How to start a WordPress blog easily (from A to Z) – by eCoupon.io

How to start a WordPress blog easily

In this article, I will guide you guys about how to start a WordPress blog within 6 Steps easily. This article is very basic but I think that many guys will be interested in it.

I know that many people here wanted to create a website for their own online business such as an online store, a personal site, a portfolio or a news blog but still didn’t know how to do. So this is a right article for you, lets read through the article now.

Example my blog eCoupon.io, this site was made based on WordPress CMS easily by me. For many people are involving in MMO industry (Make Money Online), making a website is a “must-have” skill that they need to learn at the beginning.

Some guys will have some self-questions like “how hard to create a WordPress blog?”, “how to start a WordPress blog?”, “can I make a WordPress blog by my self?”.

I can say that starting a WordPress blog is very easy. If you don’t know now how to start a WordPress blog then after reading this article, you can do it by yourself.

1. Why you should make a website by yourself?

Firstly, you have a full control on all the site. You don’t need to ask your supplier to add or remove a minor change on your site. Sometimes they will charge you a fee on such of these minor features. If you can do it by yourself then you will save a small fee.

Second, if you start the site at the beginning by yourself, it takes you just a few bucks. And you will not pay any extra money in the future. You just pay when you need to buy more plugins, themes or services. But if you hire a supplier to make a site for you, it will cost you much more in the long term. They charge you for even each minor feature you want to have.

Moreover, if you don’t know anything about domain name and hosting when hiring an agency, they ask you to use their hosting packages. That’s usually expensive. But if you know, you can buy it at the cheaper price and control many things you want.

Read more: 12 reasons why entrepreneurs need to utilize WordPress for their online business

Example my blog eCoupon.io below, it’s based on WordPress CMS and it’s totally free

Nowadays, there’re many free articles (such as this one) and tutorial videos about how to start a WordPress blog, you can easily find it on Google.

2. Some basic concepts about a WordPress blog

2.1. What is WordPress?

WordPress is a free CMS (Content Management System) based on PHP and MySQL database. WordPress is installed on a web hosting or a web server. This is also an open-source CMS. So that, many people are using it totally free. It’s not only free but also easy to manage and optimize. You can easily get WordPress install package by downloading it here

2.2. Domain name

This is one of the most important parts of your website. It can be the name of your brand or the main keyword you would like to rank on Google. For more detail about a domain name, you can read the article here What is a Domain Name? Where should you buy?

2.3. Web Hosting

This is simply a place to store your website(s) on the internet. Your website may contain images, videos, files or anything you want to show on the site. If you don’t know about what is Web hosting, I’ve already had the article about this here What is Web Hosting?. When choosing a host, you should consider many factors such as space, bandwidth, database, speed, and many others.

Read more: How to choose a good Web Hosting Provider for Your Business

Knowing well 3 essential parts above helps you to have a full control on each website you’re going to create. Knowing well how to start a WordPress blog also helps you to keep maintenance and develop it in the future.

3. Steps to start a WordPress blog

Step 1: Choosing a domain

Choosing a domain is the first step to start any website for an online business. You should choose a domain name related to your business or brand. Example if you’re working in PC technical field then the domain should begin or end with the word “PC”. The name should contain the word “technical“. Or, if you want a domain name related to the brand, you can name it anything you want.

You can buy a new domain in many popular domain registrars such as Godaddy, NameSilo, Namecheap, Dynadot,…If you’re new at Godaddy, you can register a .COM domain just only $0.99 using a coupon. Find their coupons here Godaddy 99 cent domain coupon. And if you want to buy at NameSilo at the 1st time, you will get $1 discount by using many coupons here NameSilo coupon

Read more: Top 10 Best places to buy your Domain name from

Furthermore, if you want to buy an old domain name (domain names expired, was deleted and it’s available again), you should consider some points as I listed in the article beside in order to choose a good one. Read more here: 4 things you need to check before buying an old domain

Step 2: Choosing a web hosting

There’re tons of hosting providers on the internet nowadays. But not all of them are worth to buy. You don’t know which guy has quality services and support. And more, you don’t know which price is better. So that, for helping many guys about these problems, I had these articles in which you can read and research to use too

Read more:

• Top Web hosting reviewed by eCoupon.io
• How to choose a good Web hosting provider for your business

In this guide, you will need a basic hosting for WordPress blog, so that I think you also need to know more about What you need to know when buying hosting for WordPress website

Choose Shared hosting or VPS hosting? If you’re new in this field, I would suggest you choose Shared hosting at a very first stage. Because your site is new and small, it does not require a lot of resources to run. You’re new so you don’t have enough skills to manage a VPS hosting. In the future, if your site has more many visitors you can upgrade to the higher plans or switch to VPS hosting if needed.

