How to Make a WordPress Website in 2019 - The Ultimate DIY Guide

Believe it or not, but knowing how to make a website is one of the more essential skills you should master as a small business owner in this day and age.Please bear with me! Heres why:If you know how to make a website on your own, you will save a ton of money on web developers and designers.This will also allow you to follow the market trends and put new things on your website without needing a programmers help.You will effectively stay ahead of your competition because, while they have their projects slowed down by the need to consult developers, you will be able to build most things yourself (within reason, of course).With that being said, the most important piece of the puzzle here is that you can learn how to make a WordPress website and then create something awesome for your business or project all on your own.Last but not least, the DIY approach (no coding skills required) that were presenting here is incredibly budget-friendly. In fact, you can build and run your website for a s little as ~$35 annually.Heres how to make a website on your own, step by step: your WordPress 101.Get a WordPress theme.Get some must-have WordPress plugins.Start creating your pages and blog posts.How to make a website in birds eye viewOkay, heres the plan for what were going to do in the next steps. The important thing to note is that its all DIY-able (if thats a word) and that were minimizing the costs wherever possible.In short, what youll end up with at the end of this guide is a functional, beautiful website that wont put you into debt. Heres what well go through:Table of Contents: 👉 Why choose WordPress as your website platform 👉 How to pick a name for your website, buy a domain hosting 👉 Get familiar with the WordPress UI 👉 Pick a theme / design for your website 👉 Get plugins to extend your websites abilities 👉 Create basic pages 👉 Consider starting a blog 👉 Adjust your site navigation 👉 Pro fit! 💠°Ã°Å¸â€œ ¹ Watch the video version of this tutorialOkay, that last step is mostly up to you, and we wont be focusing much on the profit element in this guide. But we have other resources for that. Check them out!How to Make Money Blogging 17 of the Best IdeasHow to Integrate AdSense With WordPress in 3 Simple StepsStep 1: Choose WordPress as your website platformTruth be told, there are many website platforms that you can use when building a new site Content Management Systems (CMS) is what theyre usually called.The idea of a CMS is to give you some easy-to-use tools so that youre able to edit your sites content without any knowledge of coding. For the most part from the users point of view those CMS look much like the familiar interfaces at Facebook or Google Docs. You basically create new pages or documents, and then have them published to the web.But enough with the technicalities! As I said, there are many CMS out there more than 100, in fact, as listed by Wiki pedia.Luckily, though, picking the best one is simple. Theres only one king on top of the mountain and its WordPress.WordPress is used on more than 32% of all websites (data says). Again, thats all websites!(Charts by Visualizer.)Or, to say it differently, roughly every one in three websites that you visit is built on WordPress.Here are the key details about WordPress:its open sourceits freeits the ultimate DIY solution for website buildingits extra versatile can run any type of websiteits fast, optimized, and secureits SEO-ready makes promotion easierNow, one important distinction; the WordPress that were talking about here is WordPress, the software. You can find it if you go to WordPress.org.Theres also the other flavor of WordPress WordPress, the commercial service, which you can find if you go to WordPress.com. We describe the differences between the two here.For now, though, lets just remember that what we want is at WordPress.org, since its a more versatile and cheaper-to -use version of the platform. This will all become clear in the next steps.🎠¯ Action note. Theres no actionable task that you need to do at this point. Step 1 is just about getting yourself familiar with the tool that youre going to use to build your site  in the next steps.Step 2: Pick a name for your website, buy a domain hostingWhen learning how to make a website, picking a name is probably the most fun aspect of the whole process.After all, you have complete freedom here. You can pick literally any name you wish for your website.However! There are still some things you need to understand to set yourself up for success later down the road.First off, there are nearly 2 billion (!) websites online on the web (at the time of writing). Meaning, staying original can be quite challenging.Its a really good idea to construct your websites name (and thus your domain name) around either the name of your organization (the most obvious approach) or a phrase thats associated with the niche youre in, but with some added words for better brandability.In short, a good domain name should be:brandable unique sounding, like nothing else thats out there in the marketeasy to memorizeshort those are also easier to memorizeeasy to type and hard to mix up you dont want people to be wondering how to spell your sites nameincluding niche-related keywords for instance, if you do anything with pizza, it would be cool to have pizza somewhere in the name of the site; it works the same in non-pizza industries as well.  Ã°Å¸ â€¢Since this might sound like a lot to think about when youre looking for a name, you can make the job easier by checking out some of the cool domain name generators that are out there. Heres a list of five of the best options + how to use them.If you cant be bothered to read that, you can go straight to our no.1 generator Domain Wheel and see how it can help you.Start by inputting a seed keyword that defines your website well.Domain Wheel will come b ack with some suggestions. You can narrow it down from there to find your perfect domain name.The next step once you know which domain name you want is to register it and also buy a hosting package in one go. Lets take care of that next:a) Buying your domain name and hosting💠¡ Note. While things like buying a hosting package might sound intimidating at first, theres really nothing to worry about. The process were presenting here is simplified and doesnt require you to do any technical heavy-lifting.