Setting Up a WordPress Website

Isaiah Bollinger

Isaiah Bollinger

WordPress is the number one content management platform for websites in the world, powering over 20% of websites as of 2014.  It is a great place to get started if you are new to the web or have a small business that needs a web presence. WordPress is open source, meaning it is free to download the software. Although it is free to use, it is also scalable and can be used to build a highly effective website which is why it is a great option for new or smaller companies that may grow in the future.

1) Purchase a Domain

The first thing your going to want to do when setting up Wordpess is purchase a domain, unless you are setting it up on a subdomain or a local test environment through Github.
Purchasing a domain is simple and can be done through many websites, the most popular of which is Godaddy.  If you search Google for a domain registration promotion you should be able to get a promotion for which registering your first domain is only 1 dollar or so for the first year.  If you buy a hosting package with a company like Godaddy or Register.com you can most likely get your domain for free.

2) Buy Hosting

You cannot have a website on the internet without hosting. A simply analogy would be that hosting is like the infrastructure behind your home and the location would be the domain name.  If you just want something quick to get started you can go with a cheap hosting package through Godaddy or Bluehost and there are also dedicated WordPress hosting solutions such as WPEngine.  You may have to go with a dedicated server or Amazon Web Services if your site reaches a certain amount of web traffic but for beginners and websites with less traffic that will almost always be unnecessary.

3) Install WordPress on Hosting Package

Once you have setup your hosting you will want to open up the Cpanel and install WordPress on the domain you have purchased. This should be fairly simple on something like Godaddy and there are many articles out there that show you how to do this in more detail. In most cases you will click on your hosting and there will be an option to install WordPress. The cpanel on your Godaddy hosting should allow you to install WordPress with the click of a button and not require any manual installation methods.  You do however have to fill out the WordPress installation fields, but you can leave them as the default ones as long as you are not overwriting another database you have already created.
WordPress Installation
In this Softaculous example you have to fill out the appropriate settings to properly insall WordPress. Make sure you set the installation of WordPress to the correct domain you have purchased if you have multiple domains.  You will probably want to leave directory blank if you want WordPress to be the basis of your main website.  Do not worry too much about Site Settings and Admin Account because that can be changed in the WordPress admin panel after you have installed WordPress on your domain.
Once you have setup WordPress you should be able to go to your domain and see the default wordpress installation.  You can then login into the admin panel to start building your wordpress website at “yourdomain.com”/wp-admin with the username and password you setup in the installation if it is installed correctly.

4) Install a Theme

There are thousands of WordPress themes to choose from, both free and paid.  Every WordPress website must have a theme, so even if you end up customizing your site a lot you will still have to choose a theme to begin with.  In most cases you are going to want to buy a nice one from Themeforest because it is worth the extra 50 dollars if you do not have the programming expertise to build a highly customized wordpress website.  There are also Bootstrap and Foundation themes like the Reverie Theme if you have coding expertise and like having the flexibility of a fluid responsive theme but without the extra baggage of most themes.  What this means is extra features and code in the theme that you will not need that could get in the way of making your WordPress website look the way you want it to.
You can either buy a theme on a site like Themeforest.net or search for a theme through the WordPress admin panel search function and install/activate it right on WordPress.  If you download or purchase a theme from something outside the WordPress admin panel you will have to upload the zip file and install it on the WordPress theme section of the admin panel.
WordPress Theme Setup

5) Configure Permalinks

One of the first things you want to do is configure the Permalink structure because this will affect your On Page SEO and the page links when you start setting up pages. The default setting is most likely not what you want so you will probably want to choose either custom or the post name option that mimics the page title.
WordPress Permalinks Setup

6) Adjust Genaral Settings

Next you will want to adjust the general settings and get the website setup.  This can be found when you scroll over settings and choose the first option General. You will probably want to make your Site Title your name or something that helps your SEO because this will be your home page title.  If you install the Yoast SEO plugin you can have more freedom with customizing page titles and meta descriptions on the home page and all other pages. The screenshot below is just a test example on a subdomain but shows what the options are when adjusting your general settings.
WordPress General Settings Setup

7) Setup Pages

Setting up the pages is fairly simple and can be done by clicking on the pages sidebar and clicking add a new page.  You can choose the page template you want associated with each page on the right side of the page admin panel. For more sophisticated themes you may have a home page template, portfolio page template, and many other page templates that may or may not be built into the theme. You can also build custom templates for pages, but I will talk about that later in the customization section of this blog post.
WordPress Pages Setup

8) Set Homepage & Blog Page

This is incredibly important if you are setting up a WordPress website.  In most cases you are using WordPress because it is easy to use and one of the best platforms out there to blog while also having a great website all in one platform.  Therefore, you will want to setup a blog and potentially a seperate home page if you want your site to be more than just a blog. Here you are going to want to set your front page to home or whatever page the home page is going to be and the posts page to blog or whatever page is going to display the blog posts on your website. Each post in the post section will be a blog post, whereas the pages section is designed for traditional website informational pages.
Wordpress Home Page and Blog Page Setup

