Dress Up the Dog… Website Design and Contents

This is the final step of the “How to Create A Website” guide. After installing the WordPress website software on your web host, you should now be able to access the website through your own chosen domain name. Just type your domain name in the URL and viola! your first baby is born (I mean the website).

Like any dog owners who would speed lots of time on raising and training their dogs, the majority of your time would be spent in this step to add your own contents to the newly created website and make it beautiful. Don’t worry if you are not a graphic designer or the like, there are thousands of free and paid themes on the market to give your website a professional touch.

 How to Change Your Website? 

1. Type your domain name in the URL bar to visit the homepage of your website.
2. Click “log in” on the lower left side of the page. Alternative, you can type your domain+/wp-admin to access the login page directly (e.g. login page of WP Learner is wplearner.org/wp-admin)
3. Use your admin username and admin password obtained during installing WordPress to login. Click the “Lost your password?” link if you have forgotten them.
4. After logging in, you might like to follow these steps to clean up your WordPress to give you a head start.

 Beautify and Customize Your Website 

Every website is unique in website design and contents. After setting up your website with your web host, the very first thing you might like to do is to customize and beautify the website to your taste. The following video will give you all the basic knowledge to tailor your website with the help of some free WordPress themes.

 Add a Web Page 

A web page is a page on your website that is not time sensitive (i.e. it will be relevant for a long time) as opposed to news or blog posts. Examples of web pages include: about us, services and products, contact us. Web pages are called “Pages” in WordPress. Follow the video below to start building web pages for your new website.

 Add News / Blog 

News and blog posts are pages on the website they will be updated and added from time to time. These are called “Posts” in WordPress. One easy way to distinguish “Posts” from “Pages” is that you usually add the date to “Posts” but not “Pages”. Follow the video below to learn how to create and add blog posts to your website.

 Useful WordPress Resources 

Learning Resource and Guides

• How to Create A Website: The Complete Guide – a more detailed discussion on how to create a website, ideal for website owners who want to know more about everything
• Advanced Topics on How to Create A Website – detailed discussion of various topics in website creation and building, target at website owners who are serious with making their websites better. Learn how to earn money with your website, how to make your website safe and how to write attractive copy for your website here. More topics are coming!
• Easy WP Guide – a free user manual for WordPress available online or can be downloaded as PDF or Word files, ideal for website owners who have gone through the “How to Create A Website” guide on wplearner.org.
• WP101 Video Tutorial – a paid (US$39/year) on-demand video tutorial for beginners in WordPress. Over 16,000 students have learnt how to use WordPress though this quality program. Learners can learn the ins and outs of how to use WordPress Admin Interface with around 2 hours of video lectures. I have personally tried it and the quality is excellent.
• Search Engine Optimization Guide – a free beginners’ guide on how to optimize your website to attract visitors through search engines

WordPress Premium Themes

• Elegant Themes – (used by WP Learner) US$69 to get around 90 quality WordPress themes, including the DIVI theme used on WP Learner – How to Create A Website Guide website. Once downloaded, you can keep the themes forever and can be used any websites.
• Theme Forest – another high quality theme website for WordPress. You can buy the themes one by one.

WordPress Plugins

You might just search the names of the following plugin in the Plugins > Add New Plugin section of your WordPress admin page to install and activate them. Most of these are in use by WP Learner website.

• Jetpack Plugin – (used by WP Learner, already installed with your Bluehost WordPress installation) add a variety of services to your website, including a contact form, statistics on how many visitors, spell checker and more. 
• Share Bar Plugin – a free plugin for adding social sharing (e.g. Facebook, Google+, LinkedIn, Twitter) to your site.
• Yoast SEO Plugin – (used by WP Learner) the best FREE WordPress plugin for search engine optimization (SEO) – which gives you tips and page audits to help your page rank better for your intended search keywords.
• Squirry SEO Plugin – (used by WP Learner) a free/paid SEO WordPress Plugin with interactive hints to help you write great posts for ranking high in search engines. It will help you to do keyword researches (e.g. how many people are searching through the keyword) and check the rankings of your web pages. You can sign up for a free plan to try it out without time limits.
• WordPress Backup to Dropbox Plugin – (used by WP Learner) to allow you to schedule regular backups of your WordPress website to your Dropbox account (sign up for 2 Gb free space at Dropbox).

Logo Design

• Get a Professional Logo Design for $240 – A professional logo is critical to building up your brand. Don’t worry if you are not a designer. You can get your own professional logo through the DesignCrowd online platform where tens of thousands of designers worldwide give you countless logo ideas. For US$240, you can get 50+ bespoke logo designs to choose from based on your requirements.

Well Done!

We are so proud of you and your website!

You have completed all the steps of the “How to Create A Website” guide and created your own website. Feel free to contact us if you have any website problems. We are glad to help you.