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When it comes to building a new website or blog, whether you are into web development or not very tech savvy at all, using the WordPress platform with Bluehost is something that anyone can do with a little guidance.
Why WordPress?
I started learning web development around the year 2014 and I have created hundreds of websites, and the majority of them were WordPress websites. Why WordPress? Because it is the most efficient and fastest way to get a website created and up and running, which is an advantage when you are a freelancing web developer.
But even with no coding skills at all, you can easily follow this guide and start your own WordPress website, which could be an ecommerce website selling products, drop shipping, or even a niche/affiliate site. It could also be a regular business website for marketing purposes.
You could start a new blog and tell your story or even review products and make money from AdSense and affiliate marketing. If you are a freelancer of any kind you could easily use this technique to create an online portfolio to show off your work and market yourself.
There are endless options of the possibilities with a WordPress website, and I will walk you through it step by step. Just follow along and you will have your website up and running in no time.
Find A Good Host Provider
The first step in this process is to find a hosting provider and a domain name for your website. There are a lot of options out there for acquiring both of these things but I am writing this article to show you the easiest and cheapest way to do it.
For every one of my clients and my own websites, I use and recommend Bluehost for everything, especially when dealing with WordPress. I have used other hosting companies before and have compared them in a review article that you can see here: Top 5 Web Hosting Solutions Of 2021 .
You can choose any hosting provider you wish, but this article is going to show you how to set up a WordPress website using a Bluehost Shared Hosting Plan. Honestly this is the easiest and cheapest way to get a website up and running with very little cost. You will soon see why I choose Bluehost.
I am a proud Bluehost affiliate and receive a small commission if you happen to sign up for an account through one of my links. This is of course, at no additional cost to you.
I stand behind Bluehost 100% and its just the best value for your money. The commissions help me to build the Level Up Dev brand and YouTube Channel so I can continue creating great content for you guys. So with that being said, lets get started!
1: Signing Up With Bluehost
To get started, click on the any of the images or here to sign up for a Bluehost Hosting Plan. You can choose between these 4 standard shared hosting plans, or you could used one of their Managed WordPress Plans if you really want to.
I think the standard shared hosting plans are perfect for most websites. I would recommend at minimum get the PLUS plan or higher just in case you want to have additional websites in the future, plus you get a few extras.
As you can see your plan also includes one domain for free for the first year. If you are unsure of what you want your domain name to be yet, no worries, you can skip that part and use a temporary domain until you get ready to launch your site.
If you have some domain idea’s, then you can check below with the Bluehost Domain Availability Checker. Be Creative!
Below is Bluehost’s Domain Name availability Checker. This will make it easy to find the perfect domain name for your new website.
2: Set Up Your Domain Name
After you choose your plan you will arrive at the “Set Up Your Domain” page that looks like this:
If you have chosen a good domain name and its available then you can register it with your account here. Or if you already own a domain name from another platform you can register it to this hosting account to assign it to this website you are about to create. If you dont know yet, you can select “Set Up Later” and move on with your Account setup.
3: Create Account Information
This section is pretty much self-explanatory, just fill out the required information for your new Bluehost account.
Next Include your payment information…
4: Select Package And Other Options
After submitting payment information, you will see the next screen where you will pick the options for your plan and decide if you want to utilize any extra options that Bluehost offers.
After you choose your Account Plan, which determines the amount of months you want to pay for at once. The plans that have a higher amount months equal out to a cheaper rate per month. So depending on your budget and strategy, pick the plan that is right for you.
Now as far as the Package extras, these are completely optional. If you want the Domain Privacy Protection, SiteLock Security, Codegaurd Basic or the Bluehost SEO Tools, you can choose them.
Another great thing about WordPress websites is that there are free and paid plugins for almost everything you can think of, so I would say that the SiteLock and Codegaurd aren’t absolutely necessary unless you just want that extra protection for convenience purposes. And the Domain Privacy isn’t a big deal unless you don’t want anyone to be able to look up your basic information by looking up your domain.
Next you will choose your password for your hosting account and then you will see your confirmation and a link to login to your account. (See Below)
Make sure you choose a good, secure password with Upper and lowercase characters , numbers, and symbols. Also be sure to write down and store your password somewhere that is secure so that only you have access to it and can refer back to it later on if needed.
Nice work! You have now successfully created your new hosting account. Click the “go to login” button and it will take you to the login screen.(Below)
5: Login And Set Up Your Website
Here is where you will see how user-friendly Bluehost is when it comes to setting up your website. You will see a couple of optional questions like these below. You should put the name of your site as well as a tagline for your business if you have one.
