How to Make a Website With Wordpress - Step By Step Guide to Create Your Own Site

It can be confusing the first time you set up your own blog or website, I know I found it difficult, but I now have over 35 websites and blogs. This hub will show you how to make a website using wordpress. There are two options when setting up your own wordpress site, a free wordpress blog which you do not own fully or your own self hosted website. Personally I will always do a self hosted site as you have full control over everything and you can use it to make money through advertising and affiliates which you cannot do with a free wordpress site.

How to Make a Website With Wordpress

This step by step guide will show you exactly how to create your own website and will cover all you will need to know to start creating your content on your own .com or .net site. The following are what is covered in this hub:

• How and where to register a domain name and hosting.
• How to set up DNS (if necessary)
• How to install wordpress using cpanel

I recommend that you read through this whole tutorial before you begin so that you know exactly what is involved, if you have any questions please leave a comment and I will do my best to answer them as soon as possible. I have included links to the sites that you will need to use to set up your website as per the instructions, if you like you can open them in a new tab so that you can reference this guide as you go.

It is relatively inexpensive to make your own website, the cost of registering a domain name for one year is around $10 to $15 for the year depending on the extension you want (.com, .net etc). The cost of hosting your website can vary depending on which hosting company your choose. The average is around $5 to $7 a month or $80s for a year. Most hosting providers will allow you to add on extra domains and websites to your hosting plan for no extra fee so you can host two or three websites for the same $80's a year if you choose to but not all hosts provide this option so be careful which one you choose. I will recommend the one's I use later on. 

The total cost for you to create a website is about $100 for a year, not very expensive overall.

Your first step to make a website is to register a domain name. Every site needs to have a domain name and for the purpose of this hub we will refer to your website as "yoursite.com". If this sounds confusing then think of your domain name as if you were registering a real world buisness name and your hosting is the premises, hosting is renting space online to put your website just as you might rent a building for your business.

You need to choose a name that is relevant to what you want your site to be about, try and stay away from your own name unless you are making a personal blog. For instance if you want to review toasters, www.toasterreviews.com would be an excellent choice, www.anniesbesttoast.com is not so good. If you can't get the name you want, try variations of the name like www.besttoasterreviews.com or www.redtoasterreviews.net. Think about it before you register because you can't change your mind later.

Now you are ready to register your first domain name. I always use godaddy to register because they are usually cheaper and it is easy to use. Below is a step by step guide to registering a domain name with godaddy.

Once you have your domain name set up the next step in how to make a website is to purchase hosting.  I do this with hostgator.  I have had several different hosting providers over the years but have found them to not only be the most reliable but the best overall.

It may seem strange to get your domain from one place and your hosting from another but having built a lot of sites I have found these to worked out best for me, if you want to use another company do so but to make life easier on yourself, choose a host that offers cpanel, its the easiest content management system.  If you choose one without cpanel you may have to install wordpress manually which is not really that difficult if you know what you are doing, but if you are only starting out cpanel is easiest.

When I built my first site, I honestly had no idea how to do it, I picked a hosting provider that completely overcharged me and allowed me only one site (they are no longer around) and I chose a domain name that had little to do with the overall aim of my site. So from experience and having tried and tested many of the hosting services out there I finally settled on Hostgator. I have never had a better provider and cannot complain about them in any way.

Setting up hosting for you site might seem tricky if you have never done it but it is really pretty straightforward. You go over to Hostgator.com (keep this page open too as a reference if you need to) and choose the hosting package you want. I recommend the baby package as it allows you unlimited domain names and is quite cheap by all accounts.

Once you have completed the details you will be sent your information via email with instructions on what you need to do to log into your control panel (cpanel) and the DNS details for your site. If you chose to register your domain name with hostgator everything will be set up for you but if you have registered your domain name with godaddy as above there is another simple step that you need to do. You will receive a couple of emails from hostgator welcoming you and they will provide your account information as well as a set of DNS (domain name servers) these are simply numbers similar to these: 

1. ns1.hostgator.com
2. ns2.hostgator.com

Now that you have set up your domain registration, hosting plan and DNS you are ready to start to make your website.  DNS can take up to 24 hours to propagate but I have found that using these two companies it is usually instant and you should be able to type your domain name into the address bar of your browser and see your website so far.  If you can't yet, don't worry its the DNS, just try again in a few minutes or an hour or so.

To log into your control panel of your website with hostgator you must go to "yoursite.com/c-panel" and as long as everything is working a log in box will appear.  Follow the images and instructions below to log in and install wordpress for your new website.

Once all that is finished (it may seem complicated but once you have done it you will always know how to do it) you can now go to your site, www.yoursite.com and you will see the sample wordpress theme for your site.  Don't worry you will change this and can change it as often as you want after that, it is your site now, you can do pretty much whatever you want with it!

To log into wordpress you need to type /wp-admin after your domain name eg. www.yoursite.com/wp-admin and use the details you entered when you were installing wordpress in Fantastico to log in.

Now that you have learned how to make a website you can use your new site to publish just as you would here on hubpages, you can advertise products, write reviews and earn money by adding adsense to your site. There are thousands of different free wordpress themes available online so you can customize your site however you want and get it exactly as you want it to look. If you follow this guide and set up your first site I would love to hear how you got on and if you have any questions on any of the above just leave me a comment here and I will answer as soon as possible. Good Luck!