9) Setup Menu

Setting up the menu is a setting in the admin of WordPress as a subsection of the appearance section.  The settings and logistics of this will change depending on the Theme you use because some themes may use a custom menu or have multiple menus that will look a little different than the standard menu setup you see in the built in WordPress 2012, 2013, or 2014 themes.
For the standard menu you will add which pages you want to the menu structure and rearrange them in whatever order you would like using their convenient drag and drop admin panel software. You can add pages, categories, and custom links to the menu of your site.  Then you will name your menu and choose a location to enable the menu if your theme has multiple location options. You have to make sure your menu is enabled for it to show up otherwise you will just have setup a menu that is not going to be visible when you view your website.
Wordpress Menu Setup

10) Disable or Configure Widgets

On most WordPress websites and themes, the widgets are going to be blocks on the homepage, sidebar of content pages, and the footer. You can add custom text, pages, recent posts and other built-in WordPress functions to your widgets. You can play around with some of the available widgets to see what makes the most sense for your theme and website.  You can also create custom widgets, but that does require some basic programming expertise.
Wordpress Widgets Setup

11) Customization

To customize your WordPress site beyond the basic options in your theme will require some coding expertise.  If you feel that you have the programming knowledge or want to get familiar with customizing a WordPress website this covers some of the first files you will want to touch.
The great thing about WordPress is that you can create a fairly dynamic and pleasant looking website tailored to your liking by mostly just knowing HTML and CSS, the two easiest markup languages to learn. For more advanced styling and customization you will want to know things like Jquery/Javascript and PHP/MYSql but you can still create a fairly nice WordPress design without that type of knowledge.
You can edit the WordPress files in the Appearance/editor section, however for more control and ease of use customizing your WordPress website, you may want to use a text editor like Aptana or Sublime and connect by FTP or download your site locally and then upload it when you have made the changes you like through something like Github.

     I) Header File

The header file in WordPress is the header.php file that will most likely have your logo, menu, and other elements you will want to add to or edit like adding a Javascript or custom CSS file. Adding a custom CSS file in the header file is probably one of the first things you will want to do if you are customizing a WordPress website.  You will have to create a CSS file or Javascript file to do so.
This can be done by adding a <link rel=”stylesheet” type=”text/css” href=”/wp-content/themes/your-theme/css/custom.css”> in the head section of your header.php file. The reason you will want to do this is because when you go to update your WordPress theme you will not overwrite any css changes because they will all have been made in a separate custom.css file outside of your WordPress theme. You do not want to change any core WordPress or theme files because when either the theme or the WordPress software are updated you will overwrite the changes you had made and have to reconfigure the changes you made on the new version. Therefore you want to create and use a seperate CSS file or other files when you make changes to your WordPress site without changing the actual theme of WordPress core files.

     II) Footer File

The Footer file will have things like powered by WordPress that will want to change so that your site represents your brand and not WordPress.  You can make changes to the footer.php file or you can use widgets and place them in the footer section to customize your footer.

     III) CSS File

You will not want to change your CSS theme file but will rather create a custom.css file in the css folder of your theme as explained in the header.php section above.

     IV) Custom Post Types

Creating custom post types is something you will want to do if you want the ability to manage content that is not already built into your theme.  For example if you want to build a carousel with images of the brands or clients you work with, you can create custom post types so that each image you add will be its own custom post type. So in that instance you would create a custom post type for brand images or client logo images that would go in the carousel when created. I am not going to go into detail on how to create a custom post type because that alone could be entire blog post.  There are many articles out there detailing how to do this such as this one by WordPress.org.

    V) Custom Page Templates

Custom page templates are extremely useful for customizing specific pages of your website.  You may find that the theme you have installed does not have the level of customization you desire for certain pages you want on your website such as a homepage or a portfolio page.  All you have to do to create a custom page template is create a new page such as home-page.php in the theme folder (for a home page template example) and add this code to the top of the page:
<?php
/*
Template Name: Home
*
*
*/
get_header(); ?>
This will be placed above the get header (); ?> function you will find in the built in page themes like page.php.  The name of the page template can be changed by changing the Template Name: to whatever you want it to be.  Custom page templates and custom post types allow you to completely customize the look and feel of your wordpress website, coupled with adding a custom.css file, customizing widgets, your footer file, and header file.
Here are some screencasts to give a live demo of some of this setup process in action:

Getting Started With WordPress Part 1

Getting Started With WordPress part 2

     VI) Plugins

Plugins are a great way to add extra functionality to your WordPress website without high level programming expertise. You should be careful about what plugins you use because they can leave your website vulnerable to hackers if the plugin becomes deprecated or is not updated frequently as new WordPress installations and versions come out.  So when installing a plugin be careful about which one you choose.
There is a lot more to WordPress than what is described in this blog post, this is just a guide of some important things you will want to do when setting up your site.
 
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