If you’re just starting out and making a website for the first time, you’re going to want to keep things as simple as possible. There will be so many points along the way that you’ll get distracted and tempted to add more features along the way, trust me.
And please also trust me that the best thing that you can do when you begin this is to keep it as simple as you can. Leave all the bells and whistles for later.
TL;DR: This is a slightly long post that covers each step a little more than just what’s on the surface, but it does take you completely by the hand through each step in depth. Frankly each step deserves it’s own article and/or video to really cover the topic. But I still recommend using this article as an overview of the whole process.
Why WordPress?
WordPress is one of the most popular site-building and content management systems in the world. Though it began as a simple blogging platform, it has since evolved into a powerful tool for businesses, e-commerce sites, and more.
There was a time when a blog was different than a website, but for all practical purposes they the same thing – at least in the beginning. I use the terms interchangeably in this post.
The vast majority of blogs/sites are built on WordPress – and with good reason. It is relatively easy to use, and there are lots of resources for finding help with pretty much any questions you have. There are also a seemingly limitless number of add-ons that let you do nearly anything you can imagine with your site.
If you’re new to WordPress, this guide will help you get started.
Please note that this is a very basic guide and I assume that you already know what the goal of your blog is. That’s a whole other discussion for another time though. The reason I bring it up here is because your goals will inform the choices you make as you set things up. Don’t worry about making mistakes along the way. Everything is fixable.
And speaking of other discussions; every one of these steps below merits much more attention that I’m going to give them here. This is just meant to be an overview of the process.
Step 1: Choose Your Niche
What is a niche?
Just real quick: Niche rhymes with leash. But if you prefer, you can pronounce it more like it rhymes with itch. Both ways are acceptable. I – and a lot of online marketers – prefer the first way.
A niche is a section of the market. Usually it’s a sub section of a sub section of a market. For example, “pets” could be your niche but that’s too big a niche to be successful in unless you are a giant corporation – which you’re not. You can and should narrow your focus. Another way some say that is to “niche down”
For example focus on dogs…. or bedding for dogs… or bedding for small dogs… or hypoallergenic bedding for small dogs. sounds pretty specific, but if you search that phrase you get over 2 million results. Maybe Hypoallergenic bedding for small dogs that shed a lot?
Is that too specific? maybe. Maybe not. If that’s your thing, you know better than I do. My guess though is that there are people who need a bed for their small shedding dog with allergies, and they need to find a solution. You could provide that solution.
The three factors to consider when choosing a nice
When it comes to choosing a niche for your website, it’s important to focus on a few key factors: what you’re passionate about, what you have expertise in, and what there is demand for.
Let’s take those one at a time:
1. Passion
Most people will tell you to put passion first. You should pick a niche that you’re passionate about. As we all know, passion is the key to success. If you’re not passionate about your niche, it’s unlikely that you’ll be able to stick with it for the long-term.
But here’s the thing. Passion may be too strong a word. Maybe I should have said “interest”, or “comfort”. I mean if there is something you are really passionate about that’s great. That makes the other stuff easier. But if you are comfortable with a topic and don’t think you’ll tire of it quickly, that’s good enough as far as I’m concerned. Better if you can be passionate about it, but not necessary.
If you are sufficiently interested in something and then start engaging with others who are also interested. That’ll keep you going. If you are also able to make some money while help those people, that will keep you going too. Passion per se isn’t absolutely necessary.
2. Expertise
The next thing you need to consider is whether or not you have expertise in the niche that you’re considering.
If you are passionate about something, but don’t have any real expertise in it, chances are that your content won’t be very good. I’ve seen many people start sites about various topics, only to give up a few months later. Actually, I’ve been one of those people.
But that advice also come with a caveat. You don’t have to be “an expert” in the topic. In fact, the people that know the most about something are usually just terrible at teaching that something.
As a mentor of mine often points out, you don’t have to know everything. You just need to know more than your audience. If you know enough more than they do to get them to the next step, that’s all you (and they) need. And you don’t need to pretend you know it all either.
Which brings us to the most important factor:
3. Demand.
Finally, it’s crucial to make sure there is actually demand for the content you plan on writing. Actually, if you’re trying to make money with your blog that’s the most important thing to consider.
One of my first business ideas WAY back when was a breakfast delivery service. I’m talking abou many, many years ago. Not too long after we had milk delivery and bread delivery in our neighborhood. A Friend and I thought it would be cool to have a breakfast delivery subscription service so you could have convenient home-cooked meals delivered to your door at the time you needed them
Fortunately, we figured out pretty early on that no one really wanted that. Seeing that our great idea wasn’t something that people wanted saved us a lot of money and frustration.
