WordPress is one of the most popular content management systems today. It makes building and editing website pages easy and fast, allowing users with minimal technical knowledge to create, customize and manage their WordPress website.
However, while installing WordPress and creating website pages is simple, the several technical details and technical jargon can be confusing to someone new to websites. This article describes what those terms mean and what to keep in mind when setting up your own WordPress website, be it for business or entertainment.
The Basics of WordPress
If you want to host your WordPress website online, you need to set up a few things.
First, you’ll require a way to install the WordPress software. Then, a suitable theme, a set of plugins to streamline website tasks, and a way to deal with hosting your website.
Using a WordPress Website
WordPress is an open-source Content Management System (CMS) responsible for most websites online today. The popularity comes from the ease of using it, flexibility, and in-depth customization, allowing it to be used for simple tasks and complex projects.
While a CMS aims to help users manage a website without needing much technical knowledge, WordPress takes it a step further by allowing users to fully customize it, host it anywhere, and use plugins to automate tasks.
WordPress has a large and enthusiastic community constantly creating new guides, plugins, and themes every day. So if what you want doesn’t exist yet, chances are someone is working on it. Alternatively, you can always take part in the community and request it or pay experts like Idea Maker to build it and optimize it.
Install WordPress
So let’s say you want to set up a WordPress site on Namecheap using one of their hosting plans. Namecheap specializes in web services like domain registering, website hosting, WordPress hosting, CDNs, and more.
One of the simplest ways to install it without using FTP, file transfer, or command line is by using Softaculous on your cPanel. In addition, Softaculous provides scripts to one-click install several popular web essentials.
Just make sure to pick your domain name as soon as possible to guarantee availability. You can purchase domain names before a host is contracted or WordPress is installed to secure your brand’s name before building a website.
After installing Softaculous, click on WordPress, fill in any required information regarding your website, and then hit Install.
Now Softaculous runs its WordPress script and does everything in the background, leaving you a ready-to-use WordPress installation.
Choosing a WordPress Theme
WordPress themes combine all the code, CSS, and scripts to define the look of your WordPress website. They’re all the shadows, buttons, colors, and styles on your website. Picking a suitable theme to fit your brand and please the customers is a big part of great design.
Some WordPress host providers make the experience of installing your own WordPress themes much more accessible and manageable. They provide integrated systems that help you find great-looking themes and install them with just a few clicks.
For instance, using the feature filter Bluehost offers is a great way to find the perfect theme to please most website visitors. It allows filtering by category, layout type, and features. Just keep in mind that premium themes vary widely in price, costing anywhere between $20 and $5000 for custom-built premium themes.
Picking the Best Plugins
In short, plugins are a piece of software that integrates into your WordPress website and expands its functionality. They cover most necessities of website owners.
It allows setting up e-commerce stores, booking restaurant tables, integrating a comment section, implementing a review system, and more easier and faster.
If you have a GoDaddy PRO account or better, the provider allows you to browse a library of already existing and popular plugins using keywords like e-commerce, restaurant, security, or booking to show best-rated relevant plugins.
However, if you can’t find what you’re looking for in the list or need something specifically made to fit the needs of your WordPress website, you can always hire reputable companies like Idea Maker to build custom plugins.
Other Important Considerations
After correctly installing WordPress, making it look good, and picking all the right plugins for your website, we need to deal with the technicalities of putting it on the internet.
When setting up a WordPress website, we need a domain name to ensure people can find you, a CDN to improve speed and reliability, a host to keep you online, and the software itself to deliver the content. It may sound like a lot of work, but much of this can be simplified when hiring reputable WordPress developers like Idea Maker.
What are Domain Names and IP Addresses?
Websites on the internet are all hosted somewhere like on a cloud provider, website host, or VPN.
When hosting your WordPress website online, it can only be found or accessed by using a string of numbers called Internet Protocol Address (IP address). Without a domain name, your website address will look similar to something like this: 74.33.1.254.
However, remembering a long string of random numbers and periods can be difficult. So domain names help by giving your website a friendly name that can be shared like “mywordpresswebsite.com” instead of several numbers.
Domain names are paid for annually and cost anywhere from $2 to $20. Providers like Bluehost, GoDaddy, and Namecheap can be contracted to ensure that your name always points to the IP address of your website.
Just remember that your IP will change if you change hosts. You can update the address and add the previous domain name to remedy this change. Doing so will allow regular customers to visit your website without issues, even with a different IP address.
Using CDNs to Improve Search Engine Optimization
Content delivery networks (CDN) are responsible for making your website fast and reliable, no matter where it’s hosted.
When you host a new WordPress website without a CDN, data must travel from the host to where it’s being requested, directly affecting your website speed. For instance, if your website is hosted on a web server in Dallas, USA, and someone visits it in Tokyo, JP, the website loads much slower.
Depending on the routes taken by the data, some elements may not load. The slow load time also negatively affects your search engine score, heavily impacting your website traffic.
To fix the issue, CDNs like Cloudflare make multiple website copies on their servers all over the world and deliver them to users based on the visitor’s geographic location. The copies ensure someone in Tokyo, JP, always gets a mirror of your website hosted in Japan or somewhere in Asia for faster load times and superior search engine optimization.
Cloudflare has a free plan if you want to employ CDN technology in your WordPress website. Additionally, they have some paid add-ons to help with customization and some functionalities.
If your website needs better mirror servers, more performance, and better protection, Cloudflare has paid plans starting at $20/mo. In addition, their plans can be customized to fit your security and performance needs. You can find more info about what each plan offers on Cloudflare’s pricing page.
Hosting Your WordPress Website Online
There are several ways to host your website online, but to have a high uptime for your WordPress website, you need to hire a web hosting provider. Website hosts are responsible for providing a place for your website online with high uptime, security, and management. However, if you end up with a late payment, expired SSH, or an unpaid domain name, your website won’t be reachable through its web address.
By using website hosts like AWS, Bluehost, SiteGround, or GoDaddy, you can ensure your WordPress website is always online and safe.
Many hosts also strive to streamline and simplify website management. For example, when making or hosting a WordPress site on GoDaddy, you can find WordPress themes, plugins, and easy WordPress install, without needing to code.
If you want to know more about WordPress hosting, we have an entire article about WordPress hosting types, their differences, prices, going in-depth on the subject, and even recommending some of the better hosting platforms today.
WordPress Website Building with Idea Maker
If you want to ensure you have the best when it comes to WordPress websites or want to avoid the headaches of dealing with hosting, plugins, and configuring, the experts at Idea Maker can help you.
We have years of experience building several types of WordPress websites. Our experts can create beautiful themes, improve your SEO score, create plugins, build safe e-commerce stores, integrate APIs to the website, and much more. So if you want to save time and invest in quality, contact Idea Maker today. We’ll be happy to talk about your project.
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