🠧™ Beginner's note: What is hosting anyway? To say it simply, web hosting (aka. web server) is something that no website can live without. Its the place where your website sits and waits to be accessed by visitors.Contrary to popular belief, websites are not just on the internet or on Google. Instead, theyre housed on web servers web hosting setups and then get served to all visitors from there.To keep your website online, you need to rent out server space from a web hosti ng company.This is all much simpler in practice than it sounds, which youll see in just a minute.There are tens if not hundreds of different companies that can register a new domain name for you. Then, there are also tons of companies that can sell you a hosting packageBut lets not complicate things for ourselves and instead get everything from a single company and in one go.Were going to use Bluehost. Heres why:Bluehost is a reputable web host thats optimized for WordPress and will make sure that your website operates with no hiccupsits one of the few companies recommended on the official WordPress.org websiteits cheap (from $2.95/month)its easy to use and beginner-friendlyyou get a domain name for freeHeres whats going to happen now:Were going to go to Bluehost and pick a hosting plan for our website.Were going to register a domain name with Bluehost as well (the domain is free).Were going to tell Bluehost to install and configure a clean version of WordPress on our new hosting s etup.Well walk out with a 100% operational WordPress website!Lets get started this is how to make a website:First, click here to go to Bluehost. Once on the page, click on the Choose Plan button.In most cases if youre launching a new site, the cheapest plan called Basic is going to be enough. Its only $2.95/month.In the next step, enter the domain name that youve decided to get for your site:Next, provide your personal data:Before continuing, its good to check and confirm the parameters of the hosting setup that youve chosen. This can be found in the section labeled package information:Note; youll get the lowest price if you purchase your hosting package for at least 12 months.At this stage, you can click on SUBMIT and finalize your purchase.b) Telling Bluehost to install WordPress for youSince you now have signed up to Bluehost and have your hosting setup ready to go, the only element  thats missing is WordPress.While you technically can install WordPress manually, why would y ou  if you can get other people to do it for you, and for free! Heres how:As soon as you completed the sign-up process with Bluehost, you should have received an email from the Bluehost crew with some details on how to log into your customer profile and begin working on your site.Once youre logged in, Bluehost will show you an easy to use wizard that takes you through the process of installing WordPress on your hosting setup.Alternatively, you can also install WordPress by going to the My Sites section and clicking on the Create Site button:All that Bluehost needs in order to install WordPress for you is the name of your new site and the username/password that you want to use when managing WordPress. Once youve completed the wizard, your site is installed and ready to go!Step 3: Get familiar with the WordPress UIYou can log in to your WordPress user panel if you go to www.YOURDOMAIN.com/wp-admin/This is what youll see:Use the access credentials that youve set in Bluehost in the pr evious step (the WordPress install screenshot above).After logging in successfully, youll see the main WordPress interface in all its glory:(1) Welcome message Some of the most important areas of the admin panel listed as quick shortcuts links these are usually your shortcuts to how to make a website.(2) The current status of your site and whats going on with it.(3) Posts go here to create blog posts.(4) Media upload/manage images and other media files here.(5) Pages go here to create sub-pages.(6) Comments this is where you can moderate comments.(7) Appearance change your sites design here and/or customize how certain things are displayed on the current design.(8) Plugins install new plugins here.(9) Users manage user accounts that can access the admin panel of the website.(10) Settings the main settings.At this stage, its good to take care of some basic getting-started WordPress settings that will improve your experience further down the road.a) Set permalinksPermalinks define how the individual web page addresses aka URLs are structured within your site.The most optimized structure is to have the pages title in the URL. For example, your about page (more on that page later on) should be available under something as simple as YOURSITE.com/about. Setting the permalinks correctly will allow you to achieve that.To set your permalinks, go to Settings → Permalinks from the main sidebar in your WP dashboard.Once there, select this setting:b) Making your site publicI guess you want Google to be able to find and index your website. To make sure thats the case, go to Settings → Reading, and make sure that the box labeled Discourage search engines is unchecked.c) Set your website title and taglineGo to Settings → General and set the Site Title and Tagline  fields to what you want.Your site title and tagline might appear in various places throughout the site. Some WordPress themes display those on the homepage and in the SEO descript ion which Google uses when listing your website on the results pages.The tagline is optional you can leave it blank if you dont have a tagline for the site.d) Allow or disable commentsWhether or not you want to accept comments on your website is up to you.On the