Ultimate Guideline to Creating a Website Fast and Effortlessly in 2019

Looking for a simple guideline to building a website without any specific knowledge of HTML/CSS code and substantial investments? It’s there. More to say, I did my best to make it as simple as I could and not turn this tutorial into a long text manual with bulky text chunks.

This guideline is about how most professional web developers prefer building websites for their clients, which, to your surprise, is way easier than you imagined. I am going to describe everything in detail, so even if you lack technical knowledge, it won’t be an issue.

At the end of my tutorial, you’ll have a fully-responsible, professionally-looking, and ready-to-use website.

Let’s get it started!

Step 1: Choose the Best Free Site Building Platform

Before you start worrying about the color schemes of your website design and domain names, you need to choose one among many existing website building platforms.

What do I actually mean by this mysterious word “platform"?

So basically, it’s a well-thought-out system where users can not only build websites from scratch but also manage their online content for free. To those platforms, we can refer CMS (content management systems) like WordPress, Joomla or Drupal, and online website builders like Wix or Weebly.

Both make the perfect alternative to a bunch of bulk HTML-pages.

According to a current BuildWith ‘CMS Usage Distribution in the Top 1 Million Sites’ statistical report, the undeniable leader remains WordPress (more than 51% of engaged users).

Why is WordPress So Popular?

Because users consider it AMAZING! But more importantly...

• It’s completely FREE, with many layouts and themes to choose from;
• You’ll find plenty of plugins and widgets allowing you to build any kind of a website, from landing pages or eCommerce platforms;
• The platform is 100% trustworthy since it’s used by such huge “giants" as Facebook, eBay, McAfee, Mozilla, Reuters, CNN, Google Ventures, and even NASA;
• You can create fully-responsive websites that will look great on both smartphone screen, desktop, or tablet.
• It has amazing support and a huge number of online materials meaning you can easily find the solution to your issue online.

I strongly recommend WordPress to beginners with a minimal budget and limited deadlines who are up to something more serious than one-page landing websites.

I probably should mention about other content management systems and website builders worth your consideration.

For instance, Drupal is a very powerful and popular platform among experienced web developers, but definitely, a bad choice for newbies due to its tortuous learning path.

Joomla is a worthy but useless alternative to WordPress unless you have at least basic knowledge of technical coding.

Website builders like Wix or Weebly are OK but usually not worth the spent money. Oftentimes, they are limited in features, so why pay for something less flexible than free WordPress?

Before moving on, make sure you...

• Choose the liked platform. I myself recommend WordPress because it’s the most user-friendly content management system for beginners available at no cost! From now on, we’re going to talk about WordPress only.
• For now, DO NOT install or download anything from the WP official site. We’ll do it a little differently in the following steps.

Step 2: Register a Domain Name and Purchase Web Hosting

Apparently, you can’t run a website without things like a) domain name (a web address like yoursitename.com) and b) web hosting (a service that “places" your website on the Internet).

As we already know, WordPress itself is free, but it costs around $10-20 a month to keep your domain name and use a hosting service. Anyway, I hardly believe you’d go bankrupt by making such monthly payments.

Where Do I Get a Domain Name and Web Hosting?

In fact, there exist hundreds of reliable hosting services and domain registrars, so feel free to choose the one you liked the most. The most popular are Bluehost and Inmotion - both have reasonable prices and nice customer support.

When you receive a domain name, you’re also going to get your own email account ending, something like [email protected]@com. This looks much more professional than regular Gmail or Yahoo email endings.

What Domain Name Should I Choose?

It all depends on the purpose of your website:

• If this is going to be a company website, the domain name usually matches the company name, something like yourcompanyname.com.
• A personal web page should include your own name in the address, so it will look like yourname.com.

Although the most traditional domain name endings are .com., .org, .net, you can also choose one of the so-called “websites zones". This is a customized ending that may correspond to your business type or product (.agency, .pizza).

