Do you wish to start a WordPress blog in the proper manner?
We are aware that starting a WordPress blog or any blog might be daunting, particularly if you are not a geek. You’re not alone, as it turns out.
We have chosen to develop a step-by-step manual on how to start a WordPress blog for beginners without any technical experience after assisting numerous people in creating a blog.
No matter your age—whether you’re young or old—the procedure is simple to follow. However, if you want assistance, we will set up your blog at minimum cost possible. Click here to contact us.
What are the requirements to start a WordPress blog?
To create a WordPress blog, you need three things:
- Idea for a domain name (WpCares.com will be the name of your blog.).
- An web hosting space (this is where your website resides on the internet).
- An hour of your full attention.
You did read that correctly. In less than an hour, you can create a blog from scratch. We’ll guide you through every step of the process, one by one.
In this guide, we’ll discuss:
- How to Register a free Custom Domain Name
- How to select the Best Web Hosting from internet
- How to install and configure a WordPress blog
- How to Modify the Design Template for Your Blog
- A Guide to writing Your First Blog Post
- How to Use Plugins to Customize Your WordPress Blog
- How to easily add a Contact Form
- How to Setup Tracking in Google Analytics and its configurations
- How to Make Your Website SEO-Friendly
- How to Earn Money From Your Blog
- Various Resources for WordPress Training
Are You Prepared? Let’s get cracking.
Choose your blog name and platform
The most common error made by new bloggers when creating blogs is selecting the incorrect blogging platform. Fortunately, you’re here, so you won’t commit that error.
Use of WordPress.org, often known as self-hosted WordPress, makes more sense for 95% of users.
Because WordPress is open source, using it is completely free. In addition to installing plugins and customizing your site’s look, you have complete freedom to monetize your blog (see the difference between WordPress.com vs WordPress.org).
The most popular website platform, WordPress, is also utilized by all successful blogs, including our own. WordPress is used by 43% of all websites on the internet, for context.
Now that WordPress is free, you may be wondering why. Why is there a catch?
Nothing is a catch. Because you have to build it up and host it yourself, it is free.
In other words, you will want web hosting as well as a domain name.
People enter in a domain name to access your website. It is the online address for your blog. Think about yahoo.com or google.com.
Your website’s files are stored on a web server. It serves as the online home of your website. Hosting for websites is a need.
Web hosting plans generally cost $5 per month, while a new domain name typically costs roughly $12.00 per year.
For those who are just getting started, that is a substantial sum of money.
Find the right choice
Thankfully, many hosts provide substantial discounts to new customers. You can also use popular WordPress hosting companies like SiteGround or Hostinger, Bluehost and still be able to follow our guide.
Let’s purchase your domain and hosting now. Since most of the hosting company gives one domain for free so we come down to purchasing only hosting.
Choose the hosting server, select the plan you want. Basic plan would suffice for the first time user but we recommend using a little higher up hosting plan. It is recommended to buy for longer period, so that you can get maximum discount.
After finishing, you will get an email with instructions on how to access your web hosting control panel (cPanel). You control everything here, including emails and customer service. But more crucially, this is the location where WordPress is installed.
Setup the WordPress software
Log onto your CPanel account, then navigate to the software area. The WordPress symbol is present there. Click on it and adhere to the straightforward instructions provided. You’ll have WordPress installed immediately.
Once WordPress has been set up, you may log in by visiting yoursite.com/wp-admin/ straight in your browser.
If you are having trouble installing WordPress, you may find step-by-step instructions in our thorough guide to installing WordPress.
Although the most of the aforementioned blog hosting firms now offer do an automatic WordPress installation to aid less tech-savvy individuals in beginning their blogging journeys.
After setting up WordPress, you’re prepared to start writing, create blog pages, and alter the appearance of your site.
Selecting the best WordPress Theme
Blog themes are what determine how your WordPress blog looks visually. Your blog will initially appear as dull as possible when you visit it first time.
The majority of people find this to be unattractive.
One of the most fun and satisfying aspects of setting up a WordPress blog is by far customizing the way it looks and feels.
You may install one of the countless pre-made WordPress themes on your website. While some of them are premium free themes, some are premium priced themes.
By navigating to your WordPress dashboard and clicking on Appearance » Themes, you may change your theme.
Click the Add New button when you’re ready.
You may search among numerous free WordPress themes that are offered in the official WordPress.org themes directory on the next screen. Along with additional feature filters, you may sort by most popular, most recent, and featured (i.e industry, layout, etc).
A Preview button will appear when you move your cursor over a new theme. When you click on it, the theme preview will open, allowing you to see how the design might seem on your website.
It’s typical for the theme preview to differ somewhat from the screenshot as you will have the opportunity to adjust and set it up afterwards. The design, colors, font, and other features are what you should be on the lookout for.
Aim for simplicity
To choose the ideal WordPress theme, the greatest advice is to aim for simplicity in design. It enables you to maintain order and clarity while providing your consumers with a positive experience.
Simply move your cursor over the theme after you’ve selected one you like, and the Install button will appear. Wait for the theme to be installed after clicking it. After that, an Activate button will take the place of the install button. It must be clicked for the theme to be activated.
Once your theme has been installed, you may edit it by selecting the Customize option from the Appearance menu.
You may customize your blog’s style using built-in widgets and customization tools, depending on the theme you select.
With a WordPress page builder like SeedProd or Divi, which enables you to create a unique header, footer, sidebar, and more without writing any HTML code, you can exert even more creative control.
These plugins allow you complete access to the robust WordPress content management system while providing you greater design flexibility than you would get with Wix or Squarespace.