That was before the internet was the internet. Now you can easily see if your idea is something people really want. Do a search for it. If you get a lot of results – and more importantly products available – then there is a demand.
That’s it. If your niche is something you’re interested in, have a reasonable amount of knowledge about and has a demand, then you’ve found your niche.
If you’re just starting out and making a website for the first time, you’re going to want to keep things as simple as possible. There will be so many points along the way that you’ll get distracted and tempted to add more features along the way, trust me.
And please also trust me that the best thing that you can do when you begin this is to keep it as simple as you can. Leave all the bells and whistles for later.
TL;DR: This is a slightly long post that covers each step a little more than just what’s on the surface, but it does take you completely by the hand through each step in depth. Frankly each step deserves it’s own article and/or video to really cover the topic. But I still recommend using this article as an overview of the whole process.
Why WordPress?
WordPress is one of the most popular site-building and content management systems in the world. Though it began as a simple blogging platform, it has since evolved into a powerful tool for businesses, e-commerce sites, and more.
There was a time when a blog was different than a website, but for all practical purposes they the same thing – at least in the beginning. I use the terms interchangeably in this post.
The vast majority of blogs/sites are built on WordPress – and with good reason. It is relatively easy to use, and there are lots of resources for finding help with pretty much any questions you have. There are also a seemingly limitless number of add-ons that let you do nearly anything you can imagine with your site.
If you’re new to WordPress, this guide will help you get started.
Please note that this is a very basic guide and I assume that you already know what the goal of your blog is. That’s a whole other discussion for another time though. The reason I bring it up here is because your goals will inform the choices you make as you set things up. Don’t worry about making mistakes along the way. Everything is fixable.
And speaking of other discussions; every one of these steps below merits much more attention that I’m going to give them here. This is just meant to be an overview of the process.
Step 1: Choose Your Niche
What is a niche?
Just real quick: Niche rhymes with leash. But if you prefer, you can pronounce it more like it rhymes with itch. Both ways are acceptable. I – and a lot of online marketers – prefer the first way.
A niche is a section of the market. Usually it’s a sub section of a sub section of a market. For example, “pets” could be your niche but that’s too big a niche to be successful in unless you are a giant corporation – which you’re not. You can and should narrow your focus. Another way some say that is to “niche down”
For example focus on dogs…. or bedding for dogs… or bedding for small dogs… or hypoallergenic bedding for small dogs. sounds pretty specific, but if you search that phrase you get over 2 million results. Maybe Hypoallergenic bedding for small dogs that shed a lot?
Is that too specific? maybe. Maybe not. If that’s your thing, you know better than I do. My guess though is that there are people who need a bed for their small shedding dog with allergies, and they need to find a solution. You could provide that solution.
The three factors to consider when choosing a niche
When it comes to choosing a niche for your website, it’s important to focus on a few key factors: what you’re passionate about, what you have expertise in, and what there is demand for.
Let’s take those one at a time:
1. Most people will tell you to put passion first. You should pick a niche that you’re passionate about. As we all know, passion is the key to success. If you’re not passionate about your niche, it’s unlikely that you’ll be able to stick with it for the long-term.
But here’s the thing. Passion may be too strong a word. Maybe I should have said “interest”, or “comfort”. I mean if there is something you are really passionate about that’s great. That makes the other stuff easier. But if you are comfortable with a topic and don’t think you’ll tire of it quickly, that’s good enough as far as I’m concerned. Better if you can be passionate about it, but not necessary.
If you are sufficiently interested in something and then start engaging with others who are also interested. That’ll keep you going. If you are also able to make some money while help those people, that will keep you going too. Passion per se isn’t absolutely necessary.
2. Expertise The next thing you need to consider is whether or not you have expertise in the niche that you’re considering.
If you are passionate about something, but don’t have any real expertise in it, chances are that your content won’t be very good. I’ve seen many people start sites about various topics, only to give up a few months later. Actually, I’ve been one of those people.
But that advice also come with a caveat. You don’t have to be “an expert” in the topic. In fact, the people that know the most about something are usually just terrible at teaching that something.
As a mentor of mine often points out, you don’t have to know everything. You just need to know more than your audience. If you know enough more than they do to get them to the next step, that’s all you (and they) need. And you don’t need to pretend you know it all either.
Which brings us to the most important factor:
3. Demand. Finally, it’s crucial to make sure there is actually demand for the content you plan on writing. Actually, if you’re trying to make money with your blog that’s the most important thing to consider.
