Setup Your WordPress Website
If you’ve never had a website on WordPress or just haven’t figured out how to set up a site on WordPress. You’re missing out on a lot of fun!
Having a blog for your own personal use can give you an outlet to talk to the world. Perhaps the best thing to do is talk to your people
Think of the possibilities…
You get to write about the very things that you are passionate about in your life. What’s not to love about this, right?
For clarification, this blog post is all about setting up a blog on wordpress.com. This is the free blogging option that WordPress offers. If you’re looking to set up a blog using your own domain name and want to use WordPress as your platform, then you should refer to this post.
What a blog is and isn’t
Your WordPress blog is a place to interact with friends, show off photos, and write about your personal experiences.
If you’ve been missing out on the fun and want to get started with your own blog. Here are some tips to help to show you how to set up a website on WordPress.
Keep in mind that wordpress.com will give you several different options ranging from $4/mo to $45/month billed yearly. If you’re serious about blogging, you should stay away from these options. Instead, find a hosting platform to set up your wordpress.org site.
The first thing you’ll want to do is visit the WordPress website. You’ll see a screen below:
The second thing you need to know regarding how to set up a website on WordPress is just as easy.
Click on the get started button and decide on what username and password you want to use. While this is an easy step, don’t rush too fast.
Remember: your username on WordPress will be part of the URL or website address on WordPress. Once you’ve chosen a username you can’t change it unless you want to start again from scratch. This could be a problem. If six months after setting up your WordPress website you decide you don’t like your username…
especially if during those six months you’ve added a lot of posts.
So part of the process regarding how to set up a website on WordPress does require some advance planning.
Make sure your username meets some basic criteria:
Naming Your Website
You’ll have to follow some other basic steps, such as providing an email address and picking a password. WordPress will send a confirmation email to you that will provide you with some easy instructions. Then just confirm who you say you are and that you agree to their terms of service.
Understanding How To Set Up A Website On WordPress
You will need to involve some thought on how you want your website or blog to look. Once you’ve confirmed your account through WordPress, choosing a theme is the next decision you’ll have to make.
It’s not difficult, but understanding how to set up a website on WordPress does involve some advance planning. The theme you choose will say a lot about you or your business. That said, pick a theme that provides a visual statement about you or your business. Take your time, and look around at the options. There’s a lot of themes to choose from so don’t feel like you need to rush.
Choosing Your Website Name
Your username should fit what you’re doing. If it’s for a business, try to use a username that matches your business name.
If it’s a personal blog, try to use a username that matches the theme of what the blog is about.
Once you’ve chosen the theme or design you want. You should set up your front page, also referred to as the welcome page. It’s the first page people will see when they visit your new WordPress blog.
Selecting Your Widgets
One thing that confuses new WordPress users sometimes are WordPress widgets.
Widgets are not all that complicated, once you get a feel for how they work.
They really are instrumental in attracting traffic to your blog. So, if you’re a newbie or just have a very basic understanding of how WordPress widgets work. Get to know the widgets by jumping in and working with them.
Widgets are a big part of understanding how to set up a website on WordPress. Widgets are simple parts of your WordPress blog. These allow you to embed code to internal or external things on the internet.
Linking to other sites
If you already have another website somewhere. Just use a widget to link to it from a different blog,
You can also use widgets to link to your Facebook account; news or whether websites. The options are almost endless. If you found this blog, most likely you found it on Pinterest as it’s my biggest traffic referral site.
Pinterest has many widgets to turn your pins into rich pins.
Rich pins are simply pins located in your blog posts. What makes them rich pins is that your blog is verified with Pinterest.
This blog is verified with Pinterest. It’s more of a way to track your stats from the bloggers perspective. From the reader’s perspective, it says you can trust the blog because it’s verified through Pinterest.
The Dashboard On Your WordPress Website
For picture-based learning, this is the administrative area of your WordPress site. This is also referred to as the dashboard.
You’ll have the option to access the settings, properties and determine how you want your posts to look.
You’ll have the option of other things like
- Whether or not you want to allow people to post comments.
- Whether you want them to be able to provide links to your site back to theirs and many more options.
- Write Pages or Posts.
- Ability to set up individual pages.
You don’t need to (and shouldn’t) set up a separate page for each post. A page is more static.
Separate pages on WordPress are for the purpose of posting information that will most likely not change.
Pages are for Information about you or your business, how to contact you, etc.
When you’re learning how to set up a website on WordPress, you’ll see that you only need one or two actual pages on your blog. They will be static pages during your blogging experience.
Pages that are most common to create are about me, thank you, and sales pages.
WordPress.org is the place to go for support and basically anything WordPress. It’s also the place that you go to start a blog with a specialized domain name such as, yourname.com
WordPress Installation
Now, if you’re really wanting to go a step above and have control over your blog posts (content)…
Then you are ready for WordPress to be installed on your personalized blog, such as this website.
Most bloggers don’t make that much money to support this habit in the beginning. However, there are some things that need to be put in place so that you can set yourself up to make money on your blog.
WordPress is installed. What now?
One of the steps that you could start out with is learning how to market your blog. I have found that social media is the best and cheapest way to tell everyone about your new blog. Try it out and see the response you get from your blogging.
Also, if you’re new to this blogging business stuff, leave a comment below. Let me know what your experience has been so far.