You are now prepared to write your first blog post after choosing your WordPress theme.
Writing Your First Blog Post
Click on the Posts » Add New menu in your WordPress dashboard to start writing your first blog article.
You may compose your first blog post in the editor section that you will see.
With WordPress’s block-based editor, you can design stunning content layouts for your blog entries.
After finishing your article, click the Publish button in the top-right corner of the page to make it visible to everyone.
Many seasoned bloggers intentionally select their niche themes by performing keyword research. This raises the visibility of their material and increases traffic.
Customization of a Site using Plugins
After publishing your first blog entry, you’ll undoubtedly want to start adding additional common website components like a contact page, galleries, sliders, an email list, forums, etc.
You must utilize plugins to add all of these extra functions.
WordPress plugins are programs that let you expand the functionality of your website (without writing any code).
In the free WordPress plugin directory alone, there are more than 60,000 plus plugins accessible. This implies that there is a plugin for whatever you wish to do.
So, let’s look at how to use plugins to add some necessary functionality to your WordPress blog.
Creating Contact Page with Form in WordPress
A contact form is necessary for any website. Your users can email you directly thanks to it. You will need a WordPress form builder plugin to add a contact form to your website because WordPress doesn’t come with one pre-installed.
The WPForms Lite plugin is something we advise utilizing. It is a free variation of the well-known WPForms plugin, which ranks first on our list of the top WordPress contact form plugins.
WPForms is used by over 5 million websites.
By heading to Plugins > Add New and putting WPForms into the search box, you may install the plugin. Click “Install” and then “Activate” to continue. You must visit the WPForms > Add New page after activation in order to construct your first form.
The WPForms builder interface will then be displayed.
You must first give your contact form a name before selecting the “Simple Contact Form” design.
Now, WPForms will build a straightforward contact form for you with all the necessary fields. Any field may be modified by clicking on it, and you can even add new fields from the left column.
After finishing changing the form, click the save button in the upper right corner to save your changes before leaving the form builder.
By selecting Pages » Add New and giving it the name “Contact,” you can now build a new page in WordPress. You must input the WPForms block into the editor on the edit screen.
In the editor, WPForms will then load a live preview of the form you selected earlier from the drop-down menu.
Now that the page has been published and saved, you may visit it in your browser to use your contact form.
Testing your form to make sure you’re getting the alerts is recommended practice.
The best feature of WPForms for bloggers is that it develops together with them. You may use it to construct reader surveys, polls, guest post submission forms, and more in addition to straightforward contact forms.
Setting Up Google Analytics Tracking in WordPress
You can see how many people are visiting your blog, where they are coming from, and what they are doing on your website with the aid of Google Analytics.
It is ideal to install Google Analytics when you first launch your blog so you can track its development.
Visit the Google Analytics website first, then sign in using your Gmail account.
You may join up for a free Google Analytics account after you are logged in.
You will be required to submit your contact information and website address. After that, your Google Analytics tracking code will be displayed to you.
Because a plugin will automatically fetch and apply this code to your blog, you may stop right now (along with setting up proper WordPress tracking).
For the Site Kit by Google plugin installation and activation, navigate to your WordPress admin area. The easiest way to integrate Google Analytics and other Google products to your website is using this free version of the top Google Analytics plugin for WordPress.
After activation, you must go to the Insights » Settings page to set the plugin’s preferences.
To finish the setup, adhere to the directions displayed on screen. After that is complete, you may get your website analytics report directly from your WordPress dashboard.
Optimization of a WordPress Blog for SEO
When starting a blog, most novices don’t optimize it for SEO. Users can find your blog in search engines with the aid of SEO, or search engine optimization.
It’s essential to start out your blog with SEO optimization if you want to increase visitors.
You must first install and activate the Rank Math plugin before you can proceed. You may improve your blog with the full WordPress SEO plugin Like Yoast Seo Plugin or All in One SEO Plugin.
A simple configuration wizard is included with the plugin to guide you through the installation process. It will assist you in setting up a WordPress sitemap, creating appropriate meta descriptions and keywords, adding schema markup, and much more.
Although there are other SEO plugins available, such Yoast SEO and All in one SEO, we advise using RankMath since it has the most user-friendly interface for beginning bloggers.
A keyword research tool can help you further improve your blog content in addition to a WordPress SEO plugin. These SEO tools assist you in developing fresh content concepts related to your subject.
Necessary Plugins for your WordPress Blog
There are several other WordPress plugins available for installation. Finding the necessary plugins might be a bit difficult for novices.
Here is our professional selection of the top WordPress plugins that you ought to look at.
- UpdraftPlus is the finest WordPress backup plugin for backups. Regular backups of your website are necessary in case something goes wrong.
- Sucuri Security is a complimentary security scanner for WordPress. You can safeguard your blog with the aid of it, step-by-step process is there to secure WordPress blog.
- Performance: If you want to speed up WordPress, we suggest utilizing either WP Rocket (paid) or WP Super Cache (free).
- Design & Customization – For designing unique landing pages, custom themes, or even just altering the look of your homepage, we advise utilizing either SeedProd or Divi page builder (without writing any code).
- Traffic and Subscribers: PushEngage’s push alerts are highly advised. By doing this, you may stay in touch with website visitors even after they leave.
- Constant Contact or HubSpot are two email marketing services that we advise utilizing. We advise utilizing the free OptinMonster plugin to make very effective popups, scroll boxes, and call to actions in order to increase the number of email subscribers.
Now since most of the basic part of creating the WordPress blog is covered we wish you happy blogging.
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