HOW TO DESIGN A SIMPLE WORDPRESS WEBSITE IN 2016.

Step one

Choose The Best Website Building Platform

Just before you begin to worry about colour patterns and domain names, you need need to decide what platform you are going to want to build your website with.

What do I mean by “platform”?

Well, back in the days when I got into web development, most websites were built using HTML (code), CSS & even Flash. These methods took a lot of time to understand and were very tricky to say the least.

That is why many people still perceive creating a website from scratch as difficult or requires a lot of coding and mad design skills. Well that is no longer true Thank God!

In 2016, we now have what we call content management systems (CMS) like WordPress, which made creating a website accessible and fun for everyone.

In simple words, a content management system (or  a website building platform) is a user-friendly platform for building websites, designing and managing your own content

Three Most Popular Site Building Platforms in 2016

Image and data credit: OpenSourceCMS.com

As you have noticed from the above graph, almost half of the websites on the Internet today are running on WordPress platform. Take a look at these stats by W3 Techs and BuiltWith.

So why WordPress right?

Well simple its because at this point there are no better nor easier way to build a website. Besides most importantly isFREE

• Your site can be easily customized with loads of layouts and themes to choose from.

And fortunately, WordPress doesn’t cost a kobo to download or install or even manage, plus there is a huge community of users who have both free and paid beautifully designed themes and templates, making it just easy to get going fast.The upside is you will never run out of uniqueness.

• It is VERY beginner-friendly

If you know how to use Microsoft Word, then you can assume you already know how add your own content on WordPress. WordPress can be expanded with free plugins to manage just about any site aspect you can imagine – from amazing business pages to social networking sites. With WP plugins you will be able to add any kind of forms from subscription forms to contact forms, image galleries and sliders and so on for your website to look pretty. Amazing right?

• Small or Big site? Doesn’t matter…

From basic functional  blogs to beautifully designed business sites and online stores, WordPress can handle just about any kind of website. WordPress is been used by eBay, Mozilla, Forbes, CNN you name it, its probably a WordPress built site.

 Your website will mobile and tablet friendly (Responsive).

Whatever website you build, it will instantly be a responsive website, looking great on every handheld, mobile device, smartphone and tablet. You don’t need the services of a web developer for that.

• There is quite a  HUGE support community available to you.

With so many people making use of the platform (Webmasters, Bloggers, Plugin creators and developers), it hasn’t been easier to find QUICK help whenever you need it. In addition, WordPress has a lot of free resources both available on YouTube and their support forums.

Of course, there are other website building CMS platforms, too.

Drupal is also a very powerful platform popular with web developers and experienced coders, it comes with a very steep learning curve though which makes it a bad choice for newbies and beginners.

Joomla although similar to WordPress and works great for online stores it will need some technical coding to make it work just the way you want.

If you want more details, I’ve put together a pretty comprehensive comparison between WordPress, Joomla and Drupal.

If for some reason you don’t want to build your site with WordPress, check out my Drupal, Joomla and HTML5 guides as well. They are all FREE to use.

For beginners, I would advise you stick to WordPress.

It is so far the easiest platform I have ever worked with, and it’s so flexible that it suits everyone from small business owners, and freelancers to creative artists and web bloggers.

I would love to see finished websites that my visitors have built…

In Step 2 I will walk you through the process of choosing a domain name and also web hosting company that you can use to host your website.

In Step 3, Soon as  you have a domain name & hosting plan,  I will show you how to install and customize your WordPress website.  And don’t worry, I will walk you through the process with lots of images as a reference for easy understanding.

Step two

Choosing a Web Host and Domain Name for Your Website

Now let’s get started,  to get a new website live,  you are going to need 2 things:

• A domain name (a web address like yoursitename.com)
• A Hosting Service (a service that connects your site to the internet)

The WordPress platform itself is free, but a domain name and hosting will cost you around N7000 Naira month depending on the plan you find suitable, Ok I will just show you how to get one for free.  However it costs less than a coffee, so it won’t break the bank.

Having your own domain name sounds and looks far more professional than having your site on someone else’s domain (like yourbusiness.my-free-website.com), and it’s super affordable, too.

I’ve mostly used www.godaddy.com as a web hosting and domain registrar for myself and for my clients.

They are quite affordable, have good customer service, andthey’re currently throwing in a domain name for free – so go check them out.

Alongside your domain name, you’ll also get a personal email account(s): you@YourSite.com – that’s way more professional than a generic Outlook or Yahoo address.

Do you have a domain name and hosting service? If you do, you can go ahead and skip ahead to step 3, where I will explain how you can set up your website.

What kind of domain name should I pick?

