How To Create A WordPress Website 2020

Free PDF Version Of This Guide

How To Create A WordPress Website 2020

If you’re looking for a free guide on on how to create a website, I got you covered. I know building a website can be a bit confusing and scary in the beginning.

The key to this problem is simplicity. That was the main focus of this guide, to make everything as simple as possible while also keeping costs low.

So to start. What is WordPress anyways? (in simple terms) It is one of the most popular free platforms to build a website on.

WordPress is loved by many, including myself. Its ease of use, reliability, 5,000+ free website templates to pick from is hard to compete with. So in all my guides you will see me recommending WordPress. Including this one.

Alternate Video Version Of This Guide (YouTube)

What are the costs involved in this guide?

$1.00/mo – Website hosting fee (this will be the only fee through the whole process)

What is website hosting?

It’s basically where all the content on your website is going to be stored at. Another way I like to describe what website hosting is to people is like this.

Say you were going to build a house. First you would need the land to put house on. It’s the same thing with a website, You’re going to need somewhere to put your website.

So if you think of your website as your house and then the hosting as your land, It’s pretty much the same thing.

*Also, You don’t have to use this hosting provider that I use in this guide.

I’ve chosen the provider based on cost/ease of use. I wanted something that everyone will be able to afford but still have it work like a top hosting provider. It also includes a 30 day refund policy if you end up not liking the service.

That said, I will be using GoDaddy web hosting in this guide. So if you do want to follow along step-by-step, that is the provider I will be using. If you use this link it will automatically apply a $1.00 discount code it also includes a free domain name.

*Each actual step of this guide will be highlighted in grey and say the number of the step (1-38). The stuff highlighted in yellow are notes/tips that I made through the process for extra help (Scroll through and check it out first) Every step is here and if you follow them you can have your own website up in no time.

(Steps 1-3)

Choose the Name of your Website (pick your domain name)

(Steps 4-13)

Get the Website Online (setup website hosting)

(Steps 13-24)
Setup WordPress (this lets us design our website free)

(Steps 25-38)

Design the Website (choose the look of the website)

Related: 5 Proven Ways to Make Money with Your Website

1. Once you take the link you will land on this page. From here we’re going to click on the “Get Started” button

2. Here is where your going to pick the name of your website (the domain name) once you figure out a name you like then click on the “Search” button to see if it is available (see below for domain name tips)

**Here are a few tips if you’re not sure how to pick a name for your website

3. After you pick a domain and its available you can then click the “Select and Continue” button

4. Once you get to the payment page you can create an account in the form or you can sign up through Amazon, Facebook or Google (which I’m choosing) or sign in if you already have a GoDaddy account

5. I’m going to sign into my Google account. After you make an account it will send you to the pay page

6. Here is the payment page (you will see a few things from here blocked out, just for privacy reasons) Once you get here you can choose how to pay. I’m going to be going with PayPal

Signing into PayPal

PayPal Payment Page

7. Here is the final payment page. If everything looks right you can click the “Complete Purchase” button

8. Now the hosting purchase is complete, You will land on this page. From here you can go down to the bottom left and click on the “Manual WordPress setup” button

9. On this page we’re going to create a username and password for our WordPress website. So just make up a username and password (make sure you make note of it somewhere) So for example: Username – mywpwebsite1 then any password you want

10. You can select your location here (It should reccomend it for you) then you can click the “Yes. That’s Correct” button

11. Then you will see a page like this, Its just going to load for a few minutes then it will automatically go to the next page when it’s done

12. Then you will land on this page and it will also load automatically and go to the next page after it is finished

13. Your site is now up! (that wasn’t too difficult!) After you get on this page you can then click the “Visit My Site” button

14. The next page you will see will be like this. It will be logging you into your WordPress account

15. Then you’ll land on the homepage of your WordPress website

****Now before I go any further I want to mention this. If you ever at any point see a message like this “403 Forbidden” – don’t panic. It’s because we JUST setup the website. Sometimes when a website is brand new it still needs a few hours to load and fully setup. So like I said, don’t panic. Take a break for a little bit if you do see a message like this then come back later and it will be gone. (It’s possible you will never even see this message)

