Yes, it is possible to create your own beautiful ecommerce or business website, and be up and running within one day with WordPress. Many people think of Wordpress as just for blogs, but you can make many different kinds of websites with Wordpress, and the best part is that you can do it on your own, and without technical skills. WordPress is that easy to set up and maintain. It will save you thousands of dollars because you won't need to hire any designers or programmers.
In this article we will go over 3 things to set up your site:
1) Getting cheap and high quality hosting for your website
2) Finding a great domain name (and then I will show you how to get it for free)
3) Getting beautiful design for your website to make it look like you had a professional designer create it
Bluehost is the only hosting service officially recommended by WordPress and has been the number-one recommended hosting service for their platform for almost 10 years.
Why hosting is needed and what it is: hosting is the web server that serves up your site when people type your domain name into their browser.
Every website needs to have hosting. Hosting is also only a few dollars a month so it won't break the bank.
A reputable and professional hosting company is BlueHost. They also have very good phone and online tech support. And when you sign up with them,
they give you a free domain name!
Sign up for web hosting with BlueHost to get a free domain name.
Once on their site, just click the "get started now" link and follow the few steps to register, and get your free domain name and hosting,
and you are done!
The best kind of a domain name is something like www.yourBusinessName.com - that looks most professional.
You need to check which domain names are available. The tool I use to
check available domain names is at GoDaddy.com.
Just enter the domian name you want and they will tell you if it is available for purchase. You don't have to buy it there.
Just check which domains are available and then choose the domain of BlueHost as the domain name that you get for free.
Tips for choosing a domain. Make sure your domain has the followings:
1) Create relatively short domain names
2) Preferably use a .com domain name
3) Use a domain name that is simple to spell
4) Use a domain name that is easy to also remember
5) The domain name should also be easy to pronounce
6) Use a domain name that gives some hint about what you are doing, but is not too specific. That will help you in case you have slight change in strategy in the future
What mistakes to avoid:
1) Make sure the domain name does not come close to violating trademarks of other companies. For example, do not get a domain name like facebooker.com
2) Do not make your domains too long to match an exact search phrase
3) Do not use dashes in your name like this: boston-cleaners.com
4) Do not use numbers in your domain name (with rare exceptions)
5) Avoid the .biz or .info domain name.
After you bought your domain name and hosting from BlueHost hosting, you can easily use the BlueHost dashboard to install WordPress, and begin building your website.
- Go to Bluehost.com and log in at the "Control Panel Login" on the top right of the page
- Scroll down to the "Software / Services" heading, and click on "Simple Scripts"
- Click on the WordPress icon, choose the latest version of WordPress, and click "Install Now"
- Select a domain name, and leave the "subfolder" box empty
- Give your site a name and a catchy tagline.
- Uncheck the check box next to "Generate Admin Login" if you want to choose your own.
- Choose your Admin user name and password. This will be for logging into your WordPress Dashboard for writing your posts and setting up your blog.
- Keep the "Automatically create a new database" checkbox checked
- Check the legal agreement and click "Complete"
Congradulations! You have just installed WordPress CMS (content management system) to your site which will make it very simple for you to add new pages to your site.
WordPress has many free design templates. They are usually not bad. But if you would like to have something a little extra that looks beautiful and professional, you can buy WordPress themes. You can easily customize these themes, and they are usually much cheaper than hiring a designer. And they tend to look great. WordPress themes are typically in the $30-100. By the way, the word theme is what they refer to as design in the WordPress world. Just think of theme and design as the same thing.
Take a look at some beautiful templates from
Elegant Themes (a theme is the term for design in the WordPress world)
Here is how to configure your theme once you chose one:
- Log into your WordPress dashboard at "YourDomainName.com/wp-admin"
- Click on the "Appearance" tab on the left hand side of the page
- You will see some "available themes" that are free and easy to set up. Click on "preview" to see what they look like and what functions they have. To set these up all you need to do is click "activate"
- If you dont like any of these themes, then there are more themes available on the Elegant Themes site
- To install these types of themes, go back to your WordPress dashboard and again click on the "Appearance" tab on the left hand side of the page. Click on the "Install themes" tab at the top of the page. Hit the "upload" link, then hit "browse". Find and choose your downloaded theme and then hit "install now"
Congradulations, your theme is now installed and your site is live with nice design and ready for business.
For great and affordable logo designs, check out 99Designs where you can get affordable logo designs.
If you try this tutorial, and you still need help creating your ecommerce or business WordPress website, I can help you do that. In fact, I can help
you as a business coach and help you find a very good and professional domain name, set up your WordPress website, and teach you how to get
traffic to it, and sell from it. Check out this article to learn how you can hire me as a business coach.
Sometimes I get involved in a bigger capacity than just a coach. I can help you through many parts of your business. For an example of that,
check out this article on how I help people start an elearning business
If you run into problems or errors, here are 4 resources where you can get help:
1) BlueHost has great tech support
2) GoDaddy.com where you bought your domain name has great tech support
3) WordPress.stackexchange.com is a great site where you can ask troubleshooting questions with WordPress issues.
4) WordPress.org site has a support message board where you can ask questions to experinced WordPress users.
Article by Alex Genadinik