Have you ever told someone that you want to start an online business? Did their eyes glaze over? Did YOUR eyes glaze over after reading the seemingly-endless stream of “How-To” guides? Web design can be difficult if you are new to the game. Luckily for us, some very crafty people created a program that is simple to use and creates great looking websites every time.

WordPress and WordPress development have taken leaps and bounds in recent years.

With entrepreneurs and bloggers popping up each minute, WordPress became necessary to help the newbies create an engaging website without knowing how to code.

If you are new to website creation, welcome to the wonderful world of WordPress! Here is a simple guide to help you get your personal site up and running.

Choose Your Domain Name

Choosing a domain is both the most exciting and most challenging part of WordPress development. You’re always looking for something that reflects what you want your website to be. For that reason, you need to have something unique. Your domain needs to be easy to spell, easy to remember and let people know what site they’re visiting right away.

That being said, don’t fret if your blog direction changes. Domains can be changed with the help of your hosting site. Speaking of..

Register With a Hosting Site

Simply buying and registering your domain name won’t allow you to start working on your WordPress site. You need to have a hosting company involved that will house your newly minted domain. There are many hosting sites that offer WordPress and domain registration, such as HostGator, BlueHost, and GoDaddy.

The benefit of choosing a hosting site that offers WordPress is that they can help you with WordPress development. The final say of how your site looks is up to you, of course. However, WordPress can sometimes cause its users some headaches. Your hosting company, if it offers WordPress, will be able to troubleshoot these issues with you.

Choose Your Look

Once you’re all registered with your hosting company and with WordPress itself, you are ready to choose how your site looks. This is your indelible ink – this is what the people will see as they browse through your site.

Themes

The theme of your website will give your site a certain feel.

This feeling is entirely up to you. WordPress has many free themes available to its users, which makes the theme selection process that much simpler. It’s important to keep it simple at the start, as you can change your theme when you wish.

Pages

“About Me”, “News”, and “Resume” are good examples of the pages you would likely see on another personal WordPress site. Pages are simple to create. Your dashboard will have a button that will feature the “Pages” button.

One thing to keep in mind is the permalink for your page. It’s at the top of your dashboard on the new page screen. When you create a page, it won’t state the title of the new page unless you tell it to. For example, the “Contact Me” page would likely read wp-page4.html. This is a simple fix in WordPress. Simply click edit, change it to your page name, and there you go.

Create Your Content

This is the fun part.

Now you can write, write write! Do what you were setting out to do in the first place – create your own content. You can be a blog, or you can simply give information about yourself. It’s better to have a mix, just to give people a sense of who you are through your writing.

In all honesty, you can create content before you create your site. In fact, it’s more beneficial to have some things to post ready to go for when your site has been created. That makes the next part much simpler.

Push Your Content

Now that you have your content, it’s time to send it out into the world.

Connect your site to your various social media to make your writing known to the world. WordPress sites can easily connect to all major platforms, so you don’t have to worry about keeping certain people out of the loop.

Enjoy Your New Site

With this simple guide, you can create an easy to navigate site for users that is easy for you to edit. Having a site through WordPress to call your own is exciting, and now is your time to seize the opportunity. Enjoy your new site!

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