Creating a WordPress Site in 4 Easy Steps

I thought it would be cool to go over these 4 easy steps to creating a WordPress site for those of you that would like to start your own blog or website. If you haven’t yet taken the plunge because you’re afraid it may be too time consuming or think you may not have the programming skills to get one up and running. Well think again, creating a WordPress website or blog is super easy and you can have your site up and running in no time.
 

Domain Name

The first step you’ll want to take is to get a good domain name. Your domain name should be something that relates to either your niche or the product you’re wanting to promote. This may actually be the most important step of all. A good solid domain name is an excellent tool in letting people know what your site is about.
 
I know that a lot of great domain names have already been taken so you’ll have to put a little more effort in securing a great one, but they are still out there. Try to focus on getting one that isn’t too long and that doesn’t contain a bunch of hyphens and underscores. It’s been proven that a domain name without all the extra characters will perform better in search engine results. Not only that but it’s a lot easier for people to remember.
 
There are many places you can order your domain name from, but it’s not always best to get the cheapest service. Personally I use 1&1 Internet for my domain registration needs and they’ve been an excellent provider, I’ve had no problems with them. I have also heard many great things about Hostgator and GoDaddy as well. But who ever you go with just remember, this is just the domain registration, you can host your domain anywhere you choose. So don’t get trapped into believing you have to host at the same place you register your domain.
 

Hosting Provider

Ok, so once you’ve chosen and registered your domain name, then it’s time to purchase a hosting package. Now you can either host your domain with the same company you registered it with, or you can choose a different company to handle your hosting. I did a lot of research on who I wanted to host my domains and I finally decided on Hostgator. They seemed to have a wide selection of Content Management System software that they offer for free with your hosting package, this makes it super easy to get services up and running. Plus they have a 1-Click installation process that allows you to install these software packages with the click of a button. For the sake of this tutorial, we’ll focus on the WordPress software.
 
Many people I know have also been happy with Godaddy for their hosting needs as well, but I’ve had great success with Hostgator and you can even pay on a monthly basis if you wish. So for those of you that just want to try it out for a bit and see how it goes, this could be a great option. That way you don’t have to sign up for a years hosting at a time if you don’t want to. Plus if you use my Hostgator hosting affiliate link, and the coupon code OddRandomThoughts you’ll get 25% off your hosting. But remember it is only a discount on your initial purchase. So if you sign up for their $3.96/month plan, you will get 25% off the $3.96. So the more months you pay for at the time of sign up, the bigger your discount will be. So if you decide to go ahead and pay for a year up front, you can get it for $5.56/month, but with my coupon code you can turn that $66.72 into $50.04! that’s a pretty good discount and an excellent price on a full year of hosting.
 
You’ll have to check out their plans, the Hatchling Plan only allows for a single domain name, but if you go with the Baby Plan or Business Plan, you will be allowed to host unlimited domain names on the same hosting package. I love this option as I have several websites and I’m able to host them all from the same control panel.
 
But who ever you choose to handle your hosting, it’s best to make sure they offer WordPress in their software lineup.
 

Pointing Your Domain to Your Hosting Provider

Ok, so now you’ve purchased your domain name and set up a hosting account. You’re almost home free, now you just need to point that domain name to your hosting providers DNS servers. That way when someone enters your domain name into their web browser, it will know where to go in order to retrieve your website. I’ll use 1&1 for this example because that is who I use. So, you’ll need to log into your domain control panel, your login credentials should have been emailed to you.
 

 
Then you will need to navigate to your domain overview by clicking on Domains. There you will see your domain listed, you will need to tick the box next to the domain name you want to edit.
 

 
and then click on the DNS tab and select Edit DNS Settings.
 

 
Here you want to select DNS at the top, then the Basic DNS Settings should be set to My name server. Then under the Advanced DNS Settings, you can enter in the Primary and Secondary DNS names provided by your hosting company. They should be something like ns1.blablabla.com and ns2.blablabla.com. Once you’ve entered these in, just click ok, and you’re done. It will usually take 24 to 48 hours for everything to propagate on their servers before the domain name is ready to use. See the image below.
 

 

Installing WordPress

Now we’re getting down to the nitty gritty. Again, we’ll use Hostgator as an example here because that’s who I’m using. Don’t forget if you choose Hostgator to use my coupon code OddRandomThoughts for 25% off your initial hosting package. You know I had to throw my sales pitch in there…lol Ok, moving on…
 
Now, of course the first step is to login to your Hostgator cPanel and look for the section called Software/Services. You should then see something similar to this.
 

 
You will need to click on the QuickInstall icon in order to get your WordPress installation started. Under the Blog Software category on the left hand side you’ll have two options, of course for this tutorial we’ll want to choose WordPress. So click on WordPress and then on the right hand side click on Continue.
 

 
Now you’ll be given the option to select the domain you want to install it on. All your available domain names will be listed in the dropdown. If you want to install your WordPress into a directory folder you can name that directory in the box after the domain name. I find it best to enable Auto Upgrades, next put in your Administrator Email address, the title of you Blog and so on and so on, that’s all pretty self explanatory.
 

 
So that’s it, you have now installed the WordPress software on your domain name and it’s ready to go. It will show you your login credentials and they will also be emailed to the admin email you entered in during the installation. You can login to your WordPress sight and begin looking for themes and setting things up to suit your fancy!
 
These processes have made creating a website so super easy these days and webmasters no long have to learn html or php in order to get an awesome website or blog up and running. I hope this has been helpful to someone out there, and I wish you all the success with your new WordPress website or blog!