one hand, letting readers leave their opinions and questions under your articles/pages can be great for building a community around the website. But, on the other, youll also have your hands busy dealing with spam and making sure that theres no trolling.Whether youll end up allowing or disabling comments, it can be done in Settings → Discussion.e) Disable pingbacks and trackbacksI dont know why this setting is even still in WordPress. Its mostly a leftover from back in the day when pingbacks and trackbacks were a thing.Though, if you want to learn how to make a website in this day and age, you can simply deactivate them by deselecting the following setting in Settings → Discussion.f) Set your time zoneSetting your time zone correctly will make publishing new pages and posts more predictable.Generally, you want to set the time zone to either where youre at or where your target audience is at. Whichever makes more sense.You can set the time zone in Settings → General.With the basic settings out of the way, we can get to the fun stuff:Step 4: Pick a theme / design for your websiteThe great thing about WordPress is that it works with interchangeable designs called themes.Meaning, you can switch the way your WordPress website looks with just one click.For example, this is what a WordPress website looks by default, right after the installation:With just a couple of clicks, and with a popular free theme called Hestia, for example, we can get it to look like this:Heres how:a) Pick a theme that you likeAs I mentioned, WordPress themes are out-the-box design packages that define the way your website looks. You can install them quickly and then change them in the future if need be.The crit ical detail here is that themes dont change the contents of your site but only alter the presentation.Theres a huge abundance of WordPress themes out there. Just looking into the official directory at WordPress.org, there are hundreds of themes there.But thats just the tip of the iceberg. There are a lot more free themes on the web on third-party sites (like JustFreeThemes), and theres also a whole other world of paid themes that are distributed by independent theme stores (like ThemeIsle or aThemes) and even theme marketplaces (like ThemeForest).Even though there are myriads of paid themes out there, for most users, free themes are a great option to start with. The surprising thing about some of the best free themes  is how many impressive features they bring to the table without asking for anything in return.So, how to pick a theme thats right for you? Here are some tips if you want to give this a more in-depth look. Generally, though, you dont need to spend too much time on thi s and go a simple route instead.We can do that because the theme you choose today doesnt have to be your final decision. You can always come back to it later on and change it in a matter of minutes.Therefore, were going to go for a safe bet and use one of the most popular free themes in the market today to demonstrate how WordPress themes work. That theme is the aforementioned Hestia.🎠¨ Note. While we will use Hestia as the example in the following section, its not the only free theme that you can use. Heres our collection of theme roundups  for multiple purposes, starting from business websites to blogs, travel, food, personal sites, and more. You can use any one of those themes. The procedure is the same.b) Install your themeIf the theme youve chosen is available in the official directory at WordPress.org then the only thing you need in order to install it is the themes name. Yep. Thats it.Heres how theme installation is done:Go to Appearance → Themes from your Word Press dashboard and then click on Add New.From there, input the name of the theme that you want to install, like so:Youll see it displayed on the list below the search field. Just click on the Install button under your desired theme:After a second, the theme will be installed. To fully enable it on your site, click on the Activate button that will appear in place of the Install button.Hestia is one of those themes that offer some excellent onboarding for new users. To see what the theme has in store for you, click on the button from the welcome prompt.Youll see your main Hestia panel from which you can learn about the theme and extend its out-the-box features with some extras. Lets do that now.First, click on the Recommended Actions link to see whats available.Out of the options proposed there, lets go with only Orbit Fox Companion for now. Just click the Install and activate button.💠¡ Note. Orbit Fox Companion is a plugin. Well talk about WordPress plugins more in depth late r in this guide on how to make a website.Orbit Fox is a nice addition to Hestia as it delivers some cool features to upgrade your sites looks. For instance, you get some useful new modules for the homepage, a template directory that will be helpful when building your sub-pages (such as about or contact), and custom menu icons.At this stage, your new theme is active on your site. You can see it in action simply by going to YOURDOMAIN.com.Though, what youre seeing there is far from the themes potential. Right now, well take care of adapting the design, menus, and other elements to make the site look exactly like you want it. Heres how:c) Customize the themeWhile the out-the-box look of your theme might be already quite nice, you should still do some basic customizations to make it fit your needs hand-in-glove.To begin, go to Appearance → Customize. Youll see the main WordPress Customizer interface.From there, you can fine-tune a load of things. Well start with the homepage, sin ce its the most representative.Setting up your homepage.Do the following:In the sidebar, go to Homepage Settings.Select the option, A static page under your homepage display setting.Click on Add New, to create a new page to act as your homepage.Input the name for the page HOME seems like a good idea and click on Add.This will replace the default listing of your sites most recent articles with a