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Beginner’s Guide: Setting Up Your First WordPress Website

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Creating a professional-looking website is easy with WordPress. It is one of the best Content Management Systems that makes it effortless to build and manage high-quality websites. It comes with various stunning and eye-catching plugins, themes, and widgets that can allow even a novice user to develop a highly interactive website.

However, many people commit some common mistakes while setting up their website. To make their job easier and reliable, we bring you a list of 10 guidelines that will help you get up and running in a short time span.

Let us explore the 10 tips:

1. Register your hosting and domain name

You can set up your WordPress site on your server and thus showcase your domain name, or host at WordPress for free and select a website. Well, you can also set up a separate domain name and hosting because this looks more elegant and professional.

There are many companies out there that are offering hosting and domain registration in one place. However, it may also happen that you have to register your domain name in one place and register the hosting account from another place. In such a situation, you need to ask your hosting provider to give you the name of the server (s) so that you can send an email for your domain registration.

This will ensure that your domain name is integrated with your hosting. And for the hosting requirements, you only need PHP version 4.3 or later, and MySQL version 4.1.2 or later to run on the server.

2. Download WordPress

You need to download the WordPress software to your system in order to run a website on the CMS platform. In fact, it is always better to use the latest version of WordPress, because it comes with some useful security fixes and other solutions.

3. Add your information

After you’ve downloaded WordPress, open the folder with the WordPress files and search for wp-config-sample.php. Rename wp-config-sample.php and open it in any text editor. Here, you need to fill in your database’s details. Then, you need to login to you hosting panel and search for the MySQL section. Finally, build a new database and save the information on file.

4. Upload your files to your server and Install WordPress

Uploading the files to a server is as simple as copying files from one folder to another on your computer. The only difference is that you need to copy the files to the computer and for that you need to login to get access.

First, login to your hosting panel and search for FTP accounts. Create a new user and write down information such as your FTP name, username and password. Go to some place like http://www.coreftp.com/ and download a FTP client.

Once you’ve done this and uploaded the info, you need to install WordPress. First, access the browser and go to www.mysite.com/wp-admin/install.php, and WordPress will be installed. Once you’ve completed the install, you will be given the login and generated password to the admin area. You need to save them on file.

5. Accessing your admin area

If you want to login to the website admin area, go to www.nameofmysite.com/wp-admin/ and fill in the username and password that you have received after installation.

6. Remove the Default Username with the unique one

Once you’ve installed WordPress, it is important for you to remove the default username “admin”, because most of the hackers target such websites with ease. So, it will be better to change the default username with a unique and new one.

7. Choose the most suitable WordPress theme

WordPress comes with hundreds of thousands of eye-catching themes that can help you enhance the beauty of your site. So, it is important to spend some time if you want to use the most suitable theme. First, research and find the perfect theme for your site that can suit your site’s design.

If you want to design and build your own WordPress theme, learn HTML, CSS, and PHP. You can speed up your learning process and development time by having a Codementor WordPress Expert guide you through building your own theme.

8. Updating General Settings

To set your website’s title, you need to go to the main settings >>General. Now you have your new WordPress website!

9. Utilize Universal Analytics

If you want to grow your online business, then it is important to collect the data of your visitors and their navigation behavior. With the help of Universal Analytics, you can track all the actions of your visitors. By doing this, you can make your future strategies with ease.

10. Update Your Themes/Plugins and WordPress on a  Regular Basis

It is important to keep updating the plugins and themes you use on regular basis. Don’t ignore those updates because they come with security fixes and some advanced features. Therefore, it is better to keep your core website, themes and plugins up-to-date.

Conclusion

In this blog post, we have collected 10 useful tips that will help you create a WordPress website with ease. By following these guidelines you will end up with a fully- functional and interactive WordPress site.


Author Bio

Tracey Jones has been serving as an experienced WordPress developer at HireWPGeeks Ltd., a leading custom WordPress theme development company across the globe. She is a passionate writer and always lookout for opportunities for sharing her knowledge with WordPress community. Follow her company on various social media networks like: Twitter, Facebook and Google+.




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