16. The next thing we need to do is verify our email/account. So go to your email inbox for the email address you registered your GoDaddy account with. You will see an email from GoDaddy asking to confirm your account. Click the “Verify Email Now” button to continue

17. After you verify your account you will land on this page. From here what we’re going to do is go to the godaddy homepage. You can click the link here or just click the GoDaddy icon on the top left of the GoDaddy website

18. Now what we’re going to do is click on our name/account at the top right and a menu will drop down. From there you can click on the “My Products” button to continue

19. From here we’re going to click the “Manage” button under the “Managed WordPress” section

20. Then click on “Setup” under the “Set up custom domain” section

21. After that we’re going to attach our domain. Find your domain in the drop down menu (It should already be selected) then put a check mark in the “Make this the primary domain for your account” box then click the “Attach” button

22. After that is finished if you scroll down to the bottom left of the page you will probably see your website loading. Like it says it can take a few minutes

After its finished loading it should notify you with a message like this

23. You can scroll back up to the top of the page and you will see this confirmation that your website is live. You will also see an offer for a business email. I’m going to select no thanks for this offer. You can choose what you like. You can even go back later and do this if its something your interested in

24. After that you can click the “Edit Site” button on the top right

The page will load and you will be logged into WordPress. This is sometimes where you will get an error message. Like I said, if you do – don’t panic. Wait a little bit and come back

This is how you log into your WordPress website. Take your website link and do the same as this. So for example my website is www.example-website123.com so if I want to log into WordPress I will simply add “/wp-admin” to the end of my website link. So the link will look like this www.example-website123.com/wp-admin and when you add “/wp-admin” to the end of your website it will take you to the log in page where you will enter your username and password that you made earlier for your WordPress website

After you log into your WordPress website, This is what you will see. This is called your WordPress dashboard. This is where you edit your website at. It’s also how you add posts, add pages, change the look of your website, plus more which we’ll go over

I wanted to mention the “Collapse menu” button because sometimes it gets hit by accident and people go “my dashboard dissapeared!” but it’s usually just the collapse button was hit

This is how the sidebar looks when the menu has been collapsed. It just has the logos with no words. You can just click the collapse button again at the very bottom to bring everything back

25. The next step is to add a “Theme” to our website. This is how you change the actual look of your website. There is thousands of free themes to choose from. To do this just hover your mouse over “Appearance” and a sub menu will pop up, Click on “Themes”

26. Once you land on the next page look the big + symbol “Add New Theme” click on that

This is where you can find all the themes. You can go through the tabs at the top that are underlined in blue. If you go to “Popular” or “Latest” thats where you will find the majority of the themes. I’m going to be using the theme called “Twenty Twenty” If you don’t see it, you can type “twenty twenty” In the search box on the right and it will come up

27. Once you find the theme, Click on “Install” then “Activate” and this will install the WordPress theme. You can do this any time you want to see how a theme looks on your website. It won’t get rid of any content it will just change the look it. You can always go back to any theme. (try some out, its fun!)

28. Now we are going to edit the name and tagline of our website. To do this we need to go over to the side bar and if you hover your mouse on “Settings” (or click it) and then click on “General”

29. So now we’re in the “General Settings” section and this is where you can edit some info on your website. So what we’re going to do is add a title to our website. This is usually the name of your website and the “tagline” like WordPress says is “In a few words, explain what the site is about” so do that and if you need some ideas you can check out this article for some tips

30. The next thing we’re going to do is add our first post to our website. To do this we’re going to go over to where it says “Posts” and you can click or hover your mouse over “Posts” and click on “Add New”

This is what a new/blank post will look like (if you change the theme the background color will usually change) The top part is where the title of your article will go and below it is where all the content goes

If you click on the little + button it will pop up a menu of different things you can add. Its pretty much all just point and click, for example if you want to add an image to the post you can just click the image button and upload the picture you want.

