You may have heard of WordPress, which is a very popular open source software that most bloggers use to create their blogs. In this article, I am going to share with you how you can use this software to create a small website for your business to market your services or products. The following 5 steps are applicable as long as you are using the latest version 3 of WordPress.
The first step is to plan the design of your website. You should write the sitemap for your website on a piece of paper so you don’t mind the structure. For example, what are the names of the pages you want to create on your site? If I run a teaching center, I will want to have the pages: Home, About Us, Tutor List, Topics We Teach, and Contact Us.
The second step is to install WordPress on your server. You can easily register a web hosting account today with so many options available online. Most web hosting providers support WordPress software. You can also Google ‘websprout consulting webhosting’ to sign up for a web hosting account to host your WordPress website.
Once you have the web hosting account, you can install WordPress by logging into Cpanel and selecting Fantastico or QuickInstall and you will have your WordPress site installed in just a few clicks.
The third step is to login to the back-end. (by going to the /wp-admin folder) of your newly configured WordPress website to delete all posts. Since you’re building a simple website, you won’t need the default posts that come with the installation. To remove all default posts, simply login to the back-end and select the posts. Move all posts to the Trash to delete them. You may only have one post to remove since your installation is fresh.
The fourth step is to start creating the pages you want. To create pages for your website, go to the back-end and click on ‘Pages’ and then ‘Add New’. This will allow you to add the pages you want. Once you have published the pages, you will be able to see the links to the pages appearing in the top navigation bar. That easy!
The last step is to set a page as your home page. For this you need to go to ‘Settings’ and then ‘Reading’ in the back-end. Under the ‘Home Page Displays’ option, select ‘A Static Page’ and choose the page you want to set as your home page to display on your home page by default.
The 5 steps above are all you need to do to easily create a simple website with WordPress. I hope you find this article useful!