Let me give you pointers to make it a little easier for you:

• If you’re making a website for your business, your domain name should match your company name. For example: YourCompanyName.com

• If you’re planning to set up a website for yourself i.e a personal website, then YourName.com can be a good option.

Though domain names usually end with  suffixes like .com, .org or .net,  in recent months, quite a huge amount of domain extensions have come out, ranging from .electronic to .coffee.

I would say you avoid the extensions and go on with .com, .net or .org unless they explicitly describe what you have to offer.

The .com, .org and .net are commonly used because they are easily remembered, with a weird domain extension people may not find you easily if you use a different domain extension.

More additional tips for choosing your domain name?

#1 Make it brandable. For example, if you make a site about poultry then best-poutlry-website.net is not a good choice for you: poultryacademy.com or Poultryfall.com is much better.

#2 Make it memorable. Short domain names are easier to recall. If your domain name is too long or spelled in an uncommon way, visitors may forget it.

#2 Make it catchy. Coming up with a catchy name isn’t easy, I admit. You just keep at brainstorming, eventually you will get that unique one.

Golden rule when it comes to domain names: Just go for it, if you like it.

THINGS TO DO BEFORE NEXT STEP:

Do some brainstorming to come up with a unique domain name that reflects your business, site or blog.

Step three

Setting Up Your WordPress Website

Once you have purchased your domain name and also set up your hosting plan, you are golden.

It is now time to get your website running. Firstly you will need to install WordPress to your domain.

Installing WordPress

There are 2 possible ways to install WordPress, one is  way easier than the other.

1. One-Click-installation for Websites like WordPress, Drupal, Joomla

Every reliable hosting company has an integrated 1-click-installation for WordPress, which makes setting up a walk in the park.

If you signed up with Goddady  or any other similar hosting company, you should find your “1-click-installation” in your account control panel.

Follow this steps (Similar steps can be taken for other hosting companies):

• 1. Log in to your hosting account.
• 2. Go to your control panel.
• 3. Look for the distinguishable “WordPress” icon.
• 4. Choose the domain where you want to install your website.
• 5. Click the “Install Now” button and you should get access to your new WordPress site.

2. Manual install (if needed)

If for some reason they do not offer ‘1-click-installation’ and there aren’t any possibility of installing WordPress automatically, look this manual guide below:

Installing WordPress Manually

heyy – if can’t find the 1-click-installation, then maybe you’re dealing with a bad host!

Choosing the right Theme/Template for your website

Once you have successfully installed WordPress to your domain, you will see a very basic yet clean site.

You wouldn’t want your website looking similar to everyone else’s site right? That’s why WordPress has millions of themes both free and paid you can choose from.

The fun part: There are hundreds of amazing, professionally designed themes you can choose from and customize for your site to make it look stunning and unique.

How to find any theme you like:

1. Log into your WordPress dashboard

If you aren’t sure how, type in: http://yoursite.com/wp-admin  and replace “yoursite” with your domain.

Here is how a WordPress dashboard looks like:

Feeling a little bit confused right? – I’m going to show you next to go.

2. Accessing the FREE themes.

Once you’re in the dashboard, you can now access over 1600 free themes! look along the side bar for “Appearance”, then click “Themes”.

Do you want something more elegant and professionally looking, head over to ThemeForest.net where there’s a LARGE library of themes to pick from at varying costs.

But before you do that, I would suggest you try spending some time with the free themes first. Some if not most of them are well written and professionally looking, so don’t hasten to cast them.

From above, you can see installing a new theme is almost too easy.

You can also search for specific keywords to find the themes that best suits your style. Be patient in finding the perfect theme, it can take a quite a while, but it’s gonna worth it.

And look for themes that are “responsive”, as that means they will look good on any device. You can search ‘responsive’ as your keyword to find them.

3. Installing your new theme

Now you have found a  theme you like, installing it is as simple as clicking “Install” followed by “Activate” button.

NOTE: Changing and replacing themes will not delete your previous posts, pages and content at all. You can change themes as often as you want without having to worry about lose what you’ve created. So you needn’t worry about losing data or your content at any.

How to I add content and create new pages

Now you’re ready to start creating content. Let me quickly run through some of the basics of creating pages.

Adding and editing pages

Want a “Contact_Us” page, or a “About” page (just like I have on my menu at the top of the site?)

1. Look along the sidebar of the WordPress Dashboard for “Pages” -> “Add New”.
2. Once you have selected it, you’ll be presented with a screen that looks like what you may have seen in Microsoft Word. You can Add text, images and many more to build the page you want, then click save to save it.

Adding pages to the menu

Adding a page to be linked(displayed) in your navigation bar.

1. Always save the changes you have made to any page by clicking on “Update”
2. Click “Appearance” -> “Menus” in the sidebar of the WordPress Dashboard
3. Clicking the checkbox next to the page you have created and then “Add to Menu” to add to the menu.