What's better? I suggest avoiding zones and make a choice in favor of .com or any other traditional ending because they are much more SEO-friendly.

How to Choose a Domain Name?

• Is your name suitable for the online market? For instance, if you decided to create a website about poetry, don’t choose something like best-poetry-website.net - way too long and poor-looking.
• Instead of vague, long or oddly spelled names, choose something short, clear, and easy to remember. The better alternatives for the first example will be poetry.com, or poetme.com.
• Is your name catchy? I know, thinking of a unique name alongside 150 million other currently-existing domain names is a bit challenging but totally possible. Look for options at domain name generators like NameMesh, Businessnamegenerator, or BrandBuckek.

At the end of the day, the best choice for a domain name is the one you personally like.

Before the next step, make sure you...

• brainstorm to create a unique domain name that reflects your business/website/blog theme.
• Purchase the liked domain name and hosting from the chosen service.

Step 3: Set Up Your Own Website

Now that you purchased a domain name and set up hosting service, it's time to take care of the website set up. And the first thing you’ve got to do is to install WordPress on your domain.

WordPress Installation

You can install WordPress in 2 possible ways and we’ll start with the easier one-click installation available for CMS like WordPress, Drupal, Joomla at almost every reliable hosting company.

Yes, as easy as it sounds, you can start using WordPress by making one single click on the control panel of your hosting provider account (the account is available only if you signed up).

Follow these steps to make it done (those is a universal guideline for all major hosting companies):

1. Log in to your hosting account;
2. Go to the control panel;
3. Look for the WordPress icon;
4. Select the domain where you’d like to install your site;
5. Click the "Install Now" button and you’ll get to your NEW WordPress site.

If for some strange reason (some companies have no one-click installation for WordPress) you are not able to start WordPress automatically, you’ll need to do the installation process manually.

Manual WordPress Installation

1. Download WordPress;
2. Create a new folder on your desktop and unzip WordPress;
3. Find the file called wp-config-sample.php and rename it to wp-config.php;
4. Open wp-config.php using notepad, and fill in the following lines:

• define(‘DB_NAME’, ‘database_name_here’); - the name of your hosting service database (ask the hosting support in case you don’t know);
• define(‘DB_USER’, ‘username_here’); - your username to access the account;
• define(‘DB_PASSWORD’, ‘password_here’); - your password.

Save the file after filling in all the gaps.

1. Now log in to your FTP-hosting (download FileZilla to do this step). The FTP address usually looks like ftp.yourdomain.com, and the username and password are the same as the ones you used to register your hosting.
2. Delete the file called index if there is one. Now upload all the files from your WordPress folder to your FTP server. You should probably know how to use the drag-and-drop function in FileZilla.
3. After you complete all the steps, visit http://yourdomain.com/wp-admin/install.php.

You are going to see this page:

Fill in all the fields, and you're ready to go!

P.S. If your hosting company doesn’t offer one-click installation, think twice - perhaps, it’s not as good and trustworthy ...

Step 4: Design Your Website Using a Theme

Congratulations! You’ve installed WordPress and this is when the most fun takes place.

To begin with, after a successful WordPress installation on a domain, what you’ll see is a very basic clean site that most likely looks nothing like your expectations.

If you want a unique website design, you should purchase a theme - a WordPress template that predetermines your site design. Fortunately, there exist thousands of amazing professional and fully-responsive themes to choose from, either free or paid ones.

To access the collection of WordPress standard themes, just enter the CMS admin panel. You’ll have a choice of 1500+ free highly-customized templates by clicking the sidebar for “Appearance", and then “Themes.

And if you want some more professional or sophisticated website designs, here is an awesome collection of WordPress themes from TemplateMonster.

Have a look real website designs created with a help of TemplateMonster WP templates:

By the way, did you hear about the newest Ready-to-Use website offer from TemplateMonster?

