Website creation with WordPress is booming. Today, more than a third of websites are developed with this powerful tool. Praised for its ease of use, it offers a wide range of possibilities. Showcase website, e-commerce website, institutional website, blog: the WordPress tool makes it possible to create any type of custom website. It is possible to develop a fully customized graphic theme, as well as features specific to your needs (called plugins).
Creating a website can be a complex task depending on the expected features and design, so don’t hesitate to consult the developers at our WordPress agency if you would like support.
In this article, we will go through the different steps involved in creating a WordPress website together.
How to get started properly with creating a WordPress website ?
The first step in creating a WordPress website is to properly prepare the groundwork ! To do this, before moving on to the actual WordPress creation process, you need to choose a domain name and hosting.
Choosing a domain name
The domain name is the address that internet users will use to find you (for example, our domain name is maintenance-wp.fr).
The first part of the domain name can be based on your company name, your brand name, or express your activity through one or more relevant keywords (for example, shoe-sales).
For the second part, you can choose from a wide range of extensions, the most common of which are: .fr and .com. You can also opt for something more specific such as: .paris, .io, .shop…
Tips:
It is better to choose a short domain name that is easy for Internet users to remember.
To register a domain name, go to a domain name registrar, such as gandi.net.
Choose hosting
Hosting is storage space on a server that is constantly connected to the Internet, allowing a site to be accessible at all times. It is therefore the place where all the files that make up your site are stored (programs, text, images, videos, etc.).
Shared hosting means that space on the server is shared by several sites. Dedicated hosting means that the server is entirely devoted to one site.
Based on our experience, we recommend Kinsta as a hosting provider. Their managed WordPress hosting service is cutting-edge, and the level of support is high.
Tips:
For creating your WordPress site, start simply with a shared hosting plan, then upgrade it when your traffic increases if the hosting plan becomes too limited.
Devote as much time as necessary to this first step in creating a WordPress site; it’s important.
How to install WordPress ?
The second step in creating a WordPress site involves installing the software, which can be done from the hosting dashboard. It is common for hosting providers to offer a simplified installation, known as automatic or “one-click” installation. Otherwise, the installation is done “manually.”
Automatic installation
One-click WordPress installation is fully automated. Simply follow the instructions displayed on the screen to quickly create a WordPress site.
In particular, you will be asked to create an administrator username and password, allowing you to log in to manage the site.
Manual WordPress installation
Manual installation takes a little longer, but it is not insurmountable. You need to :
- download WordPress as an archive, and unzip it ;
- upload all the files obtained to your web hosting ;
- create a database on the server ;
- start the installation script simply by going, via your web browser, to the URL where you have just installed the copy of WordPress ;
- follow the installer’s instructions, as in the automatic procedure.
If there are any specific requirements, ask your hosting provider for the exact procedure.
Once the software is installed, you can log in with your credentials and access the administration interface, called the WordPress dashboard.
The WordPress visual theme
To complete your WordPress website creation, you need to choose a graphic theme (free or paid) to define your site’s design. In the WordPress dashboard, go to “Appearance”, then “Themes” and “Add New”.
You can then change the colors and fonts of your theme, upload your logo and images. For a truly customized theme, it is possible to create a child theme, which overrides the parent theme, in order to define CSS rules safely.
How do you create the structure and pages of your site?
Once the installation is complete, you need to create web pages and structure them.
The structure
A WordPress site is, from the outside and like any website, a collection of pages that needs to be structured.
A simple structure when creating a WordPress site could be:
- home page,
- contact page,
- the company’s services:
- service 1,
- service 2,
- service 3…
- shop:
- catalog:
- category A:
- product A1
- product A2…
- category B:
- product B1
- B2 product…
- category A:
- cart page,
- checkout page.
- catalog:
The pages must be linked together, particularly through the menu, which allows visitors to navigate easily from one page to another.
Create a page for your WordPress site
To create a page, simply go to the dashboard menu and click on “ Pages ” then “ Add New ”. The page creation interface is very intuitive and allows you to enter:
- a title;
- a slug (that is, the URL that will be the address of this page, or the permalink);
- content.
