on click here as shown in image below, otherwise, it’s OK.Congratulations! you have created a fresh new WordPress blog, now let’s make it unique and beautiful in the next section.
Congratulations! you have created a fresh new WordPress blog, now let’s make it unique and beautiful in the next section.
Customise it: Design. Tweak Setting. Install Plugins
Broadly WordPress has four sections: Design, Core Setting, Plugins and content creation. We will start with Customising the look and feel of your blog by selecting the most suitable theme. Then we will change the essential setting, finally, you can install recommended and required plugins to make your blog more professional.
Step 4: Select and install your WordPress theme
Technically visual appearance and the look of your blog is controlled by the WordPress theme. Better design always attracts users after useful content, therefore pick the most suitable theme according to niche and the topic of your blog.
There are thousands of free and premium themes easily available. You can install either free one from WordPress directory right away or paid by premium themes providers. As WordPress has largest collections of premium themes, so it becomes very hard to pick one from thousands. So, here is the quick checklist to select the most suitable theme:
- Your maximum budget for design.
- Type of blog: Plain writing or Magazine.
- Are you tech savvy or not?
For Zero budget:
If you don’t have any budget for a premium theme, stop thinking about buying one. The sky is a limit, there are many loyal WordPress theme developers who are providing beautiful WordPress themes for you. Go and use anyone.
In fact, don’t worry if you can’t afford premium theme. Go ahead! install any suitable theme from WordPress directory and lock it for at least one year. Because changing theme frequently is really time killing and bad blogging practices. Move on to start focusing on creating useful content and the growth of your blog. In few months once your blog starts giving money back, you can go with the premium design.
If You Can Afford Premium Theme
In case, if you have at least $100 to buy a premium theme, I would recommend buying my favourite theme Genesis WordPress Framework + Genesis Child Theme that will cover all three checklists above. Even if you are a newbie you can customise the design of your blog just like designed by a geek.
When I had switched from free to premium I bought so many themes from Themeforest and some other premium theme providers. But after so many months wasting weeks of weeks on just tweaking design instead of growing my blog, somehow I found Genesis theme. Honestly from then (I think it happened in 2013) I have stopped looking for any other themes.
I have been using Genesis for years now so I always recommend it. It’s light (file size), fast, secure and easily customizable.
Genesis theme has two parts: One Framework contains main theme files and another child theme that controls the front-end design of the blog.
Click Here to Download Genesis Theme
Once you have bought and downloaded the genesis theme, go to theme page, click upload theme, select file and hit install and hen activate the theme. You are done!
Step 4: Change The Essential Setting
WordPress by default has all required setting to go ahead and start publishing the content. But there are some essential and required setting for SEO and better performance of the blog.
Let’s start with the main setting:
Open the main setting in WordPress dashboard.
General Setting
- Check site title
- Change default tagline
- Change admin email address if require.
- Uncheck anyone can register.
Reading Setting
Uncheck Discourage search engines from indexing this site. Extremely important
Permalink
Change the style of permalink, post name is recommended.
Profile Setting
Now navigate to profile setting from upper right corner.
Fill all essential fields and your author bio.
Done with design and customization of the blog? Now, you can enhance functionality and featured even more by using recommended plugins in the next step.
Step 5: Install recommended plugins
WordPress has another great feature to make it dynamically useful for any purpose by using suitable plugins. If you want you can make it eCommerce website to sell a physical or digital product. A membership website or a service website or a portfolio or simply a plain blog and much more. There is at least one plugin for any purpose.
Just like the theme, there are thousands of free and premium plugins in WordPress community. Of course, you shouldn’t use all of them, but there are a few plugins that every WordPress website should have. In this part let’s select and install some extremely essential plugins for your blog.
Jetpack is a must-have plugin for every WordPress installation. It comes with dozens of features to enhance the performance of your blog. Install, activate and connect with wordpress.com
It’s No. 1 SEO plugin to optimise your blog to help search engine index your website. Remember, it does not rank or boost SEO but it makes the process easy for you and the Search Engine. Just install it for now, in the next section, I will help you how to customise it.
Install and activate this plugin, then go to Google Analytics signup/login through your Gmail account you will see this screen, add your website to get tracking ID/Code and connect as directed by the plugin.
As you start a website, people can contact you from the day first for different purposes. You can help them to contact you efficiently through contact forms. This plugin will help you create powerful contact forms. I use and recommend gravity forms that are premium plugins. But if you don’t have the budget to buy premium plugins, you can either use Contact 7 or Ninja forms.
Email marketing is evergreen growth and a traffic channel for the blog. You can use this premium plugin to collect email addresses of your readers. Again, if you don’t have the budget, you can use any other free opt-in plugins from WordPress directory.
It’s another must have a free and very powerful plugin to reduce spam comments on your blog. Although paid option is also amiable, but its free version is more than enough for the purpose.
There are many other plugins that you can use depending upon your requirement, but don’t forget to use these plugins to take your blog to the next level.
OK! You have created and customised your blog to the professional level. Now in the next section, we will optimise it for tight SEO and conversion to meet the purpose of creating it. Ready? Let’s go!
P.S. before we will go ahead, please note that the blog you have created so far is more than enough to go ahead and start creating content. You can skip and jump to the last section, how to create post and pages. But if you want to play with more advanced version, don’t forget to follow and implement the next step.
Optimise For SEO.
Search engine optimisation is always the fascinating term for everyone who has a blog or just started fresh anew. We will discuss more it in the next part how to market your blog, but for now let’s optimise your blog ready for SEO, traffic and conversion. Let’s start with creating and connecting Google webmaster account:
Go to Google webmaster account and log in using your Gmail account.
Add this site verification code using Webmaster tools option in general setting of the Yoast plugin and click verify. If everything is correct, you will see continue button as shown in the gif above. If you can’t find this option, leave it for now, I will let you know how can you do this later in Yoast guide below.
Step 6: Add Essential SEO Setting
As SEO is a very powerful growth channel to take your blog from zero to the next level, so you need to focus on taking its advantages from the day first. Install SEO Yoast if you couldn’t, activate and go to the Dashboard.
For quick setup, click on General tab and click the big Open the configuration wizard button. Once you have done that process, go back to the dashboard and click on features tab now.
Enable Advanced settings pages
The advanced settings include site-wide settings for your titles and meta descriptions, social metadata, sitemaps and much more.
Add Homepage Title and Meta
Next, after saving this option, you will see few more options in Yoast plugin. Click on “Title and Meta” fill this with a suitable title and blog description.
Go to webmaster tools, add Google webmaster tool site verification code and hit save. Just after that, go to webmaster tool account and hit verify there too.
Open entireweb.com in a new tab and submit your website to all search engine by choosing free plan.
Congratulations! your blog is fully optimised with essential SEO setting. Move on and create your first post and important pages.
Conclusion:
Congratulations again! you have created WordPress blog from scratch like a pro. Hope you have followed each step throughout the process. If yes! you become 50% professional blogger because you own an industry standard blog. Now start and keep writing blog posts to become the complete blogger.
Please don’t forget to share your blogging journey, if you need any help please leave a comment below or contact me here.
The post How to Create A WordPress Blog: Professional and SEO Optimised appeared first on OpenThrive.