Instead of setting up the entire website on your own, these guys will do everything for you! For only $149 instead of $279, you’ll get everything necessary for launching a website of any complexity on any CMS you want (WordPress included).

Take a look:

By paying once, you won’t need to pay separately for things like domain name registration, a website theme, professional hosting services (this offer includes hosting by Inmotion), and many more.

Youtube link - https://youtu.be/ec_pTGK5DpI

How Does it Work?

1. Buy a ‘Ready-to-Use website’ offer;
2. Our manager will call you within 3 hours after the purchase is completed;
3. He will help you to choose a theme and confirm all project details;
4. Whereas time is money, with this offer you’ll be able to save a lot of your precious business hours;
5. We’ll need 7 business days to finish after we get all the needed information.

What We’ll Need From You Is…

At the end of the day, you’ll get a site with an easy-to-use control panel to apply any needed changes by yourself. No hidden fees - $149 is all you’re going to spend!

For more information, contact TemplateMonster support.

Hurry up - the offer will be lasting for 4 days (02.04.19 - 02.08.19) only!!!

All right, now let’s get back to the topic!

Before Choosing Any WP Theme…

• Think of which site elements will be important for your own website. A lot of it depends on the choice of the type of your website.
  
  Let’s say, you’d like to have a blog, so you’re likely to choose a template with a wide reading area in the middle, a convenient blocks layout as well as with the comments section below. For a news website, it is important to have a beautiful and functional home page with the ability to add several pages for the main slider, as well as blocks about the company's benefits, and user reviews.
• Decide whether you want to choose a standard free WP theme or buy a customized one. Even if you don’t want to splurge on paid themes, there is something to choose from among the offered free WP ones.
  
  Please note that being “free" does not always mean it’s completely costless. Free templates usually end up having paid functionality. Meanwhile, if you purchase a ready-made web solution at a fixed price, all the necessary functionality will come in a package at no additional cost.
• Make sure you preview the theme to see how exactly your website will look on different screens before downloading. Also, make sure the template is SEO-optimized for better online visibility.

Installing a WordPress Theme

After you selected the linked theme or uploaded one from your computer, the installation process will take you several seconds. Just click “Install" and then “Activate".

IMPORTANT: If you want to replace an old theme, do not worry about the website content - it will not be deleted. You can change themes as often as you want without worrying to lose the precious content you have already placed.

Step 5: Start Adding Content

Now that your website is finally available on the Internet, it's time to add some content:

How to Add Content and Create New Pages?

Creating a New Page ("Services", "About Us" or "Feedback")

1. click "Pages" and then "Add New" on the sidebar of the WordPress toolbar;
2. You’ll see a text editor where you can add text, images and more on your newly created page. Save it when done and the page will appear on the site.

After some pages are created, they should be organized either on the top menu, at the bottom of the site, or in the sidebar. In the next step, I’ll show you how.

Adding Pages to the Menu

If you want your new page to be linked to your navigation bar,

1. Create a page (see paragraph above).
2. Click “Appearance" -> “Menus" in the WordPress sidebar.
3. Add the new page from the list by clicking the checkbox and click “Add to Menu".

Adding and Editing Blog Posts

If you want to add a blog page to your site (or your site is an entire blog), you’ll need to learn how to create various posts and use different categories and tags to manage them.

“Posts" is basically an article, post, news or any textual and graphical information (pictures, video, documents). Before creating posts, you need to decide which category they fall to. For instance, a blog about web design can have such categories as logos, articles, inspiration, video, infographics, tutorials etc.

The correct logical hierarchy of categories and tags will help the user to easily find the needed information on your site. It is also super useful for SEO.

A Create a new category by clicking “Posts" -> “Categories" section. Afterward, write the desired category to the post.

OR

B Create a blog post by clicking “Posts ->“ Add New "section. When you are done with the article, you need to add one to a suitable category and, if necessary, to the needed tag.

