Step by Step WordPress Website Design Guide in 2021 (Free)
Do you want to create your own website? Starting a website may be a frightening prospect, especially if you are not technically inclined. You’re not alone, don’t worry. After assisting over 400,000 individuals in creating websites using WordPress, we’ve decided to put up the most complete step-by-step instruction on how to construct a website without knowing how to code.
Best WordPress Website Design Company in USA
This handbook may be used by people of all ages and abilities. If you need assistance, you may reach out to our experienced staff for free website setup assistance.
Obtain a Free WordPress Website Design Setup by clicking here!
If you prefer to do it yourself, please continue to follow our step-by-step instructions for creating a website.
All of the stages we’ll lead you through in this tutorial are listed here, from beginning to end.
Where can I get a free domain name and how do I register one?
Choosing the most appropriate web hosting service
What is the procedure for setting up WordPress?
Changing the look of your website by installing a template
Using WordPress to make a page
Using add-ons and extensions to customize WordPress
Learn WordPress and get help with it using these resources.
Taking it a step further, creating more feature-rich websites
Let’s go through some of the most often asked questions before we get started with building a website.
To create a website, what do I need?
To begin your WordPress site, you’ll need the three items listed below.
A domain name (for example, google.com) is the name of your website.
WordPress hosting refers to the location where your website’s files are kept.
45 minutes of your whole focus.
What does it cost to build a WordPress site?
The answer to this question is very dependent on the type of website you want to create. We’ve prepared a 2000-word tutorial on how much a website truly costs.
The cost of a regular company website might range from $100 to $30,000 a year.
We advise all of our users to start small and expand as their business grows. You’ll save money and prevent overpaying by doing so.
We’ll teach you how to create a website for under $100 in this tutorial.
We’ll also demonstrate how to expand it in the future by adding new features.
Which platform is ideal for a website?
Many website builders are available to assist you in the creation of your website. The platform for your website should be self-hosted WordPress.
WordPress is the world’s most widely used website platform. It is responsible for approximately a quarter of all internet sites.
WordPress is completely free and includes dozens of website templates and addons. It’s quite adaptable, and it integrates with practically every third-party tool and service accessible to website owners.
All of our websites, including WPBeginner, are created with WordPress.
What are the best ways to get the most of this instruction on how to design a website?
This is a step-by-step guide on building your own website. We’ve broken it down into manageable chunks and will lead you through each one from beginning to end. Simply follow the instructions and you will end up with a website that looks quite professional.
Based on your requirements, we will also lead you in the appropriate route for taking your website to the next level.
Have a good time building your site.
Remember, if you need assistance, you can reach out to us and we can set up your website for you for free.
The first step is to prepare.
Choosing the wrong website platform is one of the most common blunders that newcomers make. Fortunately, you’re here, so you won’t make that error.
Self-hosted WordPress.org sites are ideal for the majority of users. It has thousands of styles and add-ons that let you to construct any type of website you can imagine. See our guide to why you should use WordPress for more information on this topic.
Anyone may download and use WordPress for free to create whatever type of website they want.
Where does WordPress’s expense come from if it’s free?
Because you’ll have to organize your own domain name and hosting, both of which are expensive, WordPress is free. See why is WordPress free? for additional information on this issue.
Your website’s internet address is called a domain name. This is the address that your visitors will input into their browsers to go to your site (For example, wpbeginner.com or google.com).
Following that, you’ll want web hosting. The hosting of a website is required for all websites on the internet. This will be the internet address for your website.
The cost of a domain name is normally $14.99 a year, with hosting starting at $7.99 per month.
For most individuals just getting started, this is a lot.
Bluehost has graciously agreed to provide our users with a free domain name and a 60% discount on web hosting.
Bluehost is a global hosting company. They’re also a WordPress-approved hosting provider.
They’ve been using WordPress since 2005 and are dedicated to helping others. That’s why they’ve assured us that if you can’t set up your website using this instruction, our experienced staff will do it for free. We won’t have to pay anything since they’ll cover it. Please contact us if you need assistance setting up your website for free.
Note: Transparency is important to us at WPBeginner. We will receive a small compensation if you purchase hosting via our referral link at no extra cost to you. In fact, you’ll get a free domain name and a discount on hosting. This compensation would be paid if we recommended any WordPress hosting business, but we only suggest goods that we use ourselves and feel would benefit our readers.
Let’s get started with domain registration and hosting.
To begin, open a new browser window and navigate to the Bluehost website, then click the green “Get Started Now” button.
This will take you to a price page where you can pick a website price plan. The most popular options among our consumers are the basic and plus programs.
Choose the plan you want and move on to the next stage by clicking select.
You’ll be prompted to pick a new domain name on the following screen.
A.com domain name is ideal. Make sure it’s relevant to your industry, easy to say and spell, and remember.
Are you having trouble deciding on a domain name for your site? See how to select the finest domain name with these ideas and tools.
To proceed, click the next button after you’ve selected your domain name.
You’ll now be prompted to enter account details such as your name, address, and email address.
Optional accessories that you may purchase are also displayed on this screen. We don’t advise buying these accessories in general. If you decide you need them, you can always add them afterwards.
To complete the transaction, you’ll need to provide your payment information.
You’ll get an email with instructions on how to access your web hosting control panel after you’ve completed your purchase (cPanel).
This is where you manage your hosting account, including seeking help, setting up emails, and so forth. This is where you’ll install WordPress, most essential.
Install WordPress in the second step.
On the dashboard of your hosting account, you’ll see a plethora of icons for various tasks (cPanel). 95 percent of them will never be used, therefore you may safely disregard them.
In cPanel, Go to the website area and select the WordPress icon.
The WordPress Quick Install screen will now appear on the Bluehost Marketplace. To continue, use the ‘Get Started’ option.
You’ll be prompted to pick the domain name where you wish to install WordPress on the following screen. Then click Next after selecting your domain from the selection box.
Now you must input your website’s name, administrator username, and password. Don’t worry; if you need to, you can update them in the WordPress settings later.
To proceed, you must also check all of the checkboxes on the screen before clicking the “Install” button.
Quick Install will immediately begin the process of setting up WordPress on your site. Meanwhile, it will display different website templates for you to use on your own site.
You don’t have to do that right now since later in this article, we’ll teach you how to locate and install a free WordPress template on your website.
You’ll notice a success message in the top header after the installation is finished.
Thank you very much. You’ve just finished building your first WordPress site.
Now you can log in to WordPress.
Using the admin username and password you created before, you may log in to your WordPress site.
That was a breeze, wasn’t it?
Let’s go on to the next phase, which is to pick a website design.
Step 3: Choose a Theme
A WordPress theme is in charge of the aesthetic look of your WordPress site.
WordPress themes are professionally created templates that you may use to customize the look of your website.
Every WordPress site comes with a basic theme by default. When you go to your website, you’ll see something like this:
Most users will find this unappealing.
But don’t fret; there are thousands of free and premium WordPress themes available for you to choose from.
The WordPress admin dashboard is where you can update your theme. Then go to Appearance » Themes and click the ‘Add New’ option.
On the following screen, you’ll be able to browse among the 4,492 free WordPress themes in the official WordPress.org theme directory. You may arrange them by most popular, most recent, most highlighted, and other criteria (i.e industry, layout, etc).
Do you require assistance in selecting a theme? Take a look at our collection of free WordPress business themes.
You might also be interested in our guide on choosing the best WordPress theme for your website.
We’ll be utilizing Bento for the sake of this guide. It’s a popular multi-purpose free WordPress theme with a variety of design choices suitable for a wide range of websites.
If you know the name of the free theme you wish to install, you may search for it by typing it into the search box.
In the search results, WordPress will show you the theme. To install the theme, move your mouse over it and click the Install button.
After you’ve installed your theme, go to the Appearance menu and select Customize from the drop-down menu.
This will open the theme customizer, where you may modify your theme settings while viewing a live preview of your website.
You don’t have to finish all of the theme options right now. Once you have some material on your website, you will be able to personalize it much more.
Let’s look at how to update your WordPress site with new material.
Step 4: Fill Your Site With Content
Posts and pages are the two default content kinds in WordPress. A blog’s posts are organized in reverse chronological order (newer items displayed first).
Pages, on the other hand, are supposed to be static “one-off” material like your about page, contact page, privacy policy, and so on.
WordPress displays your blog entries on the home page of your website by default. You may adjust this and have WordPress display any page as your website’s home page (we’ll teach you how later in this article).
A separate page for your blog or news section might be created. In fact, a website can be built without a blog area at all.
After that, let’s start adding some content to your website.
To begin, you’ll need to add a few pages to your WordPress site. If you don’t have enough material for these pages right now, don’t worry. You may always make changes and updates to them.
In the WordPress admin area, go to Pages » Add New Page. Depending on your theme, this will take you to the page editor screen, which will look something like this:
To begin, give your page a title; let’s call it “Home.”
