A WordPress site can serve many purposes. It can be used as an ecommerce site. Some people use it for educational or advocacy purposes. The common factor among all of these goals is that people just want to reach out to as many people online as possible. If you are someone who has something to showcase to other people online, then you have to pick up the right tools and skills necessary for setting up and running a WordPress site.
Setting up a WordPress site is fairly simple. There are easy-to-follow steps that you can take advantage of to successfully set up and run your website. Sometimes, you don’t even need to rely on professionals offering web design services since the basics are quite uncomplicated. Here are the steps you will have to follow if you want to set up your own custom ecommerce website.
STEP 1: Get What You Need
To start the process, you need to prepare the following things first:
- Domain Name.
The domain name is the name of your website. Pick a name that is easy to remember. Moreover, it should clearly identify your business, as well as have an impact on your target audience. Don’t forget to register your domain name with your chosen web host.
- Web host.
Think of the web host as a cup and the website as water. The web host holds the website in the same way as a cup holds the water. It is impossible to use a website without a web host.
STEP 2: Setting Up
Now that you have everything ready, the next thing you need to do is install WordPress. Your web host account should have a cPanel wherein dozens of icons are placed for your use. Pick the icon with the label “Install WordPress” as this will allow you to quickly install WordPress without breaking a sweat. Some web hosts don’t have this feature though. For such web hosts, there are extra steps you need to take to successfully install WordPress on the site. Thus, if you want to use WordPress (which, by the way, is the highly recommended CMS nowadays because of the many available resources online), make sure that your web host supports it.
STEP 3: Pick a Theme
By picking out a WordPress theme, you can forgo the steps of creating your website background and layout from scratch. You can choose from the millions of themes available online to serve as the backbone of your ecommerce website design. There should be one or two that you will fancy among the selection.
Once you have chosen a theme, you can then tweak it so it contains the main navigation pages (Home, About Us, Contact Us, Blog, etc.), widgets (Calendar, Countdown, etc.), banners, plugins, and images that you want your site to have. Most themes offer easy customization wherein you just click buttons or drag-and-drop elements to achieve the look you envisioned. In the future, once you learn more about HTML and CSS, you can go up a notch and use the Theme Editor to directly modify the theme’s coding on your own.
STEP 4: Create Your First Post
This is perhaps the most exciting part of creating your website – for most people. When writing your first post, it has to be relevant to your business. If you plan to do SEO later on, you will also have to make sure that your post follows the SEO guidelines.
WordPress makes it easy to publish your first post. All you have to do is to click on the “Posts” >> “Add New” menu on the dashboard. It will open the editor area where you can directly input your first blog content. The editor also makes it easy for you to stylize or format your content according to how you want it to be. For example, you just need to highlight a word in your content and click on the “B” button on top of the editor to change the font’s style to bold. It is also thanks to the editor that you can easily include hyperlinks, images, and videos to your blog post.
Once you are done with inputting your blog content and formatting it, the next thing you have to do is to consider what categories and tags to use. These are what allow you to organize your blog posts.
STEP 5: Monetizing Your Website
You can actually earn money from your website. One of the ways to do that is to use SEO so that you can attract more potential clients online. Another way is to use ads to gain revenue. If you use ads though, the revenue will depend on how many people watched, viewed, or clicked on the ads featured on your site. Aside from these, there are still many other ways to make money through your website, so you should learn them once your website is already up and running.
These are the ultimate beginner’s steps that you should take advantage of if you want to set up and run your own WordPress website. Proweaver can also assist you in the creation and setting up of your site. Just give us a call so we can make the website creation process easier for you.