In blogging, the easiest part is setting up your website. You don’t need to learn codes. It’s as simple as setting your phone with launchers and customizing it.

WordPress Tutorial

Before setting up your website. You need a domain and hosting service.

Domain and Hosting service

You can get a free domain and hosting service in wordpress.com, but they lag behind in features and don’t get to rank well in search engines.
So, you should definitely buy your own domain and hosting service which is recommended.

You can get a domain and hosting service on a small budget with the help of GoDaddy and HostGator.

Installing WordPress

After getting a domain and hosting service, Install WordPress from your Cpanel. Remember your username and password while installing WordPress. This helps you to log in to your site’s WordPress dashboard which is very important.

This is what your website looks like right after you installed WordPress.

It may not look amazing right now, But it is going to be amazing. To make your website look amazing, first, you need to log into your site’s WordPress.

Logging to your WordPress account

You can log in by going to your yourdomainname.com/wp-admin. There you can see a page asking your username and password.

Log in with your WordPress username and password. You have mentioned your WordPress username and password while installing WordPress.

This is what you get to see right after you logged in.

Understanding WordPress

WordPress contains:

• Tools
• Customizing area
• Top bar

I am mentioning these names to make my work easier, but these are not official names.

Tools are located in the left sidebar and the number of them will be increasing as you install plug-ins. I will explain about plug-ins later in this post.

Customization area changes according to your selected tool and used to customize your website.

The top bar has some shortcuts and account settings.

6 things I want to mention before setting up WordPress website

• Pages: Pages are simply your web pages like contact page, about page, store page, home page etc. You can create and edit your pages in Pages section.
• Posts: Posts are your blog posts. You can create and edit them in posts section.
• Media: You images, audios, videos, etc are present in a single section called Media.
• Plug-ins: Plug-ins helps you to increase the features of WordPress and they are like apps for your smartphone. You can add plug-ins in plug-ins section.
• Comments: You can address all your sites comments in a single section called Comments.
• Themes: Themes gives you amazing look for your site. And you can access them from appearance section.

Setting up WordPress Website

First, change the general settings of the site

1.Adjusting settings

Changing general settings

you can access by going to Settings>General

Edit general settings according to you.

Keep your site name as site title and arrange a tagline to it.

If you want anyone to register with your site and post on it. You can enable in membership and assign a default role to them in new user default role.

And set site language and time zone according to you.

Change date format, time format and week starts on according to your comfort.

After changing the setting, click on Save changes button.

Changing Permalinks

Go to settings>Permalinks

The default Permalink is Plain, change it to Post name. Because changing it to post name gives you a better URL for your pages and posts and they are also SEO friendly.

Anyhow more than Plain

http://study.studentcompanion.in/?p=123

Post name gives you a better clarity of the page.

http://study.studentcompanion.in/sample-post/

Now click on save changes.

Changing discussion settings

Go to settings > Discussion

It’s simply changing your comments settings. Change according to your need. If you are confused, you can follow this screenshot and complete your settings.

Click on save changes

Changing Media Settings

Go to Settings > Media

This setting helps you to handle images of your site.

By default, WordPress has different values and sets images in different sizes. Changing them to 0 helps WordPress to stop generating images in different sizes.

Then click on save changes.

2.Checking WordPress Updates

You can check by going to Dashboard > Updates

Most probably, you will have the latest update as you just installed now. If you have an update, you can change there.

3.Delete pre-installed Plug-ins, Posts, Pages

Deleting Posts

Go to posts > All Posts
Delete the pre-installed post by sending it to trash.

It will send to trash. Go to Trash and delete it from trash too.

Deleting Page

Go to Pages > All pages
Delete the pre-installed page by sending it to trash.

It will send to trash. Go to Trash and delete it permanently.

Deleting Plug-ins

Go to plug-ins > Installed Plug-ins
Select all plug-ins and select deactivate if any plug-in is active.

And select all plug-ins and select Delete.

4.Install Theme

WordPress is best CMS, You can find thousands of themes for WordPress. There are free themes as well as premium themes which can be called as paid themes.

I really prefer Ocean WP theme. Why?

Because

• Ocean WP theme is free
• It supports Elementor, which is one of the best page builders with drag and drop facility.
• It is lite and responsive
• It also supports forms and e-commerce websites.
• It’s SEO friendly

Install your preferred theme from Appearance > Themes

There you can find three themes. These are installed on your WordPress site as default.