Posts are another type of WordPress content and have their own separate tab. This makes it possible to group together all the pages that will make up the site’s blog if needed.
Which WordPress extensions (plugins) are essential?
Another step in creating a user-friendly WordPress site that is easy to administer is choosing high-performance plugins. Here are some of our favorite extensions to get started.
Easily duplicate your pages and posts
Installing a plugin that lets you quickly duplicate a page or post improves your productivity and makes the content creation process much more comfortable. The Duplicate Page or Yoast Duplicate Post plugins do this very well.
Security
SecuPress is a plugin for managing many security settings on a daily basis, which is an important step in creating a reliable WordPress site. Here are some of the features it provides:
- firewall;
- protection against login fraud attempts;
- IP address blocking;
- malware scanning;
- security scans;
- setup wizard;
- login blocking by country based on geolocation.
Loading speed
WPRocket is a French plugin that helps improve a website’s speed, which is useful for avoiding a poor bounce rate. It optimizes caching and WordPress site performance.
You can also regularly and automatically monitor your site’s speed with WP Umbrella.
SEO support
SEOPress and Yoast SEO are popular plugins that help follow best practices and improve the SEO of pages, posts, products…
In particular, they make it possible to set up meta titles and meta descriptions visible on Google and to manage the social networks connected to the site.
Online store
To add an online store when creating your WordPress site, you can opt for the most popular plugin, namely Woocommerce. There are many others, such as WP eCommerce, or Easy Digital Downloads.
They allow you to create a detailed catalog of products that can be sorted by category, configure various payment methods, and automatically add cart and checkout pages. Order, payment, and delivery management is handled entirely through the admin area.
To learn more about creating an online store, feel free to contact our WooCommerce agency.
Newsletter and email marketing
A feature often sought when creating a WordPress site is the management of email campaigns. WordPress integrates very well with many platforms, such as Mailchimp, SendinBlue or JackMail. This makes it possible to create powerful forms to collect the information provided by your visitors. Perfect for your communication campaigns!
How can you properly optimize the pages of a WordPress site for search engines?
Having a presence on the web is essential, but being seen is crucial if the efforts put into creating a WordPress site are to be rewarded with traffic. It is therefore important to look at the SEO of the WordPress pages created.
Keywords
Internet users enter keywords, or key phrases, into a search engine such as Google to obtain a list of links featuring content related to their search.
It is essential to think about the keywords you want your target audiences to find you for. For example, a company selling sports shoes will probably want to appear for the following phrases:
- sale of sports shoes;
- tennis shoes;
- buy football shoes;
- etc.
Good to know:
Not all your pages should focus on the same keyword. When creating your WordPress site, make sure to define one main keyword and 2-3 secondary keywords for each page.
Content
Among the main steps for creating your WordPress site, creating content, especially written content, should not be taken lightly. Since the goal is to be seen, you need to be found. To be found, the site’s pages must appear in good positions in the search results of search engines such as Google and Bing. Without going into detail, for a page to rank well, its content must be considered relevant and high quality by the search engine during the indexing process (that is, when it establishes its ranking of pages dealing with a specific topic).
This is why it is essential to provide texts :
- unique (no copy/paste or content duplication) ;
- long enough ;
- well structured ;
- free of spelling and grammar mistakes ;
- containing the right keywords ;
- written in accordance with SEO best practices or organic search engine optimization ;
- and providing users with interesting information.
Define a unique title and meta description for each page
To differentiate each of your pages and make the indexing work of search engines easier, they need to be characterized by :
- a unique title tag containing the main keyword ;
- a unique meta description tag accurately describing what the internet user will find on the page.
These two elements are used by Google when displaying the link in its search results. They are therefore your target audience’s first contact with your page. A perfectly written title and description are therefore a powerful weapon to convince the internet user to click on your link rather than another one!
Now that we have looked in detail at the different steps for creating a WordPress site, you are ready to start your project. If you do not have time to handle it yourself or if you would like to benefit from expert advice, then call on a professional in WordPress site creation!
