How To Build A WordPress Website From Scratch

The Objective

In this tutorial, I will guide you on How to build a WordPress website from scratch. The following step-by-step WordPress guide will walk you through all the necessary steps on how to build your dream website using WordPress.org because it is free, has tons of free plugins to meet whatever your needs, and flexible to do things in many ways.

In simple words, to set up a WordPress website, all you need to do is to get a place (web hosting) to store all those files and yes, the address (domain name) to go to your files. Now, let’s go into details step by step.

Step 1: Secure Your Domain Name And Web Hosting

Domain name is your address that visitors need to type in the browser search bar to go to your website. In other words, it is your website address or the URL (Uniform Resource Locator) and is a reference to a resource on the Internet. Watch the video below for more explanation:

Refer to this guide for things you must consider while choosing a domain name – 5 Rules To Pick The Right Domain Name For Your Business.
Refer to this guide on how to get the best web hosting that suitable for you – Top Cheap Web Hosting Options Reviews.

Step 2: Set Up And Install WordPress

Method 1: Famous 1-Click easy cPanel method (Auto installer) Watch the video below for more explanation:

Method 2: Famous 1-Click Plesk panel method (Auto Installer) Watch the video below for more explanation:

Method 3: Manually – refer how to install WordPress manually here.

Step 3: Customize Your WordPress Website

First, refer to this guide on how to choose a WordPress theme – Best WordPress Themes Reviews

Things To Do After Installing WordPress:

Add a site title and tagline to your site.
Change the permalink to “Custom Structure” then select “Categories” and Post name” to be more organize, or just use “Post name”
Create core pages called: Homepage, Contact Me, About Me, Blog.
Set your homepage and blog page inside the “Reading” settings.
Set up your basic menu to display on homepage.
Set up the “contact us” page.
Set up your “About Me” page. Just write a simple 100- 500 paragraph about you and what you are hoping to do with your website. Add an image as well.
Refer to this guide if you need to setup an opt-in page – How To Create An Opt-In Page On WordPress.
Refer to this guide to get Free Autoresponder for your website – Free Autoresponder Software.
Delete all the default widgets. Add only what you need.
Just keep everything simple, because you can always come back to change it later. The key is to implement to get your website live.

Step 4: Optimize Your Website

Refer to this guide to install only the essential WordPress plugins that you need – Best WordPress Plugins Reviews or search the official WordPress repository.
Refer to this guide if you need to use free CDN service and free SSL certificate – How To Get FREE SSL Certificate For WordPress.
Refer to this guide if you are using Litespeed Cache Server – Litespeed Cache Best Settings
Refer to this guide to install free Google Analytics for SEO purpose – How To Install Google Analytics To WordPress

Step 5: Taking Steps To Better Yourself More

Refer to my blog for more free written guides here.
Refer to my YouTube channel for more free video guides here. Thanks for subscribing!
Get the latest WordPress training video guides here.

Common WordPress Mistakes To Avoid

No backup on your website – 1 word, prevention better than curing
Not using staging website – Don’t risk your live website testing on tons of themes or plugins. Use your staging website to do the test first before push to live.
Don’t use proper permalink and categories – Select “Custom Structure” then select “Categories” and Post name” to be more organize, or just use “Post name”
Using free hosting – Ok, if for temporary learning or testing purpose. You will be facing problem like limited CPU resources, SSL issue, account being removed anytime, files transfer issue, etc. and you will need to start the whole hard work from scratch again. For long term, at least get the cheap shared hosting.
Not selecting the right theme – I suggest not to pick a theme with complex design, especially if you are just starting out.
Plugins addiction – Keep the number of plugins installed to minimum as possible. If a task can be easily be done manually, try to avoid installing a plugin just for a single simple task. Don’t addict yourself to try every plugin on your main website.
Ignoring update for WordPress, Themes & Plugins – Keep everything updated, they fix new bugs, vulnerabilities and performance improvement.
Not using cache plugin – Using a cache plugin can improve your site performance, even if you are only using a cheap web hosting.
Not optimizing images – The image resolution can be big, but the file size must be small for faster loading.
Use “admin” as username and weak password – Just don’t use admin as your username and weak password.
Installing WordPress In subfolder – Auto installers sometime by default will auto generate a subfolder to install WordPress, make sure you should always install it in the base directory.
Ignoring To Improve Website Speed and Performance – Do you want your website fast or slow?
Not setting up Google Analytics and Google Search Console – Free traffic, free tracking tools, free data, SEO ranking, I’m sure you want all these right?
Not Using Posts and Pages Properly – Pages are for static pages that don’t change very often like about me, privacy policy, affiliates disclosure, etc. Posts are for time-based content like news, updates, articles, and blogs.
Not building an email list – How am I going to contact you, if I have new goodies for you?
Not learning WordPress continuously- You will miss the opportunity to explore the evolution helpful features of WordPress. (exp: Gutenberg editor)