As a developer, I always skip over these because you can set up all of these things within WordPress once you get there, but as a beginner I would answer them truthfully so they will help you out by installing plugins that you will need if you are setting up an e-commerce store. Or if you choose you want a blog it will give you the right features to help you with that.
6: Choose A Theme Or Install Later
At this step in the process, Bluehost offers you a small selection of free themes to choose from. I would recommend to either research the free themes first and then decide if that is what you want to choose.
Keep in mind that most of the free themes are usually pretty basic and they don’t offer many options for customization like most of the higher quality paid themes do. Free themes usually require more knowledge of some basic web development techniques, such as CSS, to style and customize elements on your website.
I would highly recommend beginners choose a higher quality paid theme to start out with so you will have more customization options and more control over how your website is ultimately styled and structured. Premium themes that you can buy online are anywhere from $10 up to $70 dollars if you buy them individually.
Premium Themes
You can browse through many premium themes and buy them individually through Envato Market, or another option is to sign up to a subscription service like Envato Elements.
With Envato Elements, you pay a monthly subscription and have unlimited access to hundreds of WordPress themes and plugins, stock images and videos, royalty free audio and so much more. I am a loyal subscriber for over a year now and I use this service very often to download new themes and plugins for my client’s new websites that I am working on, as well as my own websites.
Use your own judgement as you can always start off with a free theme and upgrade to a premium theme later. You will definitely get your moneys worth with an Envato Elements subscription if you need these types of assets often like I do.
If you know some basic front-end coding skills you can modify a free theme to look exactly how you want. The great thing about themes is that you can find one with a style that suits your brand or the style that you are going for and then modify it to your liking.
Using themes can give you a very professional and distinct look to your website, pages and blog sections as well. You can customize all the options your theme provides right through your own WordPress dashboard.
You can also just skip this and set up your theme in the “Appearance” menu in the WordPress dashboard later on. I will show you how to implement a theme into WordPress as well.
7: Bluehost CPanel
Now that you have made it to your Bluehost cPanel dashboard. From here you can control many different aspects of your Bluehost account and your website. You can login to your WordPress Dashboard and also quickly view your website as it currently is using the “View My Site” button.
The “My Sites” tab will show you which websites and/or domains that you own and you can manage certain features and setups. The Marketplace tab is an online store where you can find many different additional options and features that you can purchase and download, including themes, plugins and certain tools such as SEO packages.
You also have the “Email” tab which is where you can set up a specific email address that is connected to your website. For example, s.murphy@yourdomainname.com. This is a very useful thing to have in many cases but it is optional.
The rest of the menu options are self explanatory. Once you login to your WordPress Dashboard(Image in next section), this is where you start to design and setup your website.
8: WordPress Dashboard
Now you have finished setting up your account and you now have your website online, whether it is live yet or not. It will give you a temporary domain until you want to go live and then it will switch to the domain you registered at the beginning of the process.
Your next step is to begin creating and designing the structure of your new WordPress site. There is a slight learning curve when it comes to getting comfortable with WordPress such as learning how the platform works and how to organize and design your website.
I have created a YouTube video explaining the whole process of what I just covered above, as well as taking you step by step to walk you through creating a website with WordPress.
I will visually show you how to install your first theme, how to adjust the theme to design your site exactly how you need it, whether you want a static home page or a Blog as your front page.
Also I will show you how to install and use plugins and through this process of following my video tutorial you will become familiar with how to use all of the menu items and settings within the WordPress dashboard. I will have this video published soon and I will link to it in this post when it is live.
Don’t be afraid to explore the different menu tabs and options in the meantime as you can quickly teach yourself how to navigate the WordPress platform by experimenting. But the video tutorial will cover most of what you need to know to have a solid foundation.
Conclusion
I hope this article has been helpful in getting your new website or blog setup. Please let me know in the comments if you like this content, and if it was helpful, along with any questions you may have.
Also don’t forget to support Level Up Dev by subscribing to the current newsletter below and also check out the Level Up Dev YouTube channel.
Note To My Subscribers
I will be releasing a free e-book soon about how to create a career in web development or any tech-related field by following the self-taught path I used minus the mistakes.
This self taught method uses only free and paid online resources and no degree is required. Plus there will be chapters on freelancing, getting a job in the industry, using platforms like Upwork to start building your clients and portfolio, and even how to make extra money on the side using affiliate marketing and niche sites.
This will all be very valuable information for anyone interested in a career in tech or web development. This e-book will be free to my subscribers, otherwise it will be sold on Amazon and other similar platforms.
Here are a few more helpful articles that you can enjoy: