What is WordPress?
WordPress is one of the popular content management systems that aid you in making your own blog or website. Almost around 39.5% of all the sites that you can find on the internet are powered by WordPress. This platform possesses a GPLv2 license.
So it is available for free to everyone that they can make use of it or modify it for their purpose. It’s a cake-walk for you to develop your own website or blog with WordPress while managing all the contents as well. You will indeed not need any prerequisite knowledge of computer programming to use WordPress.
Initially, bloggers were using WordPress prominently. But at present, the usage of WordPress has extended to creating a lot of Business websites, Blogs, Resumes, Forums, Social Networks, Portfolios, Membership Sites, and whatnot!
Why Do We Recommend WordPress?
- WordPress, as we know already, is an open-source content management system available for free. There are a lot of open source themes and plug-ins that you can avail yourself to make your page look unique.
- Without being an expert in programming languages, you can make changes to how your website looks with WordPress. Themes can modify the website atmosphere while plugins can modify the way your site functions. For example, Plugins are used while developing an eCommerce store. At present, WordPress offers more than 50,000 plugins and around 5000 themes for free.
- WordPress is a flexible open-source CMS tool wherein you can develop any type of website while letting the same evolve in time.
- There are a lot of tutorials, blogs, and other sources of help if you need any in case you encounter any issues with WordPress.
Getting Started
Domain Names
We usually use a domain name to let the users identify our website. It is a part of the URL. Choosing the right domain name might seem a little difficult. This is because if you own a brand that is named with common English words, then finding a domain name with the same words might be difficult as it would’ve been taken already. It is commonly advised that you choose a domain name that is short and crisp. Moreover what you do with your website matters more despite the fact that branding is important.
If you are genuinely into branding, then you can probably register your domain so that you get legal ownership of the site. The registration, by default, is usually for one year. If you have enough funds and at the same time if you are very much serious about taking your brand to another level, then you may even get your domain registered for five or six years.
To remind you about the security issues, it is always better to keep your domain and hosting account separately. If someone could get into your hosting, then there might be a possibility of your domain being completely taken away somewhere leaving you empty-handed.
Hosting Packages
You can choose either of the three options that are given below
- Shared Hosting
- VPS Hosting
- Managed WordPress Hosting
Shared hosting
This might seem to be a good option because you can use a single server to house a number of websites while you can afford it with just $5 per month. But still, it comes with a number of negative factors. One of them is the bad-neighbor effect. This means that any attack targeting a single website might end up affecting the other websites as well making them unavailable. This obviously affects security and is often unpredictable. Some of the companies from which you can avail the shared hosts are A Small Orange, Inmotion Hosting, MediaTemple, and SiteGround.
VPS – Virtual Private Server
It works more like shared hosting but it keeps away the negative aspects of shared hosting. Attacks may happen but in most cases, it is predictable because the usage percentage is equally divided between the number of users accessing the same servers. For example, four users can get access to 25% of the assets each. So the attackers will have a very feeble chance of getting access to the other websites even if they attack one website. If you have enough funds you can choose VPS. Some of the providers for VPS are A Small Orange, Linode, MediaTemple, SiteGround, and Vultr.
Managed WordPress Hosting
is like availing your website from WordPress.com. The whole construction of the server has been regulated to toil with WordPress effectively. This might be a safer and faster option. It provides automatic updates as well as server-level caching. Besides this, you can expect WordPress-specific support that is completely professional. One of the downsides of this option is that it is not as flexible as the other two options and some of the plugins might be disabled for security concerns. Flywheel, Kinsta, Pantheon, MediaTemple, and WPEngine are the providers of managed hosting.
WordPress Installation
If you have managed WordPress Host, you can probably get through this step by simply filling up a form followed by the installation of WordPress to your account.
But when it comes to VPS, you are left with two options: One-click installation and Manual installation. Most of the hosts usually provide tools for making the installation easier. Even if you would like to take up the manual option, it will not turn out to be difficult. You will have to transfer all the files to the Domain folder as soon as you are done with downloading WordPress. Later, make a database and place the browser to the domain. You will now have to follow the instructions that are displayed on the screen.
Themes And Plugins
Plugins
Let us begin with Plugins. Plugins are usually used for making the website function in a specific way. So you will have to choose a plugin depending on the type of website you want to develop. Plugins are usually correlated to the theme and the backend of WordPress when it comes to functioning.
