How to Set Up a Wordpress Website » Transform Your Website

So you want to build a wordpress website. This is a great choice! WordPress is what the professionals use. It is the most flexible, and cost effective means of showcasing your business, (or even your hobby).

The only stumbling block to setting up a wordpress site is that many people feel it is a little too complicated, and just don’t have the time to learn how to do it. These issues can be overcome. It is not as hard as it first seems. Let us walk you through the process:

Step 1: Choose a Domain Name.

What is a domain name? It is your “call sign”, your “url” , your “.com” address. In the beginning, the name you choose may not be that important. But, as your business grows, and more time and effort is spent branding and linking back to your domain, this could become quite valuable to you.

Some Rules to Follow When Choosing Your Domain

It doesn’t have to be a .com. It can end in .org, .store, .net and many other things. The reason people tend to stick with reserving the “.com” is that it is easiest for your customers to remember if they are typing it in, and, if you ever do become large, you will not want someone else to own the “.com” of your name because some of your traffic may end up being redirected elsewhere.
Keep it fairly simple. Long names are harder to type. (However, most people do tend to find you through some kind of link.)
Think of the bigger company’s you know – walmart.com,…. subway.com very simple and identifiable. If it is one word, let it be the key or main name of your business.

The Process:

Decide what the name of your business will be
Come up with several suggestions of what you could use as your domain name.
Go Here (Namecheap.com) and type in your domain name suggestions and see if it is available.
If you can’t find the first thing you wanted, read below
Don’t purchase your domain name until you read the section on Hosting

What if my name is not available?

If the “.com” that you wanted is being used by someone in the same type of business that you are in, you might want to consider picking a slightly different business name, otherwise your customers could get quite confused, and end up at the other business as opposed to yours.

If the .com is not available, but is being used by someone in a very different line of work, perhaps you shouldn’t give up on the name. You could consider “tweeking” it a little:

You could use an abbreviation. (NBA.com)
You could make your name longer. One great formula combines a noun – describing what the business is, combined with a descriptive term – either an action or an adjective. (TransformYourWebsite.com)
Consider adding suffixes like store, book, blueprint to your name.
Are you married to the actual business name you chose? Could you change the name slightly? Try using synonyms.

Don’t get too overwhelmed by this step:

This is probably not the only domain name you will ever buy in your lifetime. Once you get started, you will find all sorts of domain names you like and will purchase.
Domain names are relatively cheap (usually $10 – $15), so it is not the end of the world if you buy the wrong one initially.
Domain names can be changed. This is more of an advanced concept, but it CAN be done.

Step 2: Reserving your domain name.

Your host provider often offers your first domain name free. For most people, this is a fantastic solution. If this is you, skip ahead to Step 3.

If you already have an established business, and you have found that perfect domain name that matches your business, you may want to consider reserving that domain name via a third party such as Name Cheap. Why?

In time, as your business grows, your domain name will become a very valuable asset to you. You will end up doing a lot of branding around that domain name, and much of your social media and such will have links coming back to that domain name. At some point down the line, you may want to change where you host your website. Even if you don’t intend to, it is nice to have that flexibility. This is much easier to do if you own your domain name is at a third part setting.

When you reserve your domain name with a third party, you will have to pay for it (as opposed to the free one your host provider will offer you), and you will have to go into your dashboard of that name provider and “point” your domain to your host provider’s servers. This is not that difficult, but it is an extra step. If this extra step causes you stress, by all means take the easy way out for now and go with the free one with your host. You still can change this down the road if you want.

Step 3: Choose a Host.

There are several options, but the one I use for most of my sites, and the one I highly recommend – especially for beginners – is BlueHost. You can follow this link here:

Why BlueHost?

They have great customer support
They are inexpensive
It includes a free domain name
They offer a FREE SSL when you sign up (Google has begun flagging sites that do not have SSL certificates, quoting lack of security reasons)
They have been around a long time and have a proven track record.
There are many opportunities to grow and expand within the same hosting environment, saving time and money when your business outgrows your initial installation.

Step 4: Pick a Plan

For most people, the Prime, or “Choice Plus” plan is the best option because, if you lock it in for three years. it is an incredible deal. The plan including FREE website backups, all for not alot more than a “Basic” plan.

In the beginning, you can certainly get by with the Basic Plan, but as your business grows, and the amount of files and functions you add to your website grows, this can slow your website down. If you choose the Basic Plan to start with, you will likely want to upgrade in the future.

Some website features take up more memory or computing power than others. Videos, Shopping carts, and a Membership areas are some features that take up more load time. If you are planning on making use of these features, then a Choice Plus plan will work best for you.

Step 5: Collect Your Free Domain or enter your already reserved domain

Since you have already decided what domain name you want, simply type it into the FREE domain box and Bluehost will reserve it for you. If, however, you decided to go with a third party name provider, enter that name in the second box.

If you still can’t decide on your domain name, Blue Host will still let you sign up and get started building your website. You simply won’t be able to show it to anyone until you hook it up to its name.

Step 6: Security and Back-ups

While registering, Blue Host will offer you certain add-ons – paid back-ups, and Sitelock security. If you take our 5 day website set-up course, we will teach you how to install some plug-ins (plug-ins are to wordpress as apps are to your phone) that will take care of these processes for you. In the beginning, you will be more than satisfied with the free versions of these programs. When you grow, you can begin to incorporate more complex solutions into your website.

If you are not going to take our course, and you don’t want to stress about security and back-ups, then by all means sign up for the security and back-up programs offered. Then, if anything does go wrong, you know that it can be fixed quickly and easily by a professional.

Step 7: Install WordPress

Bluehost will automatically ask you if you wish to install WordPress. Just click YES!.

As wordpress is installing, you may see a number of ideas for themes. What are themes? Themes are like a framework for displaying the information you are going to put into your site.

Recently, Bluehost has also provided the option of creating a custom theme. They will walk you through a bunch of questions and you can go through the process of developing your first, good-looking website. You do not have to use this theme if you do not want to… but if you are new, going through the process with them will be very helpful as they will guide you through some key decisions. Go with the flow.

WordPress automatically installs a few free themes you can use in the short term, and we have a very long discussion on Themes in the 5 Day Website Course you will want to take a look at if this is something new to you.

Once wordpress is installed… make sure you copy your user id and your password and place it somewhere safe like in a notepad. You will need these to Log In!

What is The “5 in 5” WordPress Website Course?

Would you like to go deeper? Would you like to learn more about WordPress and Websites, and make your website do more things for you? Would you like to add a blog, a shopping cart, products and product descriptions, schedule appointments, collect emails, set up a business email…. and so much more.

Our “5 in 5” course will be a perfect next step on your website journey as it digs deeper into WordPress and all that you can do with it.

In this 5 day course, we will discuss many topics we didn’t have time to go into in the shorter course:

How to set up hosting
How to create a Home Page, contact page, About page and several more
What Theme (Page Format) choices do you have, and which one should you choose?
What Plug-ins should you use or what added features should you include on your site?
How to set up email that you can use for your business
How to set up the ability to collect email from customers and keep in contact with them
How to add menus and navigation
How to add security and back-ups
How do I set up a Blog
How do I schedule appointments
and much more…..

Get your BLUEHOST site set up HERE