In this detailed guide we are going to show you step-by-step how to Install WordPress for your website in only few clicks and less than five minutes.
WordPress is the best website builder used by millions of websites in the world. Is free, easy to install, easy to use, and easy website builder. No techie or coding knowledge needed, its a user friendly and anyone can create a website using WordPress.
What Is WordPress
WordPress is a CMS (content management system), used to build and create websites. It’s a free and powerful software created for non-technical people. It allows anyone to use it and create a websites.
WordPress is a modular architecture system, it uses plugins to add features and options for your website. By only adding a Theme, you can create any kind of website, one-pager, blog, business, portfolio, e-Commerce store, video and much more. It’s easily customizable and enjoyable to design with.
Before To Install WordPress
Before to install WordPress and start building your website, you need to check few things. Because WordPress is a website builder, you need first to have a domain name, a website hosting provider with included WordPress, and have access to your cPanel account.
When you get your domain name and hosting, you may also ask your provider to check few things for you. To have a good start, you need your account configured well and ready for WordPress. Make sure the PHP is in the right and last stable version, your database is also in the right version, and your SSL is activated to make your website secure using https.
– Get Your Domain Name
The domain name is the name used as a website URL, this name is usually the same as your business name, like Narily.com is our domain name used for our website. To be able to have an online business, you need a website in most of time to have control of your own business, instead of using only social media, where you don’t have any control, and your accounts in these social media can be shut-down at any time. for this, a domain name is needed. To learn more about domain names, check our full guides below.
- Hoe to choose the best domain name for your online business
- How to register your domain name for your online business
– Get Your Website Hosting
Website hosting is a service people use to host their websites. You can install WordPress locally on your computer without any need of website hosting, in this case, only you have access to your website and not visible on the internet. If you would like your website to be visible on the internet –this is the main goal of having a website-, you need a website hosting services.
Because there a lot of website hosting providers in the market, we have a complete guides below helping you understanding in detail what is website hosting, how to find the best provider, how to create your account and much more.
- All you need to know about the best web hosting services
- How to setup your own website on the best website hosting providers
– Get Your Account Ready
After having your domain name and choosing your web hosting provider, you need to install WordPress to start building your website. WordPress is a set of files and folders, which will be installed on a database, to make sure the database support the WordPress installation, you need to check with your provider the following.
Does the database is in the right version? Does PHP is in the last stable version? Does SSL certificate installed and activated on your domain name?. Having these ready, will allow you to install WordPress without any issues or errors.
Usually, web hosting providers maintain their system up to date, but not all of them do. For this, looking for the best web hosting providers and not host with anyone is important. With the best providers, not only you have a good chance the database and PHP are already updated, but also their support is amazing, where their answer to your requests is almost instantly. TMDHosting support have 24/7 live chat, and all your questions will be answered in matter of seconds.
How To Install WordPress
All best WordPress web hosting providers like TMDHosting and SiteGround have WordPress pre-built and ready to be installed. All you need to do is to register your web hosting account and get access to your cPanel account. From there, is just a matter of minutes before to install WordPress and make it ready.
– Install WordPress Locally
If you would like to install WordPress locally on your computer to use it only for tests, you don’t need any domain name or web hosting services. In this case, your website will be shown only by you, and no one on the internet can see it.
To do so, you can install WordPress using one of the two methods. Using “Bitnami” from their website www.bitnami.com or “Local WordPress” from their website www.localwp.com. Open one of these links, download WordPress and install it locally on your computer.
When you install WordPress locally on your computer, you get an instant access, open your WordPress account and start configuring the fist settings on your dashboard, as well as all website building steps, as if you are working on a real website. Actually, it’s a real website, except that its located locally and only you can see it. When the website is ready, you can load it into your web hosting provider for the website to be accessible on the internet globally.
The local WordPress installation is not in the scope of this guide, but the process is so easy, even your grandma can do it, however, we recommend using “Bitnami”, since it’s the easiest one and it will be ready in only few clicks. For the WordPress settings, configuration and building your website, they are the exact same process. Just follow this guide as well as our WordPress category to find a lot of free documentations, tips and tricks about website creation.
– Install WordPress On Web Hosting
After about 24h of the domain propagation to the worldwide DNS servers, you will have access to your web hosting account through “cPanel”. To do so, open the URL of your website with the keyword /cPanel at the end, for example : www.yourwebsite.com/cpanel. By doing so, a page will open asking for your username and password. You already should have these information received by email when you created your web hosting account.
Enter your username and password and click Log in. After opening your cPanel dashboard, scroll down to SOFTACULUS APPS INSTALLER. Click “WordPress” and a new window open.
In this new window, click “Install” and make sure the field “In Directory” in empty, delete the “wp” if needed.