If you are to start a business website, then you can probably opt for WooCommerce. At present this is the standard plugin for e-commerce sites. When it comes to developing a forum, bbPress might be a good option. This allows the developer and the users to comment and reply. BuddyPress is another plugin for making a website for social networks.
Once you are done with the base plugins, you can add content at the backend to make your page look more appealing. It is to be noted that some of the themes may not support these plugins. So you can test the plugins with the basic themes that suit your website.
Themes
Now about the themes. Choosing the perfect theme to suit your website might be a tedious task. Because there is nothing called a perfect theme in WordPress. If at all you find it perfect for your purpose, then it’ll be short of some other features that another user may want. You can get a developer to make a theme of your choice but it is again going to be expensive. If you have enough funds, you can get your own theme. Otherwise, you will have to make some compromises.
Themes, as we know, add on good looks to the page. They also include the error page, search page, archive, and many more. Here are some of the basic guidelines for selecting a good theme:
TIps for your Theme
- It should possess fast code.
- A secured theme is always preferable.
- The selected theme should work well with WordPress’s latest version.
- It should support the widely used plugins.
- The theme should undergo development actively.
- Documentation should be made easier with the theme.
The Essential Plugins
- All in One SEO Pack is something you’ll need if you gotta optimize your content to make it appear easily across the search results. With this, it will be possible for you to have the Google result preview for your page.
- Dropbox backup and restore is another plugin that automatically backs up and restores the files and databases. All your files and database will be dropped in your dropbox or in any local storage.
- VaultPress is yet another plugin for backing up your files. As it is handled by WordPress it totally fuses with the system.
- Akismet is an in-built plugin that comes along with the installation of WordPress. It takes care of your comments session such that no spamming happens there. So Akismet is basically a spam protector.
- And now comes the monster plugin, Jetpack. Despite the fact that it occupies a larger space than WordPress, it offers greater features like improvised galleries, buttons for social sharing, contact forms, and whatnot.
- Ninja Forms make it easier for you to add any kind of form to your website to collect information.
There are a lot of other plugins and you can probably find them all in the repository. If you are likely to replace any of these, you can find the replacements there.
Secure Your WordPress
Here are two simple guidelines to keep your WordPress safe from hackers.
Keep all the Plugins and WordPress updated.
Choose sturdy passwords and keep changing them every two months.
Hackers usually take up the easiest path to attack. The above guidelines may help you keep your WordPress safe.
Home Page
Make a dynamic home page with WordPress to receive a greater audience. The default home page usually displays the recent ten posts in the beginning. If at all you want to give information about yourself or the company or the brand, you can create a separate page for it and make it the home page in the settings. All you gotta do is choose the “Reading” section in the settings.
About Page
If you are using WordPress for your personal website, you can probably talk about yourself in the about section so that the audience might get to know you. The branding websites usually have details about the company on the about page. This section is of more importance if you see it from the visitor’s perspective.
Contact Page
For this section, you can use some kind of form with Ninja forms and get your contact information displayed there. There is also an option to bring in Google Maps to show your location on the page.
E-Commerce Page
You should legally include contact details, privacy policy, terms of service, and refund policy in your website if it is going to be an e-commerce site. The content you are going to put in there should be in a way that you keep it as a promise. The payment providers always look for such information to integrate with your e-commerce. These contents will make the visitors feel secure as well.
Setting up E-Commerce for your business is an absolute must. Combine it with the best E-Commerce tools and wait to watch the results.
Cookie Handling
There is a law called “Cookie Law” passed by the European Union by which the website should provide information on how the cookies work. It is better if you include a separate page for it in your website. There are even plugins that provide information about cookies to the users automatically.
Website Analytics
This is usually for finding out the reach of your website so that you can reach out to certain advertisers to take the web site’s value to a greater level. Google Analytics is a fairly good tool that tracks the number of visitors to your website. It also collects information about the time they spend on your site and the number of pages they visit.
Such data is to analyze your website’s performance. You will get to know at what time your website seems active or when it is low. You can probably schedule your uploads or improvise your content based on this to receive a larger audience.
Final Words
There is still a lot more left to explore about WordPress. This article might be of good use for beginners. WordPress is one of the user-friendly content management systems that you can always rely upon.
If you’re looking for more, here’s a list of the top content management tools to pick from and make the best out of it.