First Steps to Building Your WordPress Website

Last updated: July 29, 2018 at 2:16 am

wordpress photoBuilding a website requires the following steps in the following sequence:

  1. Registering your domain name with a great Registrar such as NameCheap.
  2. Signing up for a web hosting plan with an Amazing, second-to-none web host which is no other than LeaseHost.
  3. Changing the Domain Name Servers of your domain name to those of your web hosting company.

As I mentioned before, the best Domain Name Registrar on the internet is Namecheap, and the best web hosting company is LeaseHost. Since I want the best of both worlds, I usually register my domain names with NameCheap but host them with LeaseHost. This requires me to change the Domain Name Servers in my NameCheap control panel to those of LeaseHost. I’ve already done this, and you can read about it in my article on “how to change the Domain Name Servers of your domain.”

So now that I’ve completed the essential steps to building a website, I’ll proceed to actually building the website.

Building a website requires the developer to make a decision at the starting point: what technology will I use in building my website? Here are some of the options:

  1. Hand coding: This requires you to be an expert in coding languages such as html, css, javscript etc.
  2. Ruby on Rails – this is an amazing web content management that comes with lots of frills.
  3. Dreamweaver – a pretty outdated and expensive software that takes years of learning curves and really gets on my nerves with its inadequate and overpriced tutorials.
  4. WordPress – what started as a simple blogging platform is now taking the world of web development by storm. This free open source software is a content management that has blossomed into an ever expanding web development system. It’s easy to learn and free. It’s no mystery then that more than 25% (and counting up) of websites on the internet are now powered by WordPress.

Based on my reviews of the options above, I guess that you can guess that my choice of web development platform will be no other than WordPress. So let’s head over to my hosting company, LeaseHost, and start the process.

First thing I do is I open my web browser, which is chrome, and type in: www.leasehost.com.

The LeaseHost website loads.

Next, I log in by clicking on the “client login” button which is located just above the “sign up now” button.

I type in my email address and password and click “login”.

Sort of what the inside of my Dashboard of Lease Host Client Area looks like.

Interestingly, I can’t start building my website from my Client Area Dashboard. To start building my website, I need to access my hosting “cpanel.” Most web hosts usually provide a direct link to cpanel from the Client Area Dashboard, but Leasehosst doesn’t. So what I have to do is type in: platinumrecipescollection.com/cpanel. Why this domain name? It’s because platinumrecipescollection.com is the first website I hosted with LeaseHost, so it’s used as my cpanel login.

I’m then redirected to the login for Cpanel which asks for my cpanel username and password.

Note that your cpanel login might be entirely different from your client area login, depending on your web host. If you’re using the best web host on the planet, which is LeaseHost, then your Cpanel Login will definitely be different from your client area login. If you’re not sure what your cpanel login is, just send a support request to your web hosting service provider. If your web host is Lease Host, as in my case, you will most likely receive a reply in minutes from LeaseHost’s excellent support staff.

Alright, so now that I already know my cpanel login information, I go ahead and login to my cpanel.

My LeaseHost Cpanel is organized under the following headings:

Files

Databases

Domains

Marketgoo Marketing Tools

Email

Metrics

Security

Software

Advanced

Preferences

SitePad Website Builder – Themes

Softaculous Apps Installer

Since I’m about to build a brand new website on a brand new domain, I have to scroll down to the “Domains” heading in my cpanel.

Since I’m about to “Add A New Domain” to my cpanel account, I click on “Addon Domains” which is under the “Domains” heading.

After I click on “Addon Domains,” a new page loads which gives me the ability to add the new domain on to my cpanel. It looks something like the snapshot below.

So I’ll go ahead and type in the domain name in the “New Domain Name” box. I’ll leave the “Subdomain” box blank for now. And I’ll also leave the “Document Root” box blank because that should be configured automatically. I’ll tick the check box next to “Create an FTP account associated with this Addon Domain” and I’ll click the “Add Domain” button.

My new domain that I’m adding, by the way, is “www.billytours.com.” However, I don’t need to type in “www.” I just need to type in “billytours.com.”

As you can see, an FTP username has already been created since I had checked the “Create an FTP account associated with this Addon Domain.” However, I’m prompted to create a password for the FTP account. I’ll have to choose a strong password, and also store the username and password in a special location for easy reference in the future.

Great. So I’ve chosen a strong password. Now all I have to do is click on “Add Domain,” and I should be good to go.

And voila! I did it. Billytours.com has been added to my cpanel, and an FTP account has been created for the domain. That’s it! I completed the very first steps to created a brand new website on a brand new domain.

What’s the next step? Since I already know the web building software that I’ll use to build my new site, it’s time to go and install on that domain. What’s the software I’ll be using? I told you already! WordPress!

Up Next: Installing WordPress on your domain name.

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