Fill all information in the section below. Site Name, Description, Admin Account, Password and Admin Email. Make sure to enter a strong password and an admin account you can remember, since this is the account you are going to use to access your WordPress dashboard. In the rest of information, keep them in the default settings.
If you would like to receive an email with installation details after WordPress has finished, enter your email in the field below “Email installation details”. Click “Install“ and the installation will begin, this may take only few seconds or less than five minutes depend on your network.
As soon as your WordPress is installed, your website will be ready to be built.
– Access WordPress Dashboard
After your WordPress installation is done, you can access your website dashboard, by adding the wp-admin keyword at the end of your website URL. Example, www.yourwebsite.com/wp-admin.
A new window open, enter your username or email and password, and click “Log In”. The information to enter here, are the once you created in the WordPress installation step. Make sure to keep this credentials secret.
Your WordPress dashboard for your website should open and looks like the image shown below.
WordPress Dashboard Overview
WordPress dashboard is the page where you spend a lot of time creating your website. To get familiar with this new page, we’ll take you through the menu in the left to explain them, we’ll give you an overview about all you see in this dashboard. In our WordPress category in this website, you will find a lot of guides explaining in detail each step of the dashboard and much more.
The main page of the WordPress dashboard, you will find some quick views to have an idea about how your website is performing. Like “Site Health Status”, “Quick Draft” and others, each one has it’s own meaning and show a specific information.
More you add plugins and more quick views will be added. Some of them are important like Elementor and OceanWP theme, but some are not so important. To view or hide them, click “Screen Options” to open the header –which is hidden by default– the “Screen elements” will appear, check the once you want to see, and uncheck the once you want to hide from the dashboard main page.
From the menu in the left, you have only some default information, more you add plugins more the menu get longer. In our case below, we have the default menu as well as Elementor and the OceanWP, because we already added the best website builder and the best theme.
Other titles in the menu has each one its own meaning and functions. It this guide, we are going to give you an overview about each menu, in this website, you’ll find a lot of free guides with more details.
– Posts
Is where you create your posts like this one you are reading right now. By clicking “Posts”, you’ll access a posts dashboard where you can add your post title, text, images, links, keywords for SEO, and more. Depend on the theme, some have more features available like the side bar and so on.
– Media
All images, videos, files and audio you use on your website will be found here. When you click “Media”, you get access to the dashboard where you can load all your media like images and so on. And when you create your posts, add images from the media you already uploaded.
– Pages
When you access any website, the first page open in your browser is usually the “Home” page. Other pages like “About” where you talk about your business, “Contact” where you add a contact form and contact information, “Services” where you list the services your business offer, and so on. All pages will be created in this menu.
– Comments
In case you have a blog for example, and you allowed comments in your posts, articles and guides like this one you are reading, all comments will be listed in this menu. You can see and manage the comments in this area.
– Templates
Templates include many sub-menus, you can use this to create templates. You can create “Landing page” for example, a “Popup” and so on. Creating templates in your website allows you to use that pages again and again, without the need of redoing them each time you like to create a page.
– Appearance
Appearance as the name explain, is where you find elements for your website appearance. Like Themes, Widgets, Menus, Header and so on. To customize your website, you need to download your Theme, we recommend using OceanWP one of the best themes in the market.
You also need to configure your Widgets, as well as creating your Menus and Headers. Overall, if you need to do some customizations, this is the place to go. More detailed about these configurations will be found in our WordPress category.
– Plugins
As explained in this guide, WordPress is modular and use plugins. Plugins are small programs designed to do a specific function. For example, Elementor is the main plugin which allows you to build your website. WooCommerce plugin allows you to add products and make your website an e-Commerce store.
Thousands of plugins exists to make your website fully functioning, from adding contact forms to adding video portfolio, there is always a plugin for each function. Some are free and some are paid, most of them have the free and the paid version with more features in the pro plan.
– Users
Users menu is where you add user accounts, you may have a subscription website where people have different access levels, here where you create the username and give it the right level. The default user registration is “Subscriber”, this type of user have access to the dashboard and can see personal information like name and address, payment information like credit cards, and the purchases done on the website.
In this menu you can create new users and give them high access level. If you are working with writers for your blog, you may create an account with an “Author” role, or even an “Administrator” role for a developer helping you fixing any issue in your website. The administrator role is the high access level and can do everything in the WordPress dashboard.
– Tools
In this menu you will find some tools you can use to manage your WordPress. When you install WordPress the first time, you are not going to find a lot of tools, only import and export some information will be available. When you start adding new plugins, some tool may be added to this menu.