completely custom homepage. By default, youll see some cool elements on your new homepage.See here: For starters, lets change the main headline on the page. Its a good idea to put either the name of your business there or anything else that serves as the title for the entire site.To make the changes, click on the pencil icon thats next to the headline.When you do so, a customization panel will appear on the left.Through it, you can:change the background image make it something related to your businesschange the titlechange the text under the title you can remove this completely if you wan t tochange the button text usually leading to your products or most crucial pages (more on that in a minute)Underneath that, you get to adjust any of the other available homepage blocks. By default, you get all of these (see this list by going to Frontpage Sections from the Customizer sidebar):The Features section is a great place to explain what your company has to offer or what the purpose of the website is that purpose is probably the no.1 thing to keep in mind as you learn how to make a website.The About section is a great place to talk about your story.The Team section you can use if more people work in your business and youd like to highlight them.The Ribbon is another place where you can mention your primary call to action.The Testimonials section is awesome  when you want to showcase what your previous customers had to say about your business.The Contact section is where you can display your contact information and let people know how to best reach you.There are also a h andful of more sections available. Its best to browse through those and pick the ones that make sense to use for your business and in your specific situation.When youre done adjusting the homepage, dont forget to click on the main Publish button thats at the top.Adjusting the typography.The next thing to do would be to take care of your sites typography the fonts used throughout the site.You can do that by going to Appearance Settings → Typography from the WordPress Customizer sidebar. In there, you will be able to pick a font and see it on your site immediately.Colors.Out the box, your new theme is going to use a couple of primary colors that define its default color scheme. You can change that setting in the WordPress Customizer. Just click on Colors in the main sidebar.The Accent Color is usually the color used for buttons, links, and everything else thats meant to stand out from the rest of the sites design.After doing the above, your website will start feeling like its truly yours. You will have made all the necessary tune-ups and customizations to make it fit with your brand.💠¡ Note. There are many more settings in the WordPress Customizer to experiment with. For instance, you can:pick the default layout of your website whether you want the sidebar to be on the left, right, or nowhere,how you want the blog listing to be displayed,whether you want a main background image for the entire site,the shape of the buttons, and much more.Step 5: Get plugins to extend your websites abilitiesPlugins are to your WordPress site what apps are to your iPhone. 📠±In other words, they extend the standard functionality of your site by adding some much-needed features. Essentially, as youre figuring out how to make a website on your own, plugins are how you can get some great features without knowing any coding.Here are the plugins you should consider getting best of all, they are all free:Yoast SEO   helps you make search engine optimization tweak s and make your site more accessible to the search engines in general.Google Analytics for WordPress this one integrates your website with the most popular traffic analysis solution on the web.Wordfence Security improves the security of your WordPress site.UpdraftPlus does automatic backups of your website.Optimole optimizes your images.WPForms lets you add interactive contact forms to your website, which your visitors can use to reach you directly much better than displaying your email in plain text on your site.Also look through this list of the most popular WordPress plugins of all time. You might find something interesting there as well.Installing plugins is simple. If its a free plugin that were dealing with, then all you need is the plugins name.Go to your WordPress dashboard and then to Plugins → Add New. From there, input the name of the plugin that you want into the search field, and then click on Install and Activate.Heres a step-by-step tutorial on installing WordPress plugins.Step 6: Create basic pagesThere are some pages that all websites should have, regardless of their purpose or goal.But first, how to even create a page in the first place:To do that, simply go to your WordPress dashboard, and then Pages → Add New. Youll see this screen:(1) A place for the headline of the page.(2) The body section the main content of the page. The interface is very similar to MS Word. You get all the basic text formatting features (like bold, italics, aligning text to left/right/center, creating lists, etc.).(3) You can add images by clicking this button.(4) Switch between the Text and Visual editors. Use the former only if youre at least vaguely familiar with HTML code.(5) The Publish section. This is where the main Publish button is.(6) Discussion. Decide whether or not you want to allow comments. The trackbacks and pingbacks setting you can leave unchecked.