One of my first business ideas WAY back when was a breakfast delivery service. I’m talking abou many, many years ago. Not too long after we had milk delivery and bread delivery in our neighborhood. A Friend and I thought it would be cool to have a breakfast delivery subscription service so you could have convenient home-cooked meals delivered to your door at the time you needed them
Fortunately, we figured out pretty early on that no one really wanted that. Seeing that our great idea wasn’t something that people wanted saved us a lot of money and frustration.
That was before the internet was the internet. Now you can easily see if your idea is something people really want. Do a search for it. If you get a lot of results – and more importantly products available – then there is a demand.
That’s it. If your niche is something you’re interested in, have a reasonable amount of knowledge about and has a demand, then you’ve found your niche.
Step 2: Choose Your Domain Name
Your domain name is your identity on the web; it’s how you are found and it’s how you express yourself. The domain name is like a sign out by the street telling customers where you are and (if you choose well) what you do in there. It’s important to choose a domain name that is both memorable and relevant to your niche.
Here’s a short list of things to consider when choosing a domain name
- Rule 1 – follow these rules unless you have a good reason not to. (see last rule)
- Make it end with .com – that’s what people are used to. make it easy for them
- Keep it short
- Make it easy to spell
- Avoid awkward things like hyphens, double letters, tricky pronunciation, unintended misinterpretations. (see ‘lighter things’ note below)
- Make it fit your brand
- The name should make it obvious what you do
- Don’t get TOO specific – you may change your focus as you go, and you don’t want to place unnecessary limits on yourself.
- Last rule: break the rules if it makes sense.
On that last rule: Most of your traffic is going to come from links people follow – either from other sites, ads or search results. That being the case, people won’t generally need to remember exactly how to spell it or anything like that. So a hyphen isn’t a deal breaker for example.
And they’re not going to be paying close attention to the name until they on on your site for a while. I mean, you wouldn’t want to name a site about motorcycle engine repair soft-n-fluffy-baby-clothes-4U.com.
On a lighter note:
The web is lowercase. Even if you may be able to capitalize words in your browser, the structure of domain names and email addresses is all lower case as far as the underlying tech is concerned.
What you intend for your customer to see may not be what they see. Here are 5 examples of bad domain names. Look at them first and see what pops out to you. If you don’t see anything odd, pretend you’re a 15 year old boy and look at them again. I’ll show you what they intended in the list that follows it.
What they called it (they’re all .coms)
- itscrap
- whorepresents
- penisland
- expertsexchange
- dicksonweb
What they meant
- IT Scrap
- Who Represents
- Pen Island
- Experts Exchange
- Dickson Web
One last thing to consider:
Websites do not exist in a bubble. And a whole lot of the internet revolves around social media. Don’t panic. That doesn’t mean you have to be a Instagram model or dance on TikTok. But you should be mindful of maintaining your identity/brand across various platforms.
So if you can get the same name across most of the and have that name be pretty darned similar to your site name, you’d be doing yourself a favor. I use https://www.namecheckr.com/ to do that before I go to step 3. It does as its name implies. It checks your the name you chose and lets you know the availability of that name across various apps and sites.
Step 3: Find Hosting and Register Your Domain
OK, look. This can get needlessly complicated pretty quickly. There are seemingly millions of companies who want you to get your name and website hosting through them.
I’ll keep it simple for you and tell you what I use and why.
Hosting
A web host is where your website lives. If your domain name is the sign out by the road, your hosting is sort of the equivalent of a physical building where a brick and mortar business would be. Actually the web host is the landlord in this analogy and the website itself is the building – sort of.
There are many factors to consider when selecting a web hosting service. One important factor is reliability. The last thing you want is for your website to be down when customers try to access it.
Another important factor is customer service. You want a company that is friendly and helpful should you have any problems.
And of course, you want a company that is affordable. With so many companies to choose from, it can be difficult to know where to start. This article will help guide you through the process of choosing a web hosting service and registering a domain name.
I use and can confidently recommend SiteGround. This is not an ad for Siteground and I am not employed by them. It’s simply my honest opinion.
What I like about them is that navigating the process with them is about as simple as it gets and when I’ve had questions they have always answered them concisely and completely. Also, you can (and should) start with the lowest-price plan and then upgrade as you need to.
So many people in this space recommend BlueHost or GoDaddy. I don’t mean to bash either of them, but my feeling is that both of them do a great job marketing themselves and paying others to do so through their affiliate programs, but that’s where it ends.
