How to create a wordpress website ?
Posted 25th July 2012 at 04:13 AM by managepro
Wordpress is a great blogging platform and is very effective as a Content Management System. In this post I am going to cover up the basics of wordpress and provide a few pointers on how to create a wordpress website.
Firstly, Wordpress is a great website tool for the non-techies. Even if you have NO knowledge about coding or php you can create some really powerful websites with Wordpress.
Wordpress is simple but at the same time is very powerful.
Here are a few pointers to what makes Wordpress so Easy to Use?
Step 1. Wordpress Best Practices
Most people who start with a wordpress blog jump to installation of wordpress and start writing content, this is a key mistake.
It is important that you first spend some time understanding wordpress and planning how you are going to be going about things.
Spend some time understanding wordpress as a whole, evaluate your websites business needs and how you will use wordpress to meet these needs. Also get clear on what is going to be your content writing and seo strategy.
Once you have a clear plan for your blog, then you can continue with the following steps.
Step 2: Wordpress Installation
The next step to setup your blog is to get a web-hosting account and installing wordpress.
If this sounds greek and latin to you then dont worry.
Installing wordpress is really easy now, you can do it in a matter of a few clicks. Choose a good hosting provider like hostgator or bluehost, they provide a 1 click wordpress install.
Once you have your hosting setup, login to your cpanel and install wordpress using fantastico or simple scripts. Most hosts even provide you with video tutorials for setting up wordpress using the cpanel.
Step 3: Wordpress Site Design and Layout
Great, now that you have a functional wordpress site the next thing you need to do is setup the look and feel for your website. The Wordpress look and feel is setup using themes.
Themes are pre-designed skins for wordpress that you can easily cloth your wordpress website with, the themes come pre-designed with the graphics, colors, layout and texts. You have the ability of customizing the header images and the text to your liking.
There are several pre-designed wordpress themes that you can download and use, or you can purchase a professionally wordpress designed theme for a better look and feel.
Step 4: Wordpress Content Creation
The next step after setting up the look and feel for your website is start writing content for your website. Content in wordpress is written using posts and pages.
Posts are the standard blogging format, all your posts will be displayed on the blog page. In addition to posts you can also add pages like about us, product page etc which are static pages.
The posts and pages both provide you with the ability to add graphics, audios and videos using an easy WYSIWYG (What you see is what you get editor).
Step 5: Wordpress Configuration
Wordpress provides you with several parameters that you can tweak to setup your wordpress website towards your business needs and liking.
Some of the important configurations you must perform are the setup your wordpress blog title, setup permalinks to be search engine friendly, customize your 404 error page, etc.
If you are not sure about what you are doing in this section, then you can leave it for now and your wordpress website will function fine with the standard configuration.
Step 6: Wordpress Plugins and Widgets
One of the best and most powerful features of wordpress is the ability to add plugins and widget. Plugins and Widgets are additional functionality modules that can be used to extend the functionality of wordpress.
Some examples of standard wordpress plugins are contact forms, optin forms for lead generation, image galaries, image sliders, etc.
Further there are several domain specific plugins and widgets available such as currency converters, Body Mass Index calculators etc.
Step 7: Wordpress Must Have Plugins
When you setup your wordpress website there are some plugins that you must have, these plugins include:
Step 8: Wordpress Advertising
Once you have setup the basic plugins on your website, now you can setup some plugins to monetize your website and start making some money. Advertising is the best way to monetize your wordpress website, you can choose from several of the available banner and advertisement management plugins.
You can also subscribe to and use google adsense or several of the PPC programs to monetize your website.
However it’s important to know that people come to your website for information and not advertisements, so do not load-up your website with unlimited ads or this will just push your visitors away.
Step 9: Wordpress Social Media Integration
Great now that you are setup to monetize your website the next thing is to start getting some traffic to your website.
There are several ways to get traffic; one of the methods that can get you instant traffic is social media traffic.
The world has gone social now, nearly everybody is on facebook and twitter, you can add facebook and twitter buttons to your website so that people can send your website pages to their friends and followers.
Step 10: Wordpress Maintenance
Maintenance is important for any software; you will need to moderate your website comments for spam and genuine comment.
Also it is really important that you perform the basic tune-up tasks such as delete comments, delete un-necessary posts and pages, remove unwanted and unused plugins, etc.
Last but not the least it is really important that you BACKUP your website on a regular basis, so that you are ready in the event of any failure.
Step 11: Wordpress Administration
One of the cool features of wordpress is it allows you to create users.
If you would like others to contribute to your website you can create a username and password for them and they too can add content to your website.
When you do this you will need to perform administration of your wordpress website to manage these users.
Great, these are the 11 steps you must follow to create and manage a wordpress website.
Firstly, Wordpress is a great website tool for the non-techies. Even if you have NO knowledge about coding or php you can create some really powerful websites with Wordpress.
Wordpress is simple but at the same time is very powerful.
Here are a few pointers to what makes Wordpress so Easy to Use?
- Wordpress comes with a WYSIWYG (What You See Is What You Get) Editor which allows you to just type in content to your Wordpress Blog (no need for any knowledge about coding or php or any of that technical jargon).
