Create a Website With WordPress in 5 steps

Thousands of websites are added to the internet every week, and just about anyone can create a website now with the plethora of options available. When you begin this process, one of the most important things to consider is the future of your website, which is why WordPress is the platform choice you should make. Your website and content should be yours and yours alone, and a WordPress website is the easiest way to accomplish that. The following article will outline some key steps that you need to think about when building your WordPress website with the goal of being successful at it. 

Step 1 – Planning Your Website 

Most people jump straight in without a plan and will immediately start building. While that may work for some, my experience in the industry has shown it can also be a recipe for disaster. Before you begin building the website of your dreams, you should take some time to think about your strategy and what you hope to get out of your website. Answering the following questions will help with this:

1. What is the purpose of your website?
2. How will your visitors find you?
3. How many pages do you need to go live?
4. How should your visitors communicate with you?
5. What type of content will you have?

At this point, you should also begin thinking about your domain name. Finding a good .com address can be difficult, because most of the good ones have been taken. You can choose other extensions, such as .net, .store or a number of other extensions, but traditionally, .com addresses will work in your favor because people are used to it. In some cases, web hosting accounts will come with domain names, but not all. 

Step 2 – Building Your WordPress Website 

Before you review WordPress hosting plans and choose a domain name, you can get started on setting up your website and its pages pretty easily, and free. Here at BoldGrid, we have a Cloud WordPress system that allows you to create a WordPress powered website in the cloud. One instance can be set up for free, or you can upgrade to add more. You can select your hosting later, and use our WordPress Backup Plugin to transfer it there when your project is ready. 

BoldGrid Inspirations is a WordPress website builder that will provide you with some of the most common WordPress Page Layouts in a matter of minutes. We also include tons of the tools needed to build, grow and manage your professionally designed website such as a drag and drop WordPress page builder, complete site management and an SEO plugin. Building your dream site could happen much quicker than you think. Try BoldGrid for yourself and see how easy WordPress can be!

Cloud WordPress can also be used as a testing or staging environment, since Total Upkeep has the ability to save and restore partial backups for migrating to your live website. You can also use it for testing updates before applying them on the live website, and see how content and theme changes will look without causing interruptions to your business. It is a great way to streamline your WordPress website workflow, and save you the headache that usually comes with figuring out how to manage and update your website.

Step 3 – Choose Web Hosting and a Domain

Choosing a web hosting provider only requires that you do a little research, because you want to be sure you choose the best solution for your customer base. If you serve only local clients, then choose a web host located in or near your country of operation. If you intend on having a global user base, you can also easily set up a Content Delivery Network to ensure that your entire user base gets the same user experience when visiting your website.

Here at BoldGrid we work with tons of web hosting companies, and have partnered with what we consider to be the best WordPress Hosting providers. With their offerings including everything from Managed WordPress services to traditional hosting, we recommend that you take some time to check them out when shopping.

Step 4 – Going Live With Your WordPress Website

Now that you have your website ready, it is time to launch it. Most hosting companies will usually transfer it for you. The good news is that when you use WordPress, this is something you can easily accomplish. We have a great guide covering the steps needed for learning how to migrate your WordPress website using Total Upkeep. This is an essential piece of knowledge to have when running your website normally, so learning it now while your site is getting started is a great way to help ensure your success. 

Total Upkeep is also a WordPress backup plugin that can help you schedule daily, weekly or monthly backups with a few clicks, so it provides you with peace of mind and something to roll back to in the case you break things along the way. 

Step 5 – Marketing Your WordPress Website

The best part of the internet today is that you no longer have to jump over hoops to be found by Google, or any other search engine for that matter. While having a good keyword strategy is critical, having high quality, relevant content is much more important. If I have learned anything about writing documentation or copy, it is that readability matters and purpose should be clear. 

At this point in your journey, you also want to make sure you can track the effectiveness of your changes. Adding Google Analytics to your WordPress website is a must have step, as it will give you insights about the people that visit your website. From there you begin going forward with your chosen Marketing Strategy.

Next Steps

Now that you have successfully launched a website, it is time to start sharing your site on Social Media. You want to create accounts at each of the primary outlets such as Facebook, Instagram and Twitter, and any other that your ideal visitor may frequent. Once that is done, you can start sharing useful information, and minimize the amount of promotion you do on your own. Some of the most successful social media accounts are not selling anything other than their image. It is a fine line, and the internet is difficult to please all of the time, so be careful if you choose an edgy strategy. 

Most of these platforms have paid marketing campaigns also, and it could be good to use those to help boost your efforts. If you are local, this can be as little as a few bucks a day and have very impressive results. 

There are many different directions you can take from this point to help grow your audience, but you should definitely stop to congratulate and celebrate when you reach this milestone. Successfully creating a website is something that can seem impossible when you are starting, but if you have a plan in place and understand the scope, it can be much easier to achieve. With BoldGrid you can build your dream and help it grow.