How to Create a Website with WordPress

In this tutorial I am going to show you how to get a website setup with WordPress.
To get started I will walk you through getting hosting setup with BlueHost and then walk you through how to setup your theme in WordPress and create your first post.
If you already have hosting you may skip the “Setup Hosting with BlueHost” as the steps to get started with WordPress do not require you to use BlueHost hosting. (Read to the bottom for a helpful tip to save some money!)

Setup Hosting with BlueHost

I will be using BlueHost for this tutorial. I chose BlueHost because they come highly rated, are very reasonably priced, and have excellent customer support. If you already have a hosting provider you may skip this step. 

 

 The first step will be to go to the BlueHost website, you can use my affiliate link below or navigate to the website. If you find this content useful you will be helping us create more useful content by using our affiliate links.

 

Once on the BlueHost website you will see all the different hosting plans at the top of the page. Here is a brief description of them so you can decide which one is right for you.
  • WordPress Hosting: If you plan on just creating a WordPress site this will be the option that you want. The servers that these sites are put on are optimized for WordPress
  • Hosting (Shared Hosting): If you plan on hosting other types of sites (not just WordPress) on your hosting account then you will want to choose this option.
The above two options are going to be sufficient for most users. The others will generally not be necessary for a starter website or blog, but if you outgrow the above options you may need to switch in the future (if your site is getting enough traffic that you need to upgrade that is a good thing!). Helpful Info: Both the the WordPress and Hosting are what is call ed “Shared hosting”. Shared Hosting is when a web hosting provider puts many websites together on a single server and all those websites share the server resources: bandwidth, memory, CPU, etc. You’ll want to  start with shared hosting because there will be a huge cost increase to get a dedicated server for your beginner blog site and it would not be worth it.   

The above screenshot is assuming you went with WordPress hosting but it shouldn’t be much different if you did go the shared hosting route. (Except maybe price and options). You will get three options Basic, Plus, or a choice plus plans. Honestly I would go for the Choice Plus, this is what I went with and the main reason why is it comes with automated back up and free domain privacy (which is a must in my opinion and costs an extra $1 per month on the other plans). Also if you want to create more than one WordPress website you can do that with the Plus or Choice Plus plans. All the plans come with a free Domain Name for one year which is really cool. Alone that will run about $10 or more per year. For those who don’t know the way domain names work you are basically just renting them on a yearly basis, you can choose to register them for longer periods but you will have to pay to renew them yearly.

Once you have selected your plan you will be prompted to choose your domain name (or use one you already own). You can also click “I’ll create my domain later” if you aren’t sure what domain name you would like yet. Choose an option and click next. If your picked a domain name and it  is not available it will tell you and provide some alternative suggestions. If you see one you like you can use it or just keep trying different names until you find something you like. I would stick to only .com, .net or .org sites as they are the ones most people are familiar with. If you need more help coming up with ideas for your domain name you can search Google for “domain name generator” there are some great sites that can help you out.

On the next page you will be prompted to sign up either manually or using Google. Simply fill out the required information and scroll down to see the package details.

 

Here you will be shown your package information. The first thing you will notice is that in order to get the absolute best price you have to sign up for 3 years of hosting. If you aren’t comfortable with that level of commitment you can switch down to one year. Just keep in mind that the price per month will be a couple dollars more, but still a good deal in my opinion.    Below that you will see package extras. Depending on what plan you selected some of these will already be included. Feel free to deselect whatever you don’t want to pay for, you can always add them later on if you want (the only one I would definitely recommend getting is Domain Privacy. It comes with the Choice Plus plan at no additional cost but is an add on for the others).   

Save some $$$

If you want to save a little bit more money you can move your mouse up toward the browser back button and you should be prompted with a special savings offer! (This will not show up if you are using an ad blocker though)

Now just enter you payment information (if you want to pay with PayPal click “see more payment options”) and click “Submit”

You should now get a “Your purchase was a success” message and just click “Create Account” to continue. If you did  WordPress hosting there will be a few steps which you can go ahead and answer or skip. That’s it for getting started with BlueHost, next we will go through setting up your WordPress site.