- Wordpress makes it very easy for you to add images and videos to your blog using the media manager. It is also very easy to embed videos from Youtube and other Streaming Video sites in Wordpress.
- Wordpress has over 15,000 plugins and widgets which you can use to extend the functionality of your Wordpress Blog, and this can be done without writing a single line of code.
- Wordpress can be installed in a few clicks at most hosting services; some services even provide a 1 click Worpress Install.
Step 1. Wordpress Best Practices
Most people who start with a wordpress blog jump to installation of wordpress and start writing content, this is a key mistake.
It is important that you first spend some time understanding wordpress and planning how you are going to be going about things.
Spend some time understanding wordpress as a whole, evaluate your websites business needs and how you will use wordpress to meet these needs. Also get clear on what is going to be your content writing and seo strategy.
Once you have a clear plan for your blog, then you can continue with the following steps.
Step 2: Wordpress Installation
The next step to setup your blog is to get a web-hosting account and installing wordpress.
If this sounds greek and latin to you then dont worry.
Installing wordpress is really easy now, you can do it in a matter of a few clicks. Choose a good hosting provider like hostgator or bluehost, they provide a 1 click wordpress install.
Once you have your hosting setup, login to your cpanel and install wordpress using fantastico or simple scripts. Most hosts even provide you with video tutorials for setting up wordpress using the cpanel.
Step 3: Wordpress Site Design and Layout
Great, now that you have a functional wordpress site the next thing you need to do is setup the look and feel for your website. The Wordpress look and feel is setup using themes.
Themes are pre-designed skins for wordpress that you can easily cloth your wordpress website with, the themes come pre-designed with the graphics, colors, layout and texts. You have the ability of customizing the header images and the text to your liking.
There are several pre-designed wordpress themes that you can download and use, or you can purchase a professionally wordpress designed theme for a better look and feel.
Step 4: Wordpress Content Creation
The next step after setting up the look and feel for your website is start writing content for your website. Content in wordpress is written using posts and pages.
Posts are the standard blogging format, all your posts will be displayed on the blog page. In addition to posts you can also add pages like about us, product page etc which are static pages.
The posts and pages both provide you with the ability to add graphics, audios and videos using an easy WYSIWYG (What you see is what you get editor).
Step 5: Wordpress Configuration
Wordpress provides you with several parameters that you can tweak to setup your wordpress website towards your business needs and liking.
Some of the important configurations you must perform are the setup your wordpress blog title, setup permalinks to be search engine friendly, customize your 404 error page, etc.
If you are not sure about what you are doing in this section, then you can leave it for now and your wordpress website will function fine with the standard configuration.
Step 6: Wordpress Plugins and Widgets
One of the best and most powerful features of wordpress is the ability to add plugins and widget. Plugins and Widgets are additional functionality modules that can be used to extend the functionality of wordpress.
Some examples of standard wordpress plugins are contact forms, optin forms for lead generation, image galaries, image sliders, etc.
Further there are several domain specific plugins and widgets available such as currency converters, Body Mass Index calculators etc.
Step 7: Wordpress Must Have Plugins
When you setup your wordpress website there are some plugins that you must have, these plugins include:
- Akismet Plugin to manage Spam.
- Google Analytics plugin to measure your websites performance.
- All-in-one SEO plugin for Search Engine Optimization.
- Contact Form Plugins to interact with your target audience.
- Feedburner plugin to provide blog updates to people interested in your blog.
- Aweber plugin if you would like to capture leads.
- Sitemap plugin to inform your users and the search engines about all the pages on your website.
Step 8: Wordpress Advertising
Once you have setup the basic plugins on your website, now you can setup some plugins to monetize your website and start making some money. Advertising is the best way to monetize your wordpress website, you can choose from several of the available banner and advertisement management plugins.
You can also subscribe to and use google adsense or several of the PPC programs to monetize your website.
However it’s important to know that people come to your website for information and not advertisements, so do not load-up your website with unlimited ads or this will just push your visitors away.
Step 9: Wordpress Social Media Integration
Great now that you are setup to monetize your website the next thing is to start getting some traffic to your website.
There are several ways to get traffic; one of the methods that can get you instant traffic is social media traffic.
The world has gone social now, nearly everybody is on facebook and twitter, you can add facebook and twitter buttons to your website so that people can send your website pages to their friends and followers.
Step 10: Wordpress Maintenance
Maintenance is important for any software; you will need to moderate your website comments for spam and genuine comment.
Also it is really important that you perform the basic tune-up tasks such as delete comments, delete un-necessary posts and pages, remove unwanted and unused plugins, etc.
Last but not the least it is really important that you BACKUP your website on a regular basis, so that you are ready in the event of any failure.
Step 11: Wordpress Administration
One of the cool features of wordpress is it allows you to create users.
If you would like others to contribute to your website you can create a username and password for them and they too can add content to your website.
When you do this you will need to perform administration of your wordpress website to manage these users.
Great, these are the 11 steps you must follow to create and manage a wordpress website.
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