How to Build a Website Using Godaddy’s WordPress Hosting Service

Whether you’re just getting started or you’re looking to grow your website, you need a quality hosting service and a WordPress-compatible platform to do so. You can’t afford to make any mistakes, so it’s important to do your research first.

The good news is that you can secure a top-notch hosting service with an annual commitment that’s reasonable in comparison to the price of traditional shared hosting. With this hosting service from GoDaddy, you get a free domain and you can install WordPress on the platform of your choice—meaning you’re not bound to use their popular web software. You can, however, still use their popular tools to build your site if you want to. You also get free backups, free domain privacy, and free load balancing, so it’s a pretty sweet deal. Plus, their customer support is superb.

Let’s get into the nuts and bolts of setting up a website with WordPress hosting from GoDaddy.

Step one: Choose a domain name

Just like many other services, GoDaddy offers you the option of registering your own domain name for free. This is a great starting point for your website because it gives you the ability to easily create a unique URL for your site (also known as a ‘domain name’) that can be used to access and promote your content freely.

The best part about this free option is that you can register as many domain names as you want, which means you can have a second site, a third site, or even a fourth site easily without having to pay for each one. Plus, you can do so at any time, even if you’re on the go.

Step two: Set up your hosting account

No matter which you choose (and we recommend the basic plan as it’s the perfect starting point for those just getting started), you will need to set up a hosting account with GoDaddy to actually build your site. This is where you’ll also need to decide on which platform you want to use—either WordPress or Staticmatic—and what features you need, including the disk space and bandwidth. The more advanced you go, the more expensive your hosting will be. It is not uncommon for web hosts to jack up the prices after you reach a certain level of usage.

Step three: Install WordPress

Now that you have your hosting account set up, it’s time to install WordPress on your site. You can do this with a simple click of a button—it’s one of the perks of using a reputable host—and this will provide you with a completely functioning WordPress-based website. You don’t have to worry about a thing. Just make sure you keep the site’s directory and database secured (more on this below).

Step four: Connect to WordPress

Once WordPress is installed and fully functioning, it’s time to connect to it. To do this, simply go to https://yoursite.com in your browser (replace ‘yoursite.com’ with your own domain name) and you’ll be brought to WordPress’s main page. From here, you can click on the icon that looks like a puzzle piece to begin taking your site into the creation phase.

Step five: Create content

So you’ve decided you want to create a blog for your website. Now it’s time to populate it with content. To do this, you first need to find a topic you’re confident enough to write about and then begin creating blog posts around it. You can use any tool you want to create content, including:

• WordPress
• Blogger
• Livejournal
• Medium
• Squarespace
• HubSpot
• Typeform
• Content management systems (CMS) like Joomla and Drupal

Once you’ve created content for a few posts, it’s time to publish them. You can do this by simply clicking on the ‘publish’ button next to the blog post you want to make public. Once it’s published, it will appear at the top of the blog’s homepage and can be accessed by anyone who visits the site (including Google).

Step six: Measure success

Now that your site is live, how’s it performing? It’s time to find out by measuring its success. For this, you can use a variety of tools, including Google Analytics. This tool will give you a detailed reporting system that can be used to track the performance of your site at any time. You can also use Hootsuite to follow the performance of your site across social media platforms like Twitter and Facebook.

Keep it simple

The last thing you want to do is go overboard with plugins and complicated tools when you’re just getting started. All you need is a simple blog featuring text, images, and maybe a video or two.