The problem in my opinion is that they have Soooo many users sharing the same (often outdated) servers that they suffer slow performance and frequent technical issues. Neither has a great reputation for customer service either.
Domain name
I went over picking a domain name in the previous section. Claiming one for yourself is as easy as going to one of the zillion sites that want to sell them to you and paying for it.
Here’s the thing about that, You don’t own it, you rent it. And rent for most of them is cheap. $15 – $20 per year is about the norm.
A lot of places try to lure you in with lower initial prices in exchange for a higher rate to renew, or they try to get you to sign up for their hosting and give you a year or two free domain name service.
Do yourself a favor and skip all that.
Just go to Hover.com and get it there. And keep it there. You may be able to transfer it to SiteGround (or whatever web hosting service you choose), but I don’t do that.
I have about 10 domain names that I’m either actively using or intend to use. If I decide to switch web hosting for any of those sites, managing my domain names stays simple because they are all in one place.
And if any of the web hosts go out of business, I still control the name. And thanks to backing up my sites, I can almost instantly move them to a different web host – and users will never know anything changed.
Again. I’m not advertising Hover, I just like them. Nice clean user interface, easy payment options and the occasional sale.
Step 4: Set Up WordPress
Pay attention to this please
WordPress.com and WordPress.org are two different platforms. WordPress.com is a hosted solution, which means you don’t need to worry about installing or managing the software. WordPress.org is a self-hosted solution, which means you’ll need to install the software on your own web server.
From here on out, unless I specify otherwise I mean Wrodpress.org when I say WordPress.
Skip WordPress.com. There’s almost no reason at all to bother with that site anymore.
It’s a fine site. Don’t get me wrong. It’s just that if you are on there, you are sharing bandwidth with lots of users, and you have less control and fewer options when it comes to your site’s content and appearance. You have a lot of choices, but fewer.
And isn’t part of the reason that you are doing this to have more control?
Some will say to get comfortable with that and then “grow” into WordPress.org. Poppycock I say. Transferring or site from one to the other is a hassle. And WordPress installed on your own site is dead simple to use. You can add a ton of stuff to it and make it comlicated later, but when you start with it as-is, it is simple.
SiteGround – and most other hosts – give you the option of automatically installing WordPress when you sign up with them. It’s as easy as clicking button. Even calling it a walkthrough overstates it. They just do it.
Telling Hover (or whomever) where to direct people when they click on your domain name is called pointing your domain, and again, Site ground tells you how to do it. Spoiler alert: It’s cutting and pasting two things.
That’s pretty much it. It won’t look as pretty as you want it right away, but you can change that.
Step 5: Choose and Customize Your Theme
Do this, but don’t waste too much time right away.
I know it can be tempting to get lost in the appearance of your site, but at the early stages, you are wasting time you could be spending more wisely on creating content (AKA writing).
Also, before we go on please note that when you change a theme you are changing the look and feel of the whole site. This is good.
With the click of a button it can have different colors, graphics, fonts, layouts, and so on. And in a click of another button you can change it back or change it to a different look.
So right off I’d suggest getting a simple theme and then leave it alone until you have enough content and enough traffic to it to justify making changes. No one is coming to your site to see how pretty it is. They are coming to find solutions to their problem.
Ok. To pick a theme, click Appearance:Themes in your WordPress dashboard. A few come pre-installed. If you hate them, click on Add new. A few of the tens of thousands will pop up, and you can search by any words you like. Click on the results to see which you like, and when you find what you want, click install. That’s it.
Well Kind it can be anyway.
But to make changes within that theme, you can click on Appearance:Customize to -um – customize it. I can’t tell you what to do next, because each theme has its own options. Most are pretty self explanatory though.
There are both free and paid WordPress themes available. If you’re just starting out, a free theme may be a good option for you. However, if you’re looking for more features and customization options, a premium theme may be worth the investment – but leave that until later.
If you’re going to be marketing your site (which you wil), look for themes that have features like social media integration. You should be on social media if you’re going to drive traffic to your site.
Don’t worry. Again, you don’t need to be doing TikToks or Facebook lives. But integration with the most popular social media site will be important. The good news is that the vast majority of themes have that function built in these days.
And if you make a mistake, you can very easily change the theme later.
Step 6: Install Plugins
Much of what I said about themes is true of plug-ins. Don’t fret over them right now, but there are a few that would be good to install fairly early on.
While there are a lot of great plugins out there, not all of them are essential for every WordPress site. Here are six useful plugins that I think every WordPress blog should have.