Don’t know about Shared hosting? Don’t worry, you can read the article here What is Shared Hosting and What you need to know!

Step 3: Installing WordPress on your site

After buying hosting, you will need to install WordPress CMS package on it. Depending on the hosting provider you’ve bought, whether they have Softaculous supported or not. You can read 2 detail articles below for knowing how to install WordPress on hosting.

Read more

• Guide to install WordPress on cPanel hosting
• Guide to install WordPress on cPanel hosting using Softaculous

After installing successful WordPress on your hosting. You can go to step 4 to make your website goes live.

Step 4: Pointing your domain name to hosting

In order for your site to run properly, you need to point your domain name to your hosting. In general, you can archive this by doing 2 steps below

• Add your domain name to hosting, this step is done on the hosting dashboard. Read this article to know how to do this, at Addon domain section: How to create Subdomain and Addon domain on hosting using cPanel
• Configure to point the DNS from your domain name to hosting DNS, this is done on your domain management page.

If you buy domain names at Godaddy (I would suggest), I think this article will help you too: Guide to manage domain and point domain at GoDaddy

At this step, you have a basic website with default functions, theme, and plugin.

Step 5: Choosing a theme for your WordPress blog

Now at this step, you have an active website and starting to write content for it. But with the default theme, maybe it looks boring and you want to change to another. Your site is based on WordPress so that there’re thousands of themes to use. WordPress themes are also classified into many categories such as business, hotel, restaurant, e-commerce, travel, hobby, personal and many others.

Commonly, websites we’re creating at the beginning can be a personal blog, a small e-commerce site, a news site,  a services site (travel, food, fashion…). So that, base on the purpose that you can choose a suitable one for your site.

There’re 2 types of theme, that is Free themes and Paid themes

• Free themes: certainly it’s free of charge. By default, after finishing the installation, your site uses a freely available theme in the themes directory. But using a free one has some limitations about features, widgets, plugins and looks simple. It’s suitable for a simple blog like a personal blog or a simple content site.
• Paid themes: there also has tons of paid themes made by 3rd parties in the theme directory. They make themes and sell to end users. These paid themes usually have full functions and almost meet your requirements. If you want your site more professional, you can buy them to use.

For example, the theme I’m using is from MyThemeShop. They have many types of themes that can meet all your requirements. They’re now one of the most popular WordPress theme providers with providing many quality themes in almost industry. If you would like to buy, you can visit here to get their promotions Mythemshop coupon

To install a new WordPress theme for your site, just simply go to Appearance -> Themes, then click “Add New” button to find a new one. If you’ve already had a theme in the zip file, then press the Upload Theme button to upload it and active.

If you still don’t know how to install it? Please read my guide here, this is a very simple process. Read more How to install a theme on your WordPress blog

Step 6: Choosing plugins for your WordPress blog

Like using a theme, plugins also have paid plugins and free plugins. For newly sites, if you don’t have any specific purposes I think using free plugins is enough. To install a plugin, just simply go to Plugins section -> Add New. Then type in the textbox the name of the plugin you want to install

Read more: How to install a plugin on WordPress blog

You can find some basic and useful plugins which I’ve listed out below or upload a new one if you have them in a .zip file. Some recommended WordPress plugins are:

• Askimet
• Jetpack
• Google XML sitemaps
• Yoast Seo
• Contact Form 7
• Shareaholic or AddThis
• BackWPUp
• Shortcode Ultimate

and many other plugins you would like to use in the future. After finishing this step, you will have a basic WordPress website ready to go live. The next step is writing some useful content for your readers. Get attract them and drive traffic to your site.

4. Conclusion

Those 6 steps above are easy to do, even if you don’t know much about web technology and programming. I think that everyone can do it easily. Nowadays, knowing how to start a WordPress blog by yourself is a trend. You can make a simple website with your own control and do everything you want on it. Such as sharing your experiences, your portfolio or writing about your favorite journals, reviewing your favorite foods and many things you can do with your own blog.

After finishing the basic steps above, you will need to spend more time to optimize the site such as optimizing on-page SEO, write more content, edit theme or install more plugins to test new features. All you can do with free of charge.

Good luck to you,