How to Host Your WordPress Site for Cheap on Bluehost

You may have heard of Bluehost, a popular web host that provides inexpensive and flexible hosting services to individuals and businesses alike. With Bluehost, you get a free domain, free installation of WordPress, and free daily backups, among other perks. Plus, you can easily connect your existing website or blog to the service using an included 1-click installer.

Does that sound good to you? If so, continue reading. We’ll teach you how to host your WordPress site on Bluehost for cheap. 

Choose A Domain

Since you’ll be using the same domain as your WordPress site, you may as well choose a domain that’s fitting. For example, if you have a blog about fashion, you might want to have fashionblog.com. If you create a free account on Bluehost and install WordPress to begin managing your domain, you’ll see that you can enter a domain name when creating a new site. Just make sure that you don’t use any existing domains when signing up for Bluehost. You can get creative with the names you choose, but don’t pick a name that’s already in use because that’ll make it harder to find your site if someone tries to link to it.

Install WordPress

Once you have a domain name, you can install WordPress to begin managing your site. For this tutorial, we’ll use fashionblog as our domain name. If you already have a website or blog that you’d like to connect to Bluehost, you can use the 1-click installer to get WordPress up and running in no time.

Create A User Account

Next, you must create a user account for the person(s) who’ll be editing content on your site. The account holder will have full control over the look and content of your site. For this tutorial, let’s call our user account holder “Kate.” To create a new user account on Bluehost, click the login button at the top-right corner of the dashboard. Once you’re logged in, you’ll see a users tab along the top of the page. Clicking this tab will take you to the dashboard for your WordPress site. In the left-hand column of the dashboard, you’ll see a user icon next to each user account. To the right of the icon, you’ll see a checkbox for that user account. Just click the checkbox to select the account you want to edit and continue toward the right.

Set Up The Admin Area

After you’ve created a user account for the person(s) who’ll be managing your site, you can set up the WordPress dashboard. To do this, click the settings icon at the top of the left-hand column of the dashboard. Once you’re in the settings menu, you can set up your admin area. For this tutorial, let’s call the area that houses the WordPress admin controls “admin” and the rest of the site “blog.” To create the admin area, click the plus icon near the top of the settings menu and choose a theme that you like. Keep in mind that the theme you choose will affect both the look and feel of your site, so choose carefully.

Set Up An SSL Certificate

To avoid potentially security risks, all web servers must have an SSL certificate installed. If someone tries to access your site using a secure connection (a protocol where information is encrypted as it travels from the user’s device to your server), they’ll be presented with a locked padlock icon on their browser’s address bar. This indicates that no data sent from their device will be manipulated by hackers or other bad actors. To generate an SSL certificate for your site, you must first purchase an SSL certificate from an SSL certificate provider, most commonly Let’s Encrypt. Once you’ve purchased the certificate, you can install it on your server using the 1-click installer from Bluehost. Just follow the onscreen instructions and within minutes, you’ll have an SSL certificate installed on your web server. 

Publish Your Blog Post

Now that your site is set up, you can begin publishing your blog posts to it. To do this, simply navigate to the blog area of your WordPress dashboard and click on the publish button near the top of the page. When a user submits content through the Contact form on your site, the content will be published to the blog area of your WordPress site. Since we’re using a free WordPress.com account for this tutorial, all of our posts will be posted to the blog area automatically. If you’d like to test submitting content through the Contact form on your site without having to publish each post separately, you can do so by clicking on the settings icon at the top of the left-hand column in the admin area of your dashboard. Here, you can choose to disable automatic blog publishing. Just follow the onscreen instructions to make sure you publish new content when you want it published. 

Customize The Appearance Of Your Site

You have full control over the theme (look and feel) of your WordPress site. To edit the appearance of your site, simply open the Style Library from the Appearance menu in the left-hand column of the dashboard. Here, you can choose from a variety of free and premium-quality themes installed on your WordPress site. You can also install a theme from WordPress.com directly from your dashboard. Just make sure that you’re working with a reputable theme provider who can offer support if you run into any problems.