How to Use WordPress: A Guide for Beginners

While WordPress is a free website builder, you must use a web hosting service for your site to be available on the web. WordPress.org is ideal if you want full power over customizing and controlling your website. However, there is a lot more responsibility that comes with managing a WordPress.org website. You have to purchase and set up your own domain name, upload and install plugins and a theme, edit your website’s code, and manage your website’s security.

WordPress ecommerce storeThere are also plenty of other eCommerce plugins like Easy Digital Downloads andWP Ecommerce. Check out this in-depth tutorial on how to install Easy Digital Downloads. But moving on, WordPress is free for anyone to download. It’s an open-source project that’s been around since 2003. This means that WordPress is developed by a collection of contributors.

A WordPress Tutorial for Beginners: Create Your First Site in 10 Steps

There are so many WordPress plugins – it could be hard to choose the right one. In fact, many of the plugins serve the same purpose, for example, there are dozens of WordPress caching plugins. If you need a detailed guide, see our tutorial on how to Install a WordPress plugin. Installing WordPress plugins is an easy task even for a beginner. Free and freemium plugins are available on WordPress.org plugin directory.

Choose your server location.That’s it, your site will be installed with WordPress and your server configurations will be optimized…all this is automatically done in mere minutes. Whichever way you choose to go, you can’t go wrong with WPMU DEV hosting. If you anticipate heavy traffic for your established business or e-commerce company to start, then go with VPS. Launching a new business venture and want to collect leads and/or payments?

Learn WordPress

Little and Mullenweg sought to create a better blogging platform, built on the original B2 code base, but with more robust features and more consistent development. Easy-to-use user interface – WordPress is very easy to use with no complicated settings. If you can use a WordPress processor, you can use WordPress. Website security – While no website platform is 100% secure, WordPress security continues to improve with a vigilant security team of core developers and users. Common WordPress security issues are usually due to user error rather than the software itself.

Your site’s title can be anything you like, a neatened up version of your URL or anything that reflects your pages is the best way to go. At a Glance features a summary of your posts and pages as well as any comments received. There’s also a statement which tells if you are up-to-date with the most recent version of WordPress the theme currently uses. Important pages include your contact page, about page, privacy, and disclaimer page. These pages also serve to protect both you and your site visitors. Thousands upon thousands of themes are available, ranging from absolutely free to upwards of hundreds of dollars.

For the sake of keeping our WordPress tutorial quick, we just installed a few plugins and for the sake of time, those are a good place to start. If you go there now, you’ll see there are a bunch of default plugins installed and as a WordPress beginner, you don’t really need any of these. You’ll then be able to find it in the list of installed plugins, also under the “Plugin” menu in your WordPress dashboard.

You may want to preview your page one last time before clicking Publish. To add your newly created menu to your site select the Save Menu option. This is also a good time to preview your website to check if you’re happy with the results.

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You’ll be brought to another screen where you can browse available themes or search for a specific one you have in mind. After installing WordPress, you’ll need to answer a few questions about the domain you want to use, the directory where you want to install WordPress, and your admin information. Once you choose your plan and click Select, you’ll be taken to another page to sign up with a domain name.

There are two main ways to customize — install a page builder or use WordPress’s native block editor. You can also host your own custom-coded site on WordPress, but people often don’t have the technical background for that option. If that’s you, a theme is a great way to start a WordPress website from scratch. A WordPress theme provides the design for the front end of your website — what visitors to the site actually see.

You can always come back to it later on and change it in a matter of minutes. Generally, you want to set the time zone to either where you’re at or where your target audience is at. Setting your time zone correctly will make publishing new pages and posts more predictable.

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While time consuming, this gives you a lot of oversight. Of course, many WordPress beginners have plenty of questions to ask about the platform. Asking questions is vital, but finding the right answers can take up valuable time if you don’t know where to look. Finally, we recommend creating a ‘child theme’ and testing any layout and design changes there for safety reasons. Making changes to your live site or ‘parent’ theme can negatively impact your traffic levels. This lets you see how your site will appear to visitors, and gives you the opportunity to make further changes.