But we need more themes which are a lot better, In my case, it is ocean WP.

So click on Add new button to install themes.

Search for your favorite theme. You can even get a live preview or demos of the themes even before installing.
Here I searched for Ocean WP.

Now Click install and activate.

It will ask you to install Ocean Extra and Elementor plug-ins.

Install the plug-ins, Ocean extra plug-in will give you extra features like widgets, meta boxes etc. which are useful for future usage. And Elementor is the page builder.

Now go to plug-ins section. You have installed plug-ins, but you have to activate them.

Click on Activate and you are done.

5.Create Pages

Go to Pages > Add New to create new pages.
Create pages according to your plan.

I just want to create a home page, blogs page and about page here, You can make as many as possible according to you like store pages, contact pages, category pages etc…….

 

And give a name to that page and publish.

Create all your pages in the same way.

We will edit our pages later.
And move on to next one.

6.Setting your home screen as a static page or Posts Page

Go to Appearance > Customize and then select Homepage settings

By default, it is your latest posts. If you want your homepage to show posts. Then don’t change. If you want your homepage should be a static page. Then you have to change it to static.

If you changed your homepage to a static page then you need to assign your home and posts page. Here I am assigning the home to homepage and blogs to posts page.

And click on that publish button at the top

7.Create Menu

Menus are placed on your site to help visitors to navigate.
For an example, this is a menu

Go to Appearance > Menus

Give a name and create a menu, I am giving name primary menu.

 

You can create a menu for all them.

We don’t have any blog posts right now. You can create a link to your posts too.

You can even link to your other sites or tag pages using custom links.

You Can even add post pages for certain categories. You will know about categories later in this post if you don’t know.

Here I am selecting Home And about page.

And click on that Add to Menu button

You can arrange Menu structure by dragging and dropping. You are arranging which option should come first and which option comes next.

Finally, select the display location and click on Save Menu.

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by now you have pages, menu and all your settings are set and even good at SEO point of view. Now it’s time to give an awesome look for your site.

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8. Editing site using Elementor

Elementor is a page designer. It will edit your pages, Blog posts etc. It is capable of changing pages like this

to this

It is even so simple. Just go to the page you want to edit.
I want to edit Homepage here.

Now go down to Ocean Wp settings to do some small changes.

Change the content layout to 100% Full Width

Now select header and disable Top bar and header.

Now select Title and disable heading

So why to change them?
Without disabling them, your site will be with all sidebar, headers, top bars etc. So it will look like this

So you disabled the header, sidebar etc on this page to make it look better.

Now click on that edit with Elementor button.

Then you land up here.

You have options on the left side and page to edit on the right.

click on add template

You can add a full page templates

Or you can even add blocks from the latest release of Elementor 2.0

And even download templates and upload in my templates section.

After selecting a template, edit them by using all these options and can make a website which gives an awesome look to your site.

In-depth editing with Elementor makes your site look better.

9.Creating Categories

You already may have an idea for a niche to start your site. You can create categories in your niche. My better suggestion is don’t create many categories, create a site on one niche with related categories.
Like Student Companion is started to help students in blogging and to help them related to tech.
So my categories are blogging & Tech for students

Now select your categories. For creating categories.

Go to Posts > categories

There you can create categories by giving name, description, and slug.

You can create sub-categories by adding parent category.

So that the created category will be a sub-category to that parent category.

Later you can publish your posts in these categories.

10.Installing plug-ins

Plugins are just like apps for your phone. They help WordPress to increase features.

Some plug-ins help to stop spam comments on your site
& some are there to add social media buttons.
There are plug-ins like Elementor which help to build pages. And lot more…..

You can install plug-ins by going to Plug-ins > add new

There you can install popular and recommended plug-ins or you can even search for your desired plug-in.

There are some plug-ins which are awesome and most bloggers use them.

11.Giving Finishing Touch

You can give your finishing touch by going to Appearance > customize

There you can options which can change your site colors, fonts etc…

Each theme has different customize options according to it.
These are the options you can get with Ocean WP theme. 

You already customized Homepage settings for creating a static page for your home.
Many settings here are already customized before from the dashboard like site identity, menu.
You can customize other settings in this section.

12.Creating Posts.

Now you are all set. Create posts and publish.
Here how you can do it?

Go to posts > Add new

Now create a heading, write a post, select the category and publish it.