(7) Featured image. Most WordPress themes take that featured image and display it s omewhere in a prominent spot alongside your page.When youre done editing the pages content, click on Publish.Now, with the how-to out of the way, here are the pages you should consider creating:About Ive mentioned this a couple of times now since its really an important one. Your About page is where you get to tell the story of what your website is and why people should pay attention. This one page is basically a must-have for everyone who wants to learn how to make a website.Contact this is where you can display some contact info along with a nice contact form, through which people can reach you directly (you can get such a form via the aforementioned WPForms plugin).Privacy Policy this page has become a hugely important element on todays web. Learn more about privacy policy pages in WordPress here.Portfolio a place for you to showcase your past work.Store a crucial thing if you want to sell anything from your site. To make this work, you also need a popular WooCommerce plugin the best e-commerce solution for WordPress.Once youre done with those, you can also check out this list of 12 valuable pages worth having on your site.Step 7: Consider starting a blogA blog (as well as marketing through content aka content marketing in general) is among the most effective ways to promote not only your website but also any products that you might want to sell through that website.And its not just me saying this; theres raw data proving that blogs are a superior tool for marketing online, with  55% of marketers saying that blogging is their top inbound marketing priority.Running a blog is a straightforward concept. What you do is publish articles related to the topic of your website and do it regularly.From a technical point of view, WordPress has blogging tools built right into it from the get-go. In fact, WordPress started as a blogging platform.To create a new blog post, all you need to do is go to Posts → Add New (from your WordPress dashboard).The pro cess itself of creating a blog post works nearly the same as creating a new page. The editing panel looks nearly the same (the screenshot below), and the options are mostly the same as well.One of the few differences is that you can also assign your posts to categories and tags.This is what adding a new blog post looks like: Once youre done working on a blog post, click on Publish.To make your posts easily accessible, you should designate one of your pages to serve as the main blog listing for the posts.To do it, first, go to Pages → Add New and create a blank page. Call it BLOG just to make things clear.Next, go to Settings → Reading, and select your newly created Blog page as the Posts page like so:At this stage, you can navigate to that new page and see all your recent blog posts there.Of course, the tough part about starting a blog is to write blog posts regularly and to make them attractive for people to read. Heres more on how to build a blog that rocks!Step 8: Adjust your site navigationWith all your key pages online (and perhaps your blog started as well), its now a good moment to adjust your sites navigation and make it overall easier to consume for the visitors.Well focus on two elements here:a) MenusMenus are the primary vehicle through which visitors navigate your site, thus theyre crucial when figuring out how to make a website.Depending on your theme, you will have a couple of options to choose from regarding menu settings. Heres what you can usually do (on Hestias example):First, go to Appearance → Menus in your WordPress dashboard.Youll see this default panel:To the left, there are all the pages you can choose to add to a menu. To the right, you can see the menu structure itself and all its settings.Lets start by selecting a couple of key pages and adding them to the menu. A good idea is to pick About, Contact, plus whatever other one or two pages you consider to be important, and add them to the menu.The great thing about this whole panel is that you can drag and drop the menu items to reorder them.When youre done, select the menu location at the bottom. Usually, selecting the location labeled Primary Menu will result in showing the menu in the top section of the website. This is probably what you want for your main menu. Click on Save Menu to save the settings.💠¡ Note. You can create additional menus as well. Just click on the create a new menu link thats visible in the screenshot above. This will show you the same menu creation panel.  Each menu needs to be displayed in a different location. So, for this new one, you can assign it as the Footer Menu.When you go to your site now, youll see the menu in place.b) WidgetsWidgets are an old-school feature in WordPress. In simple terms, a widget is a small block of content that can be displayed in various places around the website.The usual placement of those blocks is in the sidebar or the footer of the site.To see what this might look like and to set your widgets, go to Appearance → Widgets in your WordPress dashboard. Youll get this screen:The Hestia theme offers a number of widget areas apart from the sidebar or the footer, but lets not focus on those additional placements for now.To add any widget to a widget area, just grab it from the left-hand side and drag-and-drop it onto your chosen widget area on the right.For instance, as you can see, on my site, I have Search, Recent Posts, Archives, and Categories in my sidebar (screenshot above). Heres what those widgets look like when I go to my About page, for example:After youre done with your widgets and navigation, your site is basically ready for the world to see!Video version of this tutorialHeres a video walk-through of the steps required to make a website on WordPress. You can treat it as a summary of whats been said above.Go to topConclusionThats it! Youve just learned how to make a website! 🠍 ¾Ã°Å¸Å½Å The cool thing about the process presented here is that you can do it all by yourself and dont have to hire anyone. Going with WordPress as your website platform is the most budget-friendly solution available.If you want to learn more about what to do with your website once its launched e.g. how to promote your website, or how to monetize your website   read any of our other guides on the blog.If you have any questions about how to make a website, ask away in the comments below! * This post contains affiliate links, which means that if you click on one of the product links and then purchase the product, well receive a small fee. No worries though, youll still pay the standard amount so theres no cost on your part.