Over the past month or two, I have gotten a handful of emails from a couple of my websites asking for advice on how to build nice looking websites using wordpress. We’re not talking blogs, we’re talking actual websites.
I have decided to write this massive post explaining how to make a website using wordpress. It contains a handful of pictures, and some great advice. Now, this post will include EVERYTHING you need to do. If you already sort of know what you are doing, you might not need the first fre steps. As always, if you have any questions, or if I left something out, post a comment or use the contact form to get in touch.
Note: Affiliate links ARE in this post, but I am NOT promoting anything I don’t use for EVERY single website I develop using WordPress.
To get started on your WordPress website, you will need to install wordpress. I always use Fantastico, which is provided in my cPanel (I use HostGator). It allows me to install wordpress with the click of a button. There is a picture below outlining how to install WordPress with Fantastico.
From where the picture leaves off, you just fill in the details, and WordPress is installed! If your web host doesn’t have Fantastico, the link below will instruct you on installing and configuring WordPress:
Now that WordPress is installed on your hosting account, you are ready to configure all of the settings to transform the blog into a website.
There are a number of options that require changing in order to effectively use WordPress for your website.
1. Change your “general settings”. (Optional)
There are a number of options under the “General” tab. Most of them relate to the date and time defaults for your blog. It is nice to change these to your liking, but it isn’t necessary.
2. First, you will actually need to navigate away from the settings menu. You will need to navigate to the “Pages” menu, and add two pages. You will need to add two new pages; One to be your home page, and another to be your “blog” page (a page where blog posts show up. Not necessary, but recommended). Once you have clicked “Add New”, simply title your two pages, and you are done. Later on, you can add content, and even rename them if you’d like.
3. Now we will navigate back to the settings menu. The previous step might not seem relevant, but you will soon see why it was necessary.
Next, you will navigate to the “Reading” menu. Once you are there, you will see the “Front Page Display” options. Adjust your settings according to the picture below (“Blog page shows at most” section is your personal preference. Mine is 3):
4. Up next is the “Discussion” settings. With most websites (websites, not blogs), you won’t want readers to comment, and you wont want pingbacks and trackbacks. For the most part, I turn these off because of spam issues. If you do not want users to be able to comment on your website, adjust your settings as shown below. If you do want to allow comments, you might want to change a few settings on the discussion setting page, but not the ones shown in the picture below.
5. This step is 100% necessary! We will be changing the privacy settings for the website. Under the “Privacy” tab, click the radio button that allows search engines to visit your site. Without this option selected, search engines will not index your website.
6. This step, we will change the “Permalinks” settings. This is how your link structure is set up, and it is crucial to change from the WordPress defaults, so that you have search engine friendly URLs.
Since most websites aren’t updated on a daily basis, I choose the “Month and Name” setting, as shown below, and I recommend it:
7. There are some settings that some people prefer to adjust that weren’t mentioned above. I only hit the options that are completely necessary. If you browse around the settings tabs, you might find other settings that you feel are worth changing.
There are only three plugins that I use on the majority of my WordPress based websites.
There is a simple way of installing all three plugins without having to download anything:
First, you will need to get to the Plugins Menu, and click on the “Add New” tab:
Next, you will need to get to the search form. Typically, it will be the first thing that comes up. If it’s not, reference the picture below:
You will then need to type in the following searches, for the respective plugins. Please note that searches have the potential to change, so make sure the title of the plugin matches up to the title I give you, not the first plugin that shows up when you search.
By searching above, you find the plugin. You will then need to do the following for each plugin individually:
Of course, there are thousands of other plugins that you could use also, but those three are basically essential for websites.
I prefer to keep my overhead as low as possible, so I usually stick with a WordPress theme from one of the hundreds of Free WordPress Theme Websites.
Here are a few that I use:
There is also a search function within WordPress that allows you to search for specific types of themes for free, and install them with a click. Once WordPress is installed, you can access the search by visiting:
http://YourWPsite.com/wp-admin/theme-install.php?tab=dashboard
If you are finding themes on other sites, besides using the search function (which I suggest, because the search doesn’t work extremely well), you will have to download the theme you wish to use. Each free theme website will have download instructions, and they should be simple.
Once you have downloaded a theme that you want to use (must be .zip format), here is what you need to do to put it on your WordPress website:
Under the appearance tab, you need to click “Add New Themes”. There is a menu at the top of tat page, and you need to click “Upload”.
You will then see a form, where you can select the .zip folder that contains your theme from your computers hard drive. Locate your theme, and click “Install Now”.
Once the theme has finished uploading, you can either preview the new theme, or activate it. You will eventually need to activate it, so I suggest doing so right away.
Here is a quick tip:
There will most likely be pages that you don’t wish to include in your websites navigation bar.
Under the Appearance tab, click “editor”.
On the right side of the page, find and click “header.php”.
Find The following code:
<?php wp_list_pages('title_li='); ?>
Replace it with:
<?php wp_list_pages('exclude=123,456&title_li='); ?>
Just replace “123″ and “456″ with the page IDs that you want to exclude from the header menu.
As I’m sure you’ve read over and over, content is king for websites. You must have quality content to both connect with readers, and to attract search engine attention.
For the most part, you will be adding pages of content for your site, and not posts.
The “meat” of the website will be pages, and the less important stuff will be posts (in most cases)
Shown below is how to add pages:
Once you have clicked the link that says “Add New”, type your content in the box given, and when finished, click publish. Your content is now live for the world to see!
Adding posts for your “Blog” page is just as easy. The only difference is the tab is under “Posts” and not “Pages”.
Each plugin that we installed has different options on its page within your new website.
The SEO plugin and the Sitemap plugin are managed from the “Settings” tab, and the Contact Form has its own new tab. Click on the respective links, and adjust the settings to your preference.
Thanks for reading this informative guide! If you have any suggestions for anything to add, or if you have any questions, make a comment, or use the contact form.
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