How Much Should You Spend on a WordPress Website?
WordPress is a free and open-source content management system (CMS) that is widely used for building websites. Launched in 2007, WordPress now has over 40 million active installations globally. Some of the biggest names in business use WordPress including Forbes, Bloomberg, The New York Times, and The Huffington Post.
While WordPress is a free tool, it does come with some built-in features and options that you might not need. In this article, you’ll discover how much you should spend on a WordPress website and whether or not you need all of its included features.
The Definitive Guide to Building a WordPress Website
If you’re new to the world of web design and development, starting a WordPress website can be both exciting and overwhelming—there are a lot of options, directions, and strategies you can take when building a website. To help newbies get started, and also to answer some of the questions I’m sure you have about building a WordPress website, I’ve put together this detailed guide which will walk you through the entire process of creating a professional-looking website. Whether you’re just a hobbyist or you’re looking to build a new business around WordPress, this guide is for you.
Step 1: Set Up Your Domain Name And Web Hosting
The first step toward creating your WordPress website is to register your domain name and choose a web hosting service. For the sake of this article, we’ll be using the domain name bloggerdata.com. You can use any .com domain you wish, but it must be available. Also, make sure that the web host you choose offers one-click WordPress installation so you can get up and running quickly and easily once you’ve downloaded and installed WordPress to your hosting account.
Step 2: Set Up Your WordPress Blog
After you’ve installed and configured WordPress to your liking, it’s time to create your first blog post. You can add your first blog post directly from your WordPress dashboard—just click the “Write Post” icon in the dashboard header, and you’ll be prompted to either write and publish your post, or to search for a topic and begin writing immediately. Once you’ve written your first blog post, you can continue to add content to your blog and grow your audience over time.
Step 3: Choose A Business Plan
If you’re starting a new business or venture, it’s a good idea to choose a business plan. A business plan will help you to lay out your strategy and goals, and it will help you to connect with investors or lenders who might be willing to provide you with financial backing.
When choosing a business plan, it’s important to think about what you need and what you don’t need. Does your business require a massive amount of investment? Are you looking for an easy money maker? Are you looking for someone to back you and your company, or are you ready to jump into the business alone?
Once you’ve answered these questions, you’ll be able to choose a business plan that is right for you. If you don’t have the money to fully fund your plan, then you might want to choose a cheaper option that you can afford, or you could look into other financing options like loans or grants.
Step 4: Design Your Website
When you’ve chosen a business plan, it’s time to start designing your website. Your website’s design will depend on how you want your viewers to experience and engage with your content. There are hundreds of free tools online that you can use to quickly and easily design any website you might want. To give you some ideas, I’ve compiled a list of my favorite free tools below:
- Canva (https://bloggerdata.com/canva/) – Canva is a free tool that allows you to create and design almost any kind of website or web document quickly and easily without needing any coding knowledge.
- Graphic Design Central (https://graphicdesigncentral.com)
- One Page (https://onelap.com) – One Page is a free tool that allows you to create and design professional-looking one-pages that you can use to launch your new business or venture. One Page also makes it easy to add social media icons like Facebook and Twitter to your page for instant engagement.
- Squidoo (https://bloggerdata.com/squidoo/)
- Type kit (https://typeking.com)
- Weebly (https://weebly.com)
- WordPress (https://wordpress.com/)
- Wix (https://www.wix.com)
- HubSpot (https://www.hubspot.com)
Step 5: Choose A Theme For Your Website
Once you’ve designed your website using the tools from step 4, it’s time to choose a theme for your website. There are hundreds of free and premium-looking themes available online that you can use to fully customize the look and feel of your site. You can choose a free theme, or you can purchase a premium theme.
The choice is entirely up to you. If you don’t have the money to spend on a premium theme right now, then you might want to choose a free theme to start with. You can update the theme anytime you want by simply logging into your WordPress dashboard and clicking the “Update Theme” button next to the one you’ve chosen. Also, make sure that the theme you’ve chosen is easy to customize so that you can make the changes you want to make without breaking a sweat.
If you are new to designing websites, then choose a free theme first and then purchase a premium theme when you are able to.
Step 6: Choose And Set Up Your Social Media Accounts
Setting up your social media accounts is an important step in order to get the most out of your website. When you set up your accounts, you’ll need to decide what type of content you’ll be posting on your various platforms—whether you’ll be posting about the business or about personal life experiences. You also need to decide which social media platforms you’ll be using and whether or not you’ll be creating separate accounts for each one.
Once you’ve set up your accounts, it’s time to begin posting content. The more you post, the more people will notice you and eventually come back for more. In order to get the most from your social media efforts, you should be engaging with your audience on a regular basis—either by posting interesting and engaging content or by responding to comments on your posted content.
Step 7: Monitor And Grow Your Audience
After you’ve posted a few articles to your blog, it’s time to start monitoring and growing your audience. Using the tools mentioned above, you can find out the demographics and psychographics of your audience (age, gender, interests, etc.), and you can use that information to refine your content and grow your audience over time.
WordPress has a built-in feature called “Analytics” which you can use to track the performance of your blog—including the number of visitors you’ve received, the demographics of your audience, and much more. Once you’ve used an analytics tool for a while and become familiar with the data they provide, you can begin making meaningful and actionable decisions about your blog’s future.
The above steps will walk you through the entire process of creating a professional-looking website using WordPress. From choosing a domain name to selecting a theme and setting up your social media accounts, this guide gives you everything you need to know to get started. With WordPress, setting up a website is as easy as 123.