Adding and editing posts

If you running a blog on your website, “Posts” will be the next you turn to. You can group similar posts  by different categories..

Adding a blog to your website?,  you can  make use of different categories and posts. Say you want to create a category named “BlogPosts”. You can do so by simply adding it to your menu and begin making posts.

Now, here’s what you need do:

1. Create a new category by going to “Posts -> Categories”

OR You can;

1. Create a blog post by going to “Posts -> Add New”. Once you have finished writing your blog post. Your blog post is ready, all you need do now is to add the right category for it.

Having created your category, simply add it to the menu, and you are golden.

Customizations & Endless Tweaking…

Here I will cover some of the basic things I’m always asked about all the time, regarding tweaking websites.

Changing Your Title andTagline

Page titles explains to googlers what your website is about, and they’re also a big part of how search engines determine your page rankings, so you have got to find a way to always have keywords in your titles and make them as natural as possible.

Your title for every page should be unique for every post on your website. For example, my site’s title is “Technology Nigeria”.

(Can’t find it? Just hold your mouse over the tab at the top of your web browser).

Taglines are added at the end of titles across every page. Mine is “The tech enthusiasts recluse”

In order to change the title and tagline on your website, go to “Settings -> General” and fill in the form below:

Disabling Comments for Posts & Pages

For some reason, you might not want visitors to be able to comment on your website.

Here’s how to shut comments off on WordPress pages:

1. While you are writing a new page, click “Screen Options” in the top right corner.
2. Click the “Discussion” box. The “Allow Comments” box will appear at the bottom.
3. Untick “Allow Comments”.

Want to disable comments on every new page by default?

1. Go to “Settings -> Discussion” and untick “Allow people to post comments on new articles”

Setting Up a Static Front Page

If you don’t like your frontpage looking like a blogpost. You can fix that by making your homepage “static”.

Here’s how

A static page is a page that doesn’t change just as the name implies. Unlike a blog, where the first new article will show up at the top every time when page is visited, a “static” page will show the same content always whenever a visitor visits the website (homepage).

To set up a static front page:

1. Go to “Settings -> Reading”
2. Choose a static page that you have created. “Front Page” denotes your home page, “Posts page” is the front page of your blog (if your entire site isn’t a blog).

WordPress will by default show take your latest posts and show them on your homepage if you do not choose static page on your own in the reading settings.

Editing sidebar

Many WordPress themes have a sidebar on the right side ( and in some cases it is on the left side).

You can get rid of the sidebars or edit out items you do not need or like, Items like the “Categories”, “Meta” and “Archives”, which are usually needless, here’s how to remove:

1. Go to “Appearance -> Widgets” in the WordPress Dashboard.
2. Use the drag n’ drop feature to add multiple different “boxes” to your sidebars, you can also remove the items you want.

Wanna add some few ‘Html codes’ that’s if you know what you are doing.You can easily drag ‘n drop the elements you would like into the sidebar (put the code into the “text box” box).

Installing WordPress Plugins to get more features.

What is a plugin?

“Plugins” are extensions that are built to expand the capabilities of WordPress, it allows you to add features and more functionalities to your site that don’t come built-in with it.

You can call them shortcuts to getting your website to do whatever you want them to do, without having to go through the trouble of building the feature from scratch.

Plugins can do everything from adding photo galleries to optimizing your site and creating an ecommerce stores.

How do I Install a new Plugin?

Installing plugins is simple, go to “Plugins -> Add New” and start searching by keyword.

There are over 26,000 different FREE plugins, so you wont run out of plugins!

Once you find a plugin you like, installation is quite easy, just click “Install”.

Just before you go and installing every single plugin, I would advise you to read this article: Things you need to know about using WP plugins.

To save your time, here is a list of popular plugins you will need as a webmaster:

• #1 Contact form 7: My site has a contact form on my About Me page. It is a cool feature to have, so your visitors can fill in the form and send you an email without logging..

• #2 Yoast SEO for WordPress: Making your WordPress site SEO-friendly is more easier with yoast, this plugin is a must have. It is free, and amazing. You will be able to edit your title tags, meta descriptions easily, all from within the page.

• #3 Google Analytics: wanna track your visitors/traffic and their behaviour? install the plugin, connect it with your Google account and you’re ready to go.

Congratulations – you’re ready to go Live!

If you followed my steps in this guide, you should now have a fully-functional WordPress site! Cool right.

I hope you find my guide useful, you can post a comment or just easily use my contact-us form on the top of this page anytime. I will gladly respond to you.

Lastly

If you found my guide useful, please share my page below. This keeps me motivated and also keeps the information on this site up-to-date and accurate and relevant.

Cheers,