How to Make a Simple Website with WordPress in Less than 10 Minutes
A quick, simple and free way to make a beautiful website is to use WordPress. It’s one of the most popular content management systems (CMS) because of its ease of use and versatility. You can use WordPress to create anything from a simple blog to a fully-fledged website. In this article, you’ll learn about setting up a WordPress blog in less than 10 minutes. Then you can use it to quickly build your own website.
Choosing a Domain Name
First, you’ll need to choose a domain name for your blog. This is the address that your audience will type in to visit your site. Ideally, you’ll want to pick a.com or.net domain so that you can fully utilize the services that these TLDs offer. However, if you’re unable to choose a.com or.net domain, then you can use a free DNS service to automatically point your domain to Amazon’s AWS servers. If you’re new to web hosting, this is a great way to get started since you can use their simple, straight-forward interface to set up your blog. Once you’ve set up your blog with WordPress, you can move on to the next step.
Setting Up Your WordPress Blog
Now that you have a domain name for your blog, you can use your preferred web hosting service to setup your WordPress blog. Typically, you’ll want to use GoDaddy since it’s one of the most popular web hosts and it offers great customer support. To set up your WordPress blog with GoDaddy, simply visit their website and click the button to get started. Then, follow the onscreen instructions to set up your blog. Once you’ve done that, you can move on to the next step.
Installing WordPress
Installing WordPress is very simple — just follow the onscreen instructions. When you finish installing WordPress, you’ll be asked to choose a username and password for your blog. Then, you can visit your website and begin creating content. You can also choose to install Akismet, a free plugin that helps protect your blog from spam.
WordPress comes with lots of features out of the box, so you won’t need to install any extensions to begin using it. However, if you’re looking for additional functionality, then you can access dozens of plugins from the WordPress Plugin Directory. Some of the commonly used WordPress plugins are below.
- Akismet: This is one of the most popular spam filters for WordPress blogs. If you don’t want to risk your blog being consumed by spam, then you can use it.
- Contact Form 7: This is a free contact form for WordPress blogs. It’s very easy to use and offers great user experience. You’ll find a lot of resources, including a video tutorial, if you need help setting it up.
- Custom CSS: This is a free WordPress add-on that allows you to easily style your blog with custom colors and fonts. You don’t need to know any HTML or CSS to use it. Simply insert the appropriate style sheet and you’ll be able to make minor adjustments to the layout of your blog.
- Facebook Pixel: This is a free tool from Facebook that helps you measure how effective your blog’s content is on the platform. You can use the Facebook pixel to monitor and analyze your blog’s traffic as well as compare it to other similar blogs.
- Google Analytics: Google Analytics is a free tool that helps you track the traffic on your website. It provides you with detailed statistics about each visitor to your site. You can use the tool to track the performance of your blog posts, identify popular topics, and much more.
- Instapaper: This is a free service that allows you to save articles and videos that you find valuable or interesting. When you visit an article on an Instapaper website, it will give you the option to read it in full or to watch an accompanying video. If you choose to read the article, you’ll see a small video at the bottom of the post. This is a great way to get more people to read your blog content if you have a lot of it.
- Interactive Elements: This is a free tool that helps you add a little more life to your blog posts. You can use it to add polls, questionaires, tables, charts, graphs, and more to your blog posts. It’s a simple yet effective tool that adds a lot of value to your blog.
- Live Chat: This is a free tool that can be integrated with your blog. When a visitor visits your blog and they have an issue or question, you can have a live person pick it up and answer it directly on your site. It’s a flexible tool that can be used for customer support, sales, and marketing.
- Social Media: This is a free tool that you can use to integrate your blog with the major social media platforms such as Facebook, Twitter, and Google Plus. It’s a great way to get the word out about your blog and to create engaging content to build your following.
- Squidoo: This is a free directory that allows you to upload and link to any kind of content that you want. There are over 100 million online directories and it’s a great way to get your blog content in front of your target audience.
WordPress is a free content management system that can be used to create a blog or a fully-fledged website. It is very easy to use and setup, so if you’re looking for a simple way to create a blog, then you can opt for WordPress.com or WordPress.org. To get started, visit www.wordpress.com/ or www.wordpress.org/ and create a free account. Then, you can begin creating content and sharing it online.