1) Akismet Anti-Spam
Akismet is a spam filtering service that helps protect websites from spam comments and contact form submissions. Akismet uses a variety of techniques to detect and flag spam, including checking comments against a global database of known spammers, checking the IP address of the comment author, and checking for common patterns in spam comments. It’s not perfect, but it gets rid of a lot of the nonsense.
It is a free/payed plugin. It’s a pay-what-you-think-it’s-worth honor system model, and You’ll be asked to update it and any payment options annually. I leave it to your conscience to decide what it’s worth to you.
2) Elementor
Elementor is a popular plugin that lets you create beautiful website pages and posts in minutes using intuitive layout options and tools. Elementor is easy to use and comes with a wide range of features, making it the perfect tool for creating a wide variety of looks.
3) GA Google Analytics
Google Analytics is a web analytics service offered by Google that tracks and reports website traffic. It is pretty much the standard traffic reporting system. There are many others that you can use instead or in addition. I do recommend installing and using this though even if you don’t think you need it right now. It can quietly collect the data until such time as you want to use it.
That said, there are a few extra steps you need to take to set it up. That’s for another article though.
And by the way, it’s free
4) Generate press
This is a free plugin, but it is also a theme. It’s kind of both.
It has so many options with its theme that it’s kind of more than just a theme. And to complicate matters, it has it’s own plugins – some free, some paid.
I install it on all my sites and have gotten quite used to the premium version. Not totally necessary, but I’m at the point that I really like the additional options/functions it provides. The pay version is good for multiple sites and is fairly inexpensive.
Try the free version for a while.it might be all you need.
In fact. You may not need it at all if you like one of the other themes well enough.
5) WP autoterms
Your site should have some basic terms and conditions that are clearly spelled out. That’s what WP autoterms does.It askes you to fill ina couple blanks and generates a policy page and footer with links to each.
It comes with Privacy Policy, Terms and Conditions, cookie notices, endorsement disclaimers, and a couple other ones in addition to being able to add your own within the same tool.
If you’re looking to create policy pages on your WordPress site, the WP autoterms plugin is a great option. With this plugin, you can easily create and manage your site’s policies, terms, and conditions.
You can doo all this stuff on your own., This plugin just makes it much easier.
6) SSL Encryption plugin
Okay. This isn’t really a plugin exactly. I mean it kind of is, but….
You need your site to be secure. No one will go to it if it isn’t. And for that you need a security key (a looooonnnnggggg string of numbers and letters) from a trusted provider.
For some sites that means installing a plugin like one that you see when you search the term “encrypt” in the plugins search bar.
My hesitation comes from the fact that I don’t do it that way anymore. I instead opt for SiteGround to secure the site when I install it using a security key from Let’s Encypt SSL.
They do it all, so I haven’t had to mess with how you do it with a plugin for years. As a result I’ve lost touch with which ones are better or worse – though frankly, they’re probably all quite good if they are still approved to be on the WordPress search results.
Step 7: Create Pages and Posts
This can get confusing for new users of WordPress because they look very similar to each other both in how you create them and how they look when they are done. I’ll try to keep it as simple as I can.
A page is a static piece of content that generally doesn’t change. It is usually used for information that doesn’t need to be updated often, like an “About Me” page, policy pages, or a “Contact” page.
A post is typically a dynamic piece of content that can be regularly updated. It is normally used for blog posts or news articles. As a rule, they appear on your blog in the most-recent-first format.
Generally, you should make most of your content posts. If if you don’t plan on changing anything on them once they are posted.
I like to use pages for the things mentioned above and also for category pages. Each category page can the have posts listed on it that fall into that category. The page stays where it is, but the content on it is arranged from newest to oldest – or in the order I choose.
Conclusion: Next Steps: Now What?
If I’ve done my job, you now have a way to structure your thoughts about how you can go about getting your website/blog up and running.
I want to stress again that a lot of these steps are not vital when you first start, but rather things to have in the back of your mind.
The first thing that you should do is something. I don’t say that to be glib. You can have thoughts in your mind that seem good and fall into the trap of ending there.
Try putting things down in writing. Put them into action. That’s when you see the gaps in your thinking. ANd if you know what they are, you can fill them in.
I would recommend that beofre you spend a dime on a domain name or hosting or anything else, figure out who your niche audience is going to be. It’s step one in the “brief” guide for a reason.
For a little more insight you can check out other content on this site like this one: How to Find the Perfect Niche for Your Blog
Good luck. You’ve got this.