To make your website function online, WordPress must be installed on the server which hosts your site. This is what has sometimes already been taken care of by your web hosting provider, and the installation process is extremely simple and fast. Once installed, you can log into the WordPress platform to add the theme you want along with text, photos, videos, and any other content. The beautiful part of the WordPress website creation process is that you have a wealth of “templates” you can choose from, and which you can change to your liking and according to your needs – with only one click. You can also add all kinds of plugins, known also as extensions, depending on what you need.
WordPress: the best platform for your new website
Let’s take things a step by step. After you’ve gotten to know how the WordPress platform is structured, you can learn what you need to do to actually create a website. The first thing is to register a domain. A website that you’ve created goes by the name you choose, but it also must be available. Each domain on the Internet is unique and checking its availability is very easy to do and is done through the hosting provider.
When you are choosing your domain, you need to keep a few things in mind:
- Be brief
- Be unique
- Be creative
- Choose something which is easy to write
- Include keywords – the closer your domain name is to the niche you represent, the easier it will be found in Google searches
- Registering a domain also involves choosing an extension. The most popular of them are .com, .org, and .net.
Then to run online, the site needs space on a server. This server is like a hard drive meant to store all the information on your site (text, pictures, videos, etc.) The web hosting provider virtually leases space on their servers and takes care to have the best conditions to operate on the Internet. When it comes to a writer’s WordPress website, the best and the most accessible hosting option is shared hosting.
Now, let’s talk about the fun part!
So, after choosing domain and hosting, here we are at the most important point: creating a website. These days, you do not even need programming or web design skills to create a website – just WordPress. A piece of cake. We all know how it works: the harder the task, the more you postpone doing it. Like most students do when they’re thinking “Hey, it’s time to do my dissertation for me!” So, after you’ve finished the whole process of analyzing how you can build a site and how you can earn money from it, just install WordPress and get to playing with different themes, fonts, and colors.
Because you are taking the first steps in the world of this platform, the most appropriate path for you is the semi-automatic installation option. This is done through cPanel – the interface that manages the hosting account. Here are the steps (which will take less than 1 minute):
- Write the name of your new site in the browser and add the “/cpanel” sequence in the end. It will look something like this: www.sitename.com/cpanel;
- Enter the username and password to log into your account;
- Click on the WordPress Installer icon (in the area called Softaculous Apps Installer);
- Choose where you want to install the site
- Configure the username, password etc.;
- Click “install”
Pros and cons of having a WordPress website for a writer
Let’s start with the pros of using WordPress.
- It is easy to use
- You don’t need to be a programmer – just determined to create your own virtual space
- Low costs
- Free themes
- You can customize almost everything
- You can create own theme that is suitable for your niche (online assignment help or blogging, for instance)
- You can upload/edit/delete any content easily
If you want to see what the downsides of WordPress are, then you should know that:
- If you don’t really know how to use a PC or you are completely new to using the admin interfaces, it will be a little hard to become familiar with it from scratch
- When you need to edit some templates or to create one by yourself, you need to know the how-to
- When you want to move a logo by a few pixels, for instance, you can face some problems. In WordPress, you cannot do this without programming knowledge
It’s never too late to get writing!
Whether writing is your hidden passion or you just do it as your second nature, don’t keep it for yourself! Share your perspective with others and connect through words with millions of people.
This is a guest article by Alyssa Johnson. Alyssa wanted to share her experience, and she wanted to do it herself. That was the moment when she decided to create a website, to write and to share with the others how the world looks like through her eyes. Not to mention that she has been doing that for almost 20 years, and will continue sharing tips & tricks for writers.