Business has changed. We are no longer interacting with the local audience, but oftentimes a national or even global customer base. We the pop up of online stores traditional brick and mortar business are falling behind. Most know that it is important to have a website, but many don’t know how to make a successful website or what content to place in it.
Both of these are actually easy to achieve. The only issue is that no one is trained how to do this. The most important factors to take into account with your website are engagement and authenticity. You need to post content that your audience is excited to read and it has to be real content that is from the heart. Value is the name of the game, and providing value to your niche is huge.
There are really only two steps to take to get yourself up and running. You need to set up domain and hosting, and you have to install a theme to use. You can do all of these in an hour or two, and you will be up and running!
Step 1: Set Up Your Website
The first thing you must do is to create a website. This is really not difficult to do, and the air of confusion that surrounds website creation should be cleared up. There are only two things that must be done to get your domain of choice showing your beautiful content.
- Go to GoDaddy and purchase your domain of choice. This link will give you a domain name for only $5.99. They will have many extras and options that you really don’t need, but it is up to your discretion to buy or not buy them. If anything, you might want to purchase the privacy option to hide your personal information.
- Go to Hostgator and purchase a hosting plan. You can use the coupon code: CausetheFuture during checkout to get 25% off of your hosting plan, which is 5% more than what they normally offer. You can either buy a baby plan or a hatchling plan. I recommend the baby plan, as it allows for unlimited domains and only costs $30 more a year. The hatchling plan is cheaper, but you can only host one domain name on it. You need to do this step second, as it will require you to provide the domain that you bought.
After you have done those two things, you only have one step left. Hostgator will give you cpanel login information, and this is how you will access your back end site. You should have two name-servers that are sent to you in an email. Copy those, then go to godaddy.com, click on manage my domains, then update name-servers. Copy the two nameservers that Hostgator sent you and click save.
Next search through all of the buttons in cpanel until you see QuickInstall. Click on that icon and choose to install WordPress on your domain name. It will give you a username and password use, and you now have your new site!
Step 2: Make the Website Beautiful
Next you have to install a theme on your website. This is not difficult either and only takes a couple of thoughtful clicks to set up.
- Type in the domain of your website into the URL. So www.yourwebsitename.com, then add /wp-admin to it. So it would be www.yourwebsitename.com/wp-admin. Here is where you sign in to your site via the username and login that you got from cpanel when you installed WordPress.
- Next visit Theme Forest in a new tab. Sign up for an envato account and here you can browse literally thousand of themes for you to purchase for cheap. Once your find one you like, purchase it, then download the zip file they give you.
- Then go to www.yourwebsitename.com/wp-admin and click on appearance -> themes. Next click on upload theme, and upload the zip file that you just purchased.
- After you have done that, you have a legitimate website!! All that is remaining is for you to enter content, images, and other information by following the instructions for each specific theme.
Pretty simple right? You will have to play around with the theme that you have downloaded to get it right, but there is no coding involved and after an hour or so of playing around you will be a WordPress pro. Have fun with your new website 🙂