• The idea of a CMS is to give you some easy-to-use tools so that you’re able to edit your site’s content without any knowledge of coding.
• At HostPapa, installing WordPress is incredibly easy and takes just minutes with our Softaculous script installer.
• They let you create different “levels” of accounts, each with its own ability to access sections of the site.
• It features an easy-to-use drag-and-drop header and footer builder to build any type of header in minutes.
• After you input the desired shortcode, click Preview.

Some website building tools think about design and apps first, then the blogging interface comes in as an afterthought. You’re not restricted to the default options in WordPress. If you want to add further functionality, such as to optimize images or increase your site’s security, you can always turn to plugins.

Must-Have WordPress Plugins for All WordPress Sites

AND thanks to plugins and the bit of knowledge we’re about to drop, you can keep your site blazing fast and optimized without knowing how to code. Now you can drag and drop your menu pages to change their order or make one page a sub-menu item of another. When you smash that “Publish” button on a blog post, it’ll show up on your blog page right away. Pages are less fluid, you tend to have a limited number of them that doesn’t change much over time, and they cover general info about your site, your services, products, etc. WPForms – one of the best WordPress contact form plugins . We’ve got a big ol’ post on the best WordPress plugins for you here.

On top of that, this CMS is constantly updated with new versions that improve security, include new features and improve overall performance. The easy-to-use CMS offers completely how to create a WordPress website customizable plans suitable for all needs. With no prior knowledge necessary, you can start building your own site for your business, blog, portfolio, or online store immediately.

What is a WordPress Plugin?

At HostPapa, installing WordPress is incredibly easy and takes just minutes with our Softaculous script installer. While shared hosting is good, sometimes it can get a bad neighbour effect, causing slow speed or downtime. Another drawback is that you cannot customize your web environment, which would affect other websites. Shared hosting is the most basic type of web hosting. It is like renting a home with one or more roommates – in the case of web hosting, the number of sharers is up to a few thousand. When you buy shared hosting, your business’s domain will be housed on the server and all the websites that have shared the same hosting as you.

When you add content to your WordPress website, it’s usually displayed in the form of posts and pages. If you are using a hosting provider outside of WordPress, you’ll need to install the CMS to connect your new domain to your website. Once you select your domain name, you’ll be brought to a page to complete your account and billing information for your purchase. Your hosting provider is like your house — it’s where your website files are actually stored. Without a hosting provider, your site wouldn’t have space on a server to “live.” Some of the best WordPressing hosting providers include WP Engine, Bluehost, and Kinsta. Although, to say it’s easy to use, you certainly aren’t referring to a mass audience of new users?

Once you select a theme, you can preview, install, and activate it on your website. You can now upload the PDF file or select it from your WordPress Media Library if you uploaded it already. Access the editing environment of the post or page to which you want to add the PDF file. When readers purchase services discussed on our site, we often earn affiliate commissions that support our work. Professionals from our community have built custom third-party add-ons to enhance Elementor web-creation capabilities, or add new elements, widgets and themes.

On a more technical level, WordPress is a content management system written in PHP that uses a MySQL database. In non-geek speak, WordPress is the easiest and most powerful blogging and website builder in existence today. An important part of maintaining a WordPress website involves managing a range of back-end settings. For example, you’ll likely want to create a site map, install an SSL certificate, and perform site backups. At some point, you also may want to change your site’s permalink structure or its privacy settings.

However, your best bet is to pick from a trusted WordPress theme shop and or developer. This ensures you get quality support, fast and well optimized code, and updates for the long haul. Then there’s the more official customer support https://xcritical.com/ from WordPress. You can either pay extra money for dedicated support or work through the WordPress forums. WordPress portfolio siteThe screenshot below is a rather popular ecommerce theme that pairs with the WooCommerce plugin.