WordPress Tutorial: Step-By-Step Guide to Creating a Professional Website
Web Development

WordPress Tutorial: Step-By-Step Guide to Creating a Professional Website

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You want to create a website for your business but you don’t know where to start? You’ve heard that WordPress is a good option, but you don’t know how to use it? Don’t worry – we’re here to help!

In this WordPress tutorial, we’ll show you step-by-step how to create a professional website. Everything from registering a domain name and hosting your website to installing WordPress and choosing the right theme will be covered.

By the end of this tutorial, you’ll be able to create a website that looks great and gets your business noticed online!

Register Your Domain Name

The first step in creating your website is to choose a domain name. Your domain name is the address of your website (e.g. example.com).

When choosing a domain name, they should choose one that is as short, memorable, and representative of their business as possible.

Next, they need to make sure the domain name is available. Ideally, they register a .co.uk domain for the UK, but they can also appear professionally on the Internet with an international TLD such as .com or .net. 

Important: They should avoid excessively long or complicated domain names and domain names with hyphens.

They can check the availability of their desired domain on a website like Checkdomain.

If the domain name you want is already registered, there are still some alternatives you can try. For example, you can try to register it with a different extension (e.g. example.info instead of example.de). But you could also try to buy the domain name from the current owner.

If the current owner is not interested in selling it, they will have to register another domain name that is still available. If that is not possible, they can also look for a similar domain name that is still available.

And if everything doesn’t help, they can use a domain name generator to find new ideas.

Now they need a web hosting package.

Choose a Hosting Provider

Once they have chosen a domain name, they need to find a hosting provider. WordPress can be installed with most web hosts. The following is recommended from WordPress’ side: Server with PHP version 7.4 or higher and MySQL version 5.7 OR MariaDB version 10.3 or higher.

WordPress’ core team further recommends Apache or Nginx as the most stable options for a WordPress environment, but other web servers are also possible.

When choosing a web hosting provider, it is important to consider data protection laws. Germany has some of the strictest privacy laws in the world. So, choosing a hosting provider based in the business’ home country will ensure that their website is compliant with their laws and legislation.

This is important for businesses that want to ensure that their website is GDPR compliant and legal under the TTDSG.

The next step is the installation of WordPress. This is the software that will run your website.

Install WordPress

Now that they have a domain name and hosting, it’s time to install WordPress. Installation is usually pretty easy and most hosters offer a one-click installation of WordPress. If their host doesn’t offer that, however, don’t worry, installing WordPress isn’t complicated!

WordPress is known for being easy to install. In most cases, installing WordPress is a very simple process that takes less than five minutes.

To install WordPress, they need:

Then they simply download the latest version of WordPress from wordpress.org, unzip the file on their computer and connect to the web host via FTP or SFTP. After that they upload the WordPress files to their web server.

Now they can create a database for WordPress on their web server. This can be done via the control panel of their hosting or with a tool like phpMyAdmin. Then they create a user for the database and add it to the database.

wordpress

Now it’s time to edit the wp-config.php file. In this file you have to enter the database data so that WordPress can connect to the database. Just open the file wp-config-sample.php in a text editor like Notepad++ (free at notepad-plus-plus.org) and enter the database data (name, user and password).

After that they open the URL of their website in the browser. There they will be greeted by the WordPress setup wizard. The first thing they have to do is select their language. After that, they will be asked to enter some information about their website.

In the next step, they need to choose a username and password for their WordPress admin account. It’s important to choose a strong password here! You can use a password generator like LastPass to create a strong password.

Now it’s time to choose a theme for the website.

Choose a Theme and Customize It

Once WordPress is installed, they need to choose a theme for the website. A theme is a collection of files that determine the look and functionality of your website. There are thousands of free and premium themes, so you are sure to find one that suits your needs.

When choosing a theme, it is important to consider the following:

  1. The purpose of the website: Is it a business website, a portfolio, or a blog?
  2. The budget: free themes are usually sufficient for most websites, but if you want more features and customization options, you’d better buy a premium theme.

Theme recommendation for beginners and non-programmers: if they are new to the world of WordPress, it’s best to buy the Divi theme. No other theme is as user-friendly and suitable for beginners to create a truly professional website as Divi. If they want a wide range of templates, layouts and styles, but have little technical understanding of HTML and CSS, then Divi is the theme for them.

Now that they have WordPress installed and a theme selected and configured, it’s time to add content to their site. They can do that by creating pages and posts.

Create Pages, Menus and Content

Pages are the foundation of any website in WordPress. These are static pages that don’t change often, such as the About Us page or the Contact Us page. These pages can easily be added to menus in WordPress and these menus can be displayed in specific positions in the theme. The main navigation is usually found at the top of the page, and things like the masthead and privacy policy are often placed in the page footer.

The next step is to add content to their site. This can be text, images, videos and more. Always make sure the content is informative, engaging, and optimized for search engines so potential customers can find it online. There is one thing you should consider when it comes to WordPress SEO.

Last but not least, they need to set up a contact form on their website so that potential customers can get in touch with them. They can use plugins like WPForms or Gravity Forms to create a contact form.

They should also add some important legal pages like an imprint and privacy policy. These pages are required by law in many countries and help protect the website owner from liability claims.

At eRecht 24, they can generate a correct imprint for websites and emails and create a DSGVO-compliant privacy policy for free. 

That’s it! Now they know how to create a professional WordPress website step by step. Thanks for reading!

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