How to Create a Second Website Using WordPress

So you have a beautiful website, with all its white space and perfectly laid-out content. You have worked very hard to get where you are, and you certainly don’t want to give up on all that hard work just to maintain the site. What then do you do? You can certainly hire a professional to come in and fix glitches for you or to clean up the content, but why bother? You can automate much of the maintenance process with WordPress, and in this article, we’ll discuss how you can use this popular content management system to create a duplicate site which you can use to test new products or features, or simply to keep the other one for backups.

The Many Benefits Of WordPress

WordPress is a fairly popular blogging platform, but it also happens to be a fantastic choice for anyone looking for a content management system (CMS). In fact, if you’ve ever used a website at all, chances are you’ve browsed or been on one that uses WordPress. Why? Because it’s incredibly easy to use, and it has a large number of pre-built themes and plugins which you can simply drop into an empty WordPress installation and start using. Additionally, WordPress offers a massive support community which you can tap into for help if you ever need it.

WordPress also has a very active development team which regularly updates it with new features and fixes bugs. For these reasons, and the fact that it’s free, open source, and very highly customizable, WordPress is a great choice for anyone looking to create a second website.

WordPress Is A Great Platform For Creating A Duplicate Site

So let’s get started. Before you begin, you should first decide what you’re going to call the new site. We’ll use the example ‘blogger.com’ to create our new site, but you can use whatever domain you want. In the next step, you’ll need to install WordPress on a server. You can do this through your WordPress dashboard, or through a third-party hosting provider. Once you’ve installed WordPress, it’s time to move onto the next step.

Step One: Create A Theme For Your New Blog

The first thing you’ll need to do is pick a gorgeous, polished theme for your new site. For this example, we’ll be using the twentytwelve theme from StudioPress, as it is one of the most popular free themes out there. You can download it from their homepage, or through WordPress’ own site by going to Appearance > Themes > Search.

Once you’ve downloaded the theme, you can click on Activate to use it. There’s also a good chance you’ll need to register for a free account with StudioPress so you can download and activate the theme. Once you’ve done this, you can go back to WordPress’ dashboard and click on Appearance. From here, you can choose to Update the settings for your new blog (this will make most of the theme’s features available to you).

Then, click on the Theme Options button, and you’ll see all the theme’s settings. Here, you can control things like the background, fonts, colors, and much more. For the purposes of this tutorial, we’ll leave all the theme’s options at their default settings. However, you can go back and change these settings whenever you want to; you’re not locked in to using them as-is.

Step Two: Install WordPress Live Chat

WordPress comes with a number of great features built-in, but for those looking for even more flexibility, they can opt-in for the Gold membership of the Pro version of WordPress (this costs $29.95 per year, but is completely worth it).

What is the Gold membership? Well, it’s more than just the paid features. It also includes things like live chat which allows members to communicate with other members of the community, as well as with the WordPress team. You can opt-in for live chat by going to Settings > Discussion > Start a Live Chat. From there, you can enter a name for your chat, choose a room for it to appear in (make sure this is in the correct room, as the wrong room can make your chat invisible to other users), and finally, you can opt-in for live chat, or not.

Step Three: Install WooCommerce

What is WooCommerce? It’s an online shop builder which allows you to create an online store inside of WordPress. You don’t need to run your own e-shop to use it. In fact, WooCommerce comes with a large number of pre-built templates which you can use to create an online store quickly and easily. For those looking for an all-in-one solution, WooCommerce is a great choice.

To install WooCommerce, you first need to install the plugin. Then, you can visit your blog’s dashboard, and on the left-hand side, you’ll see a little grey box. Click on this, and you’ll see a drop-down menu. From here, you can select Community > Plugins > Add New. Now, you can search for WooCommerce, and when it shows up, click on it and install it.

Step Four: Create Sub-pages For Your Blog

Just like pages on a WordPress-powered site, sub-pages on a Blogger blog are used to structure content. For example, you can have a About Us page which details the company’s information, an Open for Business page which promotes new products, or a Contact page which allows visitors to get in touch with you.

To create a sub-page, visit your blog’s dashboard and click on Pages. From here, you can select + New Page to create a new page, or you can go through your blog’s existing pages and click on Edit next to any of them. When you’re on a page which is already configured, you can simply click on the three dots next to More in the top-right corner of the page, and select Add New to create a new sub-page.

It’s important to note here that you do not necessarily need to have a sub-page for every single one of your blog’s content items. You can use this feature to organize content which is not related to a specific product or service, and you can use the sub-pages to highlight important dates and anniversaries, or to just keep track of your blog’s content in general.

Step Five: Customize Your Blog’s Header

The header for your blog is the area located at the top of the page which contains your blog’s name and a little bit of text. To customize your blog’s header, go to Settings > General > Header.

Here, you can enter the text you want to use for your blog’s header, and you can also upload a custom logo which will appear alongside your blog’s name.

Then, click on Apply Changes. Once you’ve done this, hit Save Changes.

Step Six: Configure Your Blog’s Language

Like many other content creation tools, WordPress comes with a handful of languages built-in. These languages are English, Spanish, French, and German. You can use the Settings menu in the upper-right corner of your WordPress dashboard to change the language used on your site. To change the language currently being used on your site, go to Settings > General > Language.

Here, you can select British English (this is the default setting), American English, Australian English, or New Zealand English.