Here are some more points to check out if you’re unfamiliar what some of these buttons do. I would also recommend you make a random new post and just try some of this stuff out so you can get used to it. It’s going to to take a little time to get used to but it was made to be simple and once you spend a little time with it you see the simplicity.

This is how your post can look with some text and images. You can check out the actual post here

31. Now inside the post we’re going to create some categories for our website. This is just to help organize your posts. So for example I just made a post about Traveling so I made a category called “Travel Tips” To add a category just click on “Add New Category” Think about what your website is going to be then create categories accordingly. There is no right or wrong number of categories, It basically depends on what you’re writing about and how specific you want to be

32. If you scroll down a little bit you will see a “Add New Tag” button. This is usually for SEO purposes. If you have a specific keyword you think relates to your article you can add it. To do it just type in your keywords and then a comma so it will look like this “how to travel on a budget,” that will put that keyword in. Don’t add too many tags just enough to show what your post is related too. Then for the featured image below it, It’s the same as adding a image in a post. You can just click add featured image and it will let you choose what photo you want. If you want to change it just click “Replace Image” – *** Finally when you feel your post/page is complet, simply click on the “Publish” button to make the post live.

Now we’re going to go to our websites homepage, So if you click your websites name in the top right corner of your dashboard (to the right of the little circle WordPress logo) That will take you to your homepage and then up at the top click on “Customize”

From here this is another location you can edit your website. Scroll through and take a look at everything, you don’t even have to click anything. You can just check out each thing. (Most of it you won’t even need unless you want to tweak some visual stuff)

To show you real quick, It’s pretty simple. I clicked “Site Identity” and this is where you can add a logo to your website. This will remove the site title and the tagline if you do this. The logo is more professional but usually will cost you. You can check out Fiverr.com They have tons of people who can make a nice looking logo for $5+

Now I’m going to show you how to add some categories to the top of your website to make it easier for your readers to find what there looking for.

33. To do this we’re going to go over to the pages section. To get there just go to the sidebar on the left side and click on “Pages” – Once you get here you will probably only have one page made (these are put there by WordPress for a demo) Making a Page is pretty much the same thing as creating a post. You click “add new” just like you would a post if you want a new page. Go through and add 3-4 pages that you think would make sense on the top of your website. My site is travel related so I put the following pages. Don’t worry about putting content on the pages yet, just add a title to the page. You can go back after and put content on them.

34. Now to put these pages in the menu section we’re going to go over to the left side again and click “Appearance” then “Menus”

35. Once we’re here if you added those pages you will see them pop up on the left (in the blue box) to add them to the menu simply select which ones you want to show up on the menu section at the top of your website. Then click “Add to Menu”

36. Once you add those pages, you will see them pop up on the right side (upper blue box) Make sure you have the 2 check marks in at least the following categories (lower blue box) or else it won’t show up at the top of your website. You can select more than that for example, if you want these categories at the bottom of your website (the footer) too, you can just select the “Footer Menu” and the menu will be at the bottom of your website too. Click “Save Menu” when your done

37. The next thing we’re going to is clean up how our links look for our posts and pages. Go over to “Settings” and then to “Permalinks”

38. From here you can select the “Post name” option. If you look at all the other option, you can see they look a little bit messy. We’re selecting the “Post name” because when you go to a post on your website it will just be your website address filled by the name of your post. You can check out this article if you want more info on permalinks. After that just click on “Save Changes” [END]

If you ever want to delete a page or post that you don’t want, simply select which post you want to delete and click the drop down button and click “Move To Trash” and then click “Apply” this will get rid of those unwanted posts/pages.

You can add plugins by going to the “Plugin” section. Installing plugins is pretty much the same as installing a theme. You find the plugin you want and click “Install Now” then “Activate” If you want more info on Plugins you can go here for a full explanation

This is what the end result will look. (go here for the live version) I hope you enjoyed this tutorial guide. Cheers!

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