A Step-By-Step Guide to Building a WordPress Website

If you’re new to setting up a blog or website, WordPress would be a great option for you. Most web hosts already offer WordPress installation with just a few clicks which takes five minutes or less to complete. When installing WordPress, you can use an auto installer like Softaculous provided by your web host or you can do the installation yourself.

Our goal here in this WordPress tutorial is to provide a comprehensive guide to help both beginners and advanced users in manually installing WordPress. It’s actually very easy with no prior experience in coding necessary. So here goes.

1. How to Install WordPress

Installing WordPress is very easy and the process takes a few minutes to complete. Most web hosts have built-in tools to automatically install WordPress for you. In this first step, we will be using ‘Softaculous’ to install a WordPress copy.

Before installing WordPress, you need to do the following:

1. Purchase a web hosting plan from a reliable web hosting provider like Vodien.
2. Purchase a domain name for your website.

If you prefer to install WordPress manually, you may refer to this video.

1. Login to your cPanel account by adding a /cpanel after your domain address.
2. Go under Software and Services. Click Softaculous.
3. Hover your mouse over WordPress, and click Install.
4. Customise the settings for your WordPress Site and click Install.

2. How to Configure Settings in WordPress

After you have successfully installed WordPress to your website, you’re now ready to configure the settings. Click this video to see how settings in WordPress are configured.

1. Make sure that you are logged in to your WordPress account.
2. Go to Settings in the left margin and click the General tab.
3. Update settings for the Site Title, Tagline, WordPress Address and others.
4. When finished, click “Save Changes”.
5. Go back to Settings.
6. Click the Writing tab to edit settings related to writing posts.
7. Click “Save Changes” when done.
8. Go to Reading tab under Settings.
9. Update this tab to set how many blog pages to show.
10. Click “Save Changes” when done.
11. Do the same process as above each for Reading, Discussion, Media and Permalinks tabs.
12. Don’t forget to always click “Save Changes” for each setting.

3. How to Change Password in WordPress

Here are five simple steps to take to change your password in a few seconds. Click here to watch the video on how to change your WordPress password.

1. Make sure that you are logged in to your WordPress account.
2. Click Users in the left margin and click “Your Profile”.
3. Scroll at the bottom of the page and enter new password.
4. Repeat the same password to ensure you didn’t make any mistake.
5. Click “Update Profile”.

4. How to Edit Profile in WordPress

Here are instructions to follow when you’d like to edit the colour of your admin dashboard and edit personal information on your profile. Watch this video to know how your profile in WordPress can be modified.

1. Make sure that you are logged in to your WordPress account.
2. Click Users in the left margin.
3. Click “Your Profile”.
4. Edit options for visual editor and colour scheme, and update personal and biographical information here.
5. When done, click “Update Profile”.

5. How to Change Header in WordPress

This step-by-step instruction will show you how to change the header. This video will show you the entire steps on how the headers can be edited from your WordPress account.

1. Make sure that you are logged in to your WordPress account.
2. Click Appearance in the left margin.
3. Click “Header” from the drop down menu.
4. To change the header, you have the option to choose images  from the “Uploaded Images” section or upload a new image from your computer.
5. To upload a new image from your computer, click “Choose Image”.
6. Click “Upload File” and “Select Files”.
7. Choose image you want to upload.
8. Click “Set as Header”.
9. Crop the image as desired.
10. When done, click “Crop and Publish”.
11. Check out the live website to see what your header looks like.

6. How to Manage Categories in WordPress

When you need to edit or delete certain categories from your website, these steps will show you how to manage categories properly. Click this video to know more.

1. Make sure that you are logged in to your WordPress account.
2. Click Posts in the left margin.
3. Got to “Add New Category” to update the Name, Slug, Parent and Description of a category.
4. Once done, click “Add New Category”.
5. You may also do a quick edit on each category by hovering over the category name on the upper right side of the page.
6. Click “Quick Edit”  to change the name and slug.
7. Click “Update Category”.
8. If you want to delete a category, simply click “Delete” .