In the future, you can easily move the website posts by managing their categories. For example, the “Articles" category can be displayed on the main page of the site, while the “Services" category will be seen somewhere else.

Setting Up Widgets, Comments, and More

Changing the Page Titles and Descriptions

A page title is displayed in the browser tab and is a super important part of how search engines determine what your webpage is about. Thus, use the strongest keywords in there for better visibility.

Remember that each page of your site must have its own unique title.

A tagline is basically a brief description of the page, which is too used by search engines to generate a snippet - a small text below the page title. This text is important for both search engines and users.

To change the title and tagline of your website, go to “Settings -> General" and fill in the form.

Disabling Comments for WordPress Pages

Some websites (mostly business organizations) do not want visitors to comment on their pages. Here is how to close comments on WordPress pages:

1. Click “Screen Options" in the upper right corner when you create a new page;
2. Click the “Discussion". The “Allow Comments" window will appear below.
3. Untick "Allow comments".

In case you wanted to turn off comments on every new default page, visit "Settings -> Discussions" and untick "Allow users to leave comments on new articles."

Making a Static Home Page

Some people are upset their home page looks like a list of blog articles. You can fix this by making your homepage "static" so that it doesn’t change.

Unlike the blog, where new article are typically displayed at the top, the “static" page will show the same content every time someone visits the site.

1. Go to "Settings -> Reading"
2. Select the static page that you’ve created as the main page.

Editing Sidebar

Most WordPress themes have a sidebar on either right or left side of their web pages. So if you want to get rid of the sidebar or edit those elements, do the following:

1. Go to "Appearance -> Widgets" in the WordPress toolbar. A widget is a special tool for performing a specific function on a site (for showing calendar, displaying recent posts, or recent comments, etc.);
2. Drag the necessary widgets to add different “boxes" to your sidebar or delete unnecessary widgets.

You can also see an HTML box here allowing you to paste any code in order to display things like ad banners, etc.

Installing Plugins to Get the Most Out of WordPress

A plugin is an extension designed to enhance the WordPress customization opportunities, as well as add various features and missing functions to your website.

How to install a new plugin?

To start installing plugins, go to "Plugins -> Add New" and start your search. For example, you can search for a “Contact Form" or “Gallery". Keep in mind there are over 25,000 different free plugins, so it’s gonna be a LONG search way there.

Once you find a plugin you like, click Install and that’s pretty much it!

BUT before you move on to installing dozens of free plugins on WordPress, here’s what you need to know:

• A free plugin should have at least 1000 installations, in other words, be popular;
• The last update of the plugin should be no older than six months ago.
• The plugin must have good reviews and ratings.
• The plugin should be tested in your version of WordPress.

These are top 3 most popular and perhaps must-have plugins for your consideration:

Contact form 7

This widget will help you create a “Contacts" page or add a contact form to any website page. The contact form 7 allows visitors to leave messages that will be sent directly to your email.

Yoast SEO for WordPress

If you want to make your WordPress site even more SEO-optimized, this free plugin is a must. You can edit your title tags, meta descriptions, and much more, which means you no longer have to fuss with the WordPress settings.

Google Analytics

How to track your visitors/traffic and their behavior in WP? It’s impossible unless you install Google Analytics WP plugin. The plugin connects to your Google account and works perfectly from now on.

Of course, there are so many more plugins out there and this is just a tip of an iceberg.

What’s more important is not to install a lot of plugins on the site, which can cause a website slowdown. Pick the ones that you truly need.

Got to the End? Good for you!

Now you know how to create a website fast and effortlessly. Soif you already followed all the steps in this tutorial, by now you should have a fully functioning WordPress site!

And it was definitely not as scary you thought, right?

If you have any questions, please leave them in the comment section. For those having no time or desire to deal with their site building procedure, just let TemplateMonster take the initiative. Their service is definitely worth it!

And last but not least ... If my guideline helped you, please share it so that it’ll help others =)