After that, use the text editor below to add content. You may include text, links, photos, videos, audio, and more.
After you’ve finished adding material to your page, click the publish button to have it appear on your website.
You may repeat the procedure by adding more pages to your website’s various parts. An about page, a contact page, and a blog page to showcase blog entries, for example.
Let’s now add a few blog entries to the mix.
In your WordPress admin area, go to Posts » Add New, where you’ll see a screen similar to the one you saw when creating pages.
In the visual post editor, you may add a title and then content. In the sidebar, you’ll also see some other choices such as post types, categories, and tags.
You can save your article as a draft or publish it to make it available on your site by clicking the save button.
Please visit our tutorial on how to add a new post in WordPress for additional information on how to use all of these options on the post and page edit screens.
Step 5: Tailoring and Fine-Tuning Your Website
Now that you’ve developed some material for your website, you’ll be able to personalize it and show it in a professional manner.
Let’s begin by creating a static home page.
Constructing a Static Front Page
In your WordPress admin area, go to the Settings » Reading page. Click on the static front page under the ‘Front page displays’ option, then choose the ‘Pages’ you generated previously for your home and blog pages.
Don’t forget to save your changes by clicking the ‘Save Changes’ button at the bottom of the page.
WordPress will now utilize the ‘Home’ page as the front page of your site and the ‘Blog’ page to display your blog articles.
Change the title and tagline of your website.
You get to pick the title of your site throughout the installation process. The tag line ‘Just another WordPress site’ is automatically added to your site title by WordPress.
You may alter the title and tagline of your site at any moment by going to the Settings » General page.
The name of your website, such as WPBeginner, will be your site title. In most cases, the tag line simply a single sentence that describes your website. If you like, you may leave the tag line box blank.
Don’t forget to save your changes by clicking the Save Changes button.
Configure the Comment Settings
WordPress has a built-in comment system that allows your visitors to offer feedback on your content. This is beneficial to user engagement, but it is also a target for spammers.
You’ll need to implement comment moderation on your website to deal with this.
Scroll down to the ‘Before a remark appears’ section on the Settings » Discussions page. Check the box next to the option “Comment must be manually approved.”
Don’t forget to save your changes by clicking the Save Changes button.
Make a navigation menu
Users can go to different pages or areas of your website using navigation menus. WordPress has a robust navigation menu system, which your WordPress theme makes use of to show menus.
Let’s start by adding a navigation menu to your site.
To begin, go to the Appearance » Menus page. Click the create menu button after giving your navigation menu a name.
Your navigation menu will now be created by WordPress. However, it will remain vacant for the time being.
After that, choose the pages you want to include in your menu and click the add to menu option.
You’ll see that the empty space in your navigation menu has been filled with the pages you’ve chosen. You may reposition them in the menu by moving them up and down.
You must now choose a display location. Your WordPress theme determines where these places are. Most WordPress themes feature a major menu that shows at the top of the page.
Finally, save your navigation menu by clicking the save menu option.
You can now see the menu in action on your website.
See our beginner’s guide on adding a navigation menu in WordPress for additional information.
Installing Plugins (Step 6)
WordPress Plugins are similar to applications for your website. They let you to extend the functionality of your WordPress site. Consider contact forms, photo galleries, and other such features.
There are presently over 49,000 free WordPress plugins available. Paid plugins are also available from third-party websites and developers.
How do you decide which plugins to install when there are so many? See our article on how to select the best WordPress plugin for more information.
Here’s a list of vital plugins you should install straight immediately on your site. They’re all completely free.
Characteristics
WPForms Lite — Add a contact form to your WordPress site with this plugin.
Envira Gallery Lite is a free WordPress plugin that allows you to create attractive picture galleries.
MonsterInsights — Link your website to Google Analytics to understand how people find and utilize it so you can keep them coming back.
SeedProd — With SeedProd’s drag-and-drop page landing builder, you can create bespoke designs and layouts.
Optimization of a website
Improve your WordPress SEO and gain more Google traffic with All in One SEO.
WP Super Cache — Increases the performance of your website by presenting cached pages.
PushEngage — Increases website traffic by allowing you to communicate with users after they have left your site. WPBeginner’s top 5 traffic sources are push notifications.
Safety is paramount.
Sucuri — Website security audit and malware scanning — Updraft Plus — Create automated scheduled backups of your website
Do you require assistance with the installation of plugins? To learn how to install a WordPress plugin, follow our step-by-step instructions.
Check out our list of 24 must-have WordPress plugins for business websites for additional plugin recommendations.