7. How to Write a New Post in WordPress

Follow these instructions when you’re now ready to publish a new post. Here’s a video that will show you how you can write and publish posts on WordPress.

1. Make sure that you are logged in to your WordPress account.
2. Click Posts in the left margin.
3. Click “Add New” from the drop down menu.
4. Enter new title for your new post.
5. Write the content of your post.
6. Assign a category by checking on the category box.
7. Click “Publish” when finished.
8. Click “View Post” to check out your published post.

8. How to Manage Users in WordPress

If you have several users that post content on your WordPress site, you can manage their roles by following the steps outlined on this video.

1. Make sure that you are logged in to your WordPress account.
2. Click Users tab in the left margin.
3. To add a new user, click “Add New” from the dropdown menu.
4. Update user details such as username, email address. first name, last name and others.
5. Click “Add New User”.
6. You can also quickly edit or delete users directly from the main User tab.
7. To delete a specific user, just click “Delete” under the user’s name.
8. Choose between “Delete all content” or “Attribute all content to” to assign to another user.
9. Click “Confirm Deletion” when done.

9. How to Manage Pages in WordPress

To manage or create a new page, watch this video to show you how it’s done.

1. Make sure that you are logged in to your WordPress account.
2. Click Pages in the left margin.
3. Click “Add New” from the drop down menu.
4. Enter the title of the Page.
5. Write the page content.
6. Select a parent page from the “Page Attribute” or assign a specific template to the page.
7. When done, click “Publish”.
8. To view the list of all pages, click “All Pages”.
9. From here, you can do a quick edit, delete or view specific pages.
10. To delete a page, simply click on the “Bin” link.

10. How to Manage Plugins in WordPress

Check out this video to guide you when you want to check, edit and delete installed plugins or add a new one.

1. Make sure that you are logged in to your WordPress account.
2. Click Plugins in the left margin.
3. Click “Installed Plugins” to show the current list of all installed plugins.
4. From here, you can activate, edit or delete any of the plugins.
5. To add a new plugin, click “Add new”.
6. All available plugins are listed here but you can also browse for more at “WordPress Plugin Directory”.
7. To edit plugins, go back to the Plugins tab and choose “Editor”. NOTE: This is only recommended for advanced users. Do not attempt if you don’t know how to edit codes.

11. How to Write a Comment in WordPress

When a reader comments on one of your posts, you can reply to their comments by following the steps on this video.

1. Make sure that you are logged in to your WordPress account.
2. Go to your live website.
3. Locate the post you want to comment on.
4. Click “Leave a Comment”.
5. Enter your comment.
6. Once done, click “Post Comment”.
7. To comment from your admin interface, click on “Dashboard”.
8. Click on the Comments tab in the left margin.
9. This is the page where you can reply to, approve, edit, or delete comments.

12. How to Update WordPress Installation

To keep your WordPress site up-to-date, you can manually update it on a regular basis. Let this video show you the easy steps in manually updating WordPress.

1. Make sure that you are logged in to your WordPress account.
2. Go to Dashboard in the left margin and click “Updates”.
3. Click “Check Again” to verify if your website has the latest version of WordPress.
4. You can also update plugins, themes and translations on this page, as well.
5. Should there be any issues and WordPress needs to be re-installed, just click on “Re-install Now”.
6. Once installation is complete, you should see a welcome screen.

We have come to the end of our Step-By-Step Guide to Building a WordPress Website. If you like to have an extensive guide with screenshots of the actual steps to better assist you, feel free to download it from our WordPress Guide page.

If you’re looking for a 100% reliably fast web hosting plan that meets all your website needs, look no further. All Vodien Web Hosting Plans already come with thousands of FREE elegant WordPress Themes and plugins that you can customise according to your preference. Vodien provides consistent functionality, strict spam control, generous bandwidth and storage space allocation, regular scheduled file backup, easy-to-use control panel, and best of all, their Customer Support team will be there to assist you when you need help to get onboard. To get started, talk to one of our sales representatives via phone: +65 6288 6264, email: [email protected] and chat: www.vodien.com.