– Settings
Here is the central and the main WordPress configuration. When you install WordPress the first time, you need to go here as first place to change some settings. The general is where you setup the basic website information like language, time zone and so on. Because there is a lot of information in this menu, the rest of the list will be discussed separately in the next section.
WordPress Settings Menu
As soon as you install WordPress and access the dashboard, your website is ready to be built by adding pages, posts, products and so on. However, before to do so, you need to setup some settings in the dashboard. By clicking the “Settings” menu, the “General” tab will open and here where you can setup your time zone, languages, the admin account and website title.
In the “Writing” sub-menu, nothing special will be done here, usually we keep the default information. Here you define the default category and post format, as well as the SMTP configuration. The “Reading” tab will allow you to define the home and post pages, the rest of setting we usually keep in the default configuration.
In the Discussion tab, you have many option and check boxes, where you can define the comments behavior. Here you define if you allow comments or not, if the reader have to be logged in or they can comment without having an account. How many time you want to keep the comments in your website, and so on.
The media tab allows you to define the image size, usually we keep the default information here. The permalink though which is the next sub-menu, allows you to define how your pages, posts and all links appear. By default, the value is “Day and name”, more often we change it to “Post name”. This will make your pages and posts to have the same name as a URL link, which make your website management easier.
The last sub-menu in the “Settings” menu is “Privacy”, this allows you to define the Privacy Policy page. The privacy policy is part of your website creation, it define the rules about how your website handle your visitors information, like personal information and credit cards. This page is mandatory to avoid legal issues with governments.
Install Your Theme
After having installing WordPress and making the first settings in your WordPress dashboard, the second thing to do is to install your theme. There is hundreds of themes available in the market, however, not all have the right features you are looking for. Some are well designed and can be used for any kind of website, and some are poorly designed and can be used only for a very specific website. Some are free, and others are paid, and most of them have the free and the paid version.
To make sure you have the best theme for you website, we recommend using the best theme ever, it can be used for any kind of website, it has the best designs and a lot of demos to choose from, it has the free and paid version. Even with the free version you can have a great website demo as well as nice features and design. OceanWP is classified the best for many years, and is improving as the years come. We have been using OceanWP theme for many years and for all our websites.
The details about theme installation and configuration will be explained in another guides. since this need a full post, please visit our WordPress category and search for “Theme”.
Install Your Plugins
The plugins are small programs designed and created to do a specific function, there is thousands if not millions of plugins in the market, there is always a plugin for any function.
For example, the Smart Quiz Builder plugin allows you to create quizzes in your website to get more engaging visitors.
Spin Rewriter will allow you to create and generate a blog posts in just few seconds for your blog, this will add to your website a lot of high quality content which bring a lot of traffic to your website.
Rank Math is the best SEO ever, this plugin will allow you to rank in the first page in google, which let your website get more visitor, more traffic, which means more money for your business.
Tons of plugins exist, and each one allow you to do one or some specific things. Some of them are free and some are paid version. Most of them have the free and the paid version with more features.
However, be careful when choosing the plugin to use, since some free once are designed to hack your website, for this security reason, we always go with the paid versions, except for the trusted and well known plugins, since you are protected, and you deal with the right company and not hackers.
Add Pages and Posts
The “Home” page for example is the first page you see when you access any website, other pages like “Contact Us”, “About Us”, “Our Services”, “Blog”, “Shop” and so on, are all different pages you need to create for your website.
Some of them are needed and mandatory for your website to work, like the home page, other are optional depend on the website type. Whether is business website, Blog website, e-Commerce website and so on, each type need different pages and features.
Most likely, the Blog website need a lot of content, articles and guides, this what we call “Posts”. This guide, article or call it post you are reading right now, is one of them. If you have a Blog website and you deliver a free or paid content, you need to create posts.
The posts are needed for business and e-Commerce websites as well since they bring traffic to your website. If you are looking to bring traffic to your website by adding a lot of posts easily, use the Spin Rewriter which allows you to create many posts in few seconds.
Final Thoughts
WordPress is one of the most popular and the best website builder in the market. It’s used by millions of websites in the world, designed to be used by anyone without tech knowledge or a degree.
Create your own website using WordPress is possible and easy, and install WordPress is easiest. Just follow our step-by-step guides in this website and get your website up and running in no time.
In this guide, we explained you what WordPress is and how to install it. We have a full WordPress category with many full and complete guides about WordPress, check it out and learn more about themes, plugins, pages, posts, blog, design and much more.
We hope this guide will help you create your own website using WordPress, whether is one pager website, a business website, a Blog, an e-Commerce store. WordPress is the best website builder for you to use. Remember, is free and easy to use.
What about you, did you have your website, did you create your website using WordPress or other builder ? please share your experience with our community by leaving a comment below.