Step 7: Getting to Know WordPress
WordPress is a simple to use platform with a lot of power. You may find yourself seeking for fast solutions from time to time.
The good news is that there is no shortage of free WordPress assistance. See our tutorial on how to ask for and receive WordPress assistance.
WPBeginner is the most comprehensive WordPress resource site on the web. On WPBeginner, you’ll discover the following materials (all of them are completely free).
WPBeginner Blog — Here you’ll find all of our WordPress tutorials, how-tos, and step-by-step guidance.
WPBeginner Videos — Learn WordPress FAST with these step-by-step videos.
WPBeginner on YouTube — Looking for more video tutorials? Join our YouTube channel, which has over 52,000 followers and over 7 million views.
WPBeginner Dictionary — This is the greatest spot for WordPress newbies to start learning the language.
WPBeginner Blueprint — See which plugins, tools, and services WPBeginner uses.
WPBeginner Deals — WPBeginner users get exclusive savings on WordPress products and services.
Here are a few of our guides that you should put on your favorites list right now. It will save you a significant amount of time and money in the long run.
25 of the most frequent WordPress mistakes and how to correct them
Beginner’s guide to WordPress issue troubleshooting
The comprehensive WordPress security tutorial explains how to resolve common image vulnerabilities in WordPress (step by step)
For novices, the ultimate WordPress SEO guide (step by step)
On WPBeginner, many of our users utilize Google to get answers. Simply enter in the terms you’re looking for, followed by wpbeginner.com.
You can’t seem to locate a solution? Send us your query using our contact form, and we’ll do our best to respond.
Step 7: Expanding on it
So far, we’ve demonstrated how to create a website, apply a theme, and install necessary plugins.
Do you want to take it a step further?
You can construct powerful specialized websites using WordPress that can do a lot more.
Add an e-commerce store to your website.
Create a podcast of your own.
Make a membership website, a web directory, a discount website, a review website, and a multilingual website.
Create a website for a job board, a website for questions and answers, and a website for a wiki knowledgebase.
Check out our list of 19 different sorts of websites you can make with WordPress for additional inspiration.
Most Commonly Asked Questions (FAQs)
We’ve answered a lot of queries after assisting thousands of customers in creating a website. The answers to the most frequently asked questions regarding building a website may be found here.
Is WordPress the sole option for building a website?
There are plenty of different website builders to choose from. WordPress, we feel, is the greatest and most user-friendly platform for creating websites.
What is the best way for me to generate money from my website?
This is by far the most often requested question after assisting people with the creation of a website. There are several methods to profit from your website online.
We’ve compiled a list of 25 WordPress-based ways to generate money. This isn’t a get-rich-quick program. If you’re seeking for a quick way to be rich by generating money online, I’m sorry to inform you that there isn’t one.
How can I get started with a product-selling website?
An online store may be quickly added to your WordPress website. We’ve compiled a list of the finest WordPress eCommerce plugins. You may also use our step-by-step instructions for setting up an online store.
Is it necessary for me to understand HTML and CSS in order to design and modify my website?
No, you don’t need to know HTML or CSS to use WordPress to create a website. To effortlessly personalize your webpages, you may utilize one of the numerous drag-and-drop WordPress page builder plugins.
What is the best way for me to establish a website for free?
Although some website builders provide free choices, we do not encourage utilizing them. They frequently place their branding and advertisements on your website, making it appear unprofessional.
It’s preferable to get your own domain name and hosting so that you have complete control over your website. Find out what the distinction is between a domain name and web hosting.
Is it possible for me to build a website similar to eBay?
Yes, using an auction plugin for WordPress, you can simply construct a website similar to eBay. You may follow our step-by-step instruction on how to create an online auction website using WordPress.
Is it possible to receive a free domain name for my website?
Yes, if you want to build a website with them, some web hosting companies will provide you with a free domain. Bluehost is an officially approved WordPress hosting provider, and if you opt to develop your website using their service, you’ll get a free name and 60% off hosting.
Is it possible for me to make a website similar to Facebook?
Yes, WordPress can be used to transform your website into a social network. We have a step-by-step tutorial on how to use WordPress to create a website that looks like Facebook.
Is it possible for me to create a website with a discussion board or forum?
Without a doubt. You may use one of these WordPress forum plugins to create a website with discussion board functionality.
We hope that this post has shown you how to create a website without hiring a developer or spending too much money. You might also be interested in our 19 actionable recommendations for increasing traffic to your new WordPress site.
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