How to Build a WordPress Website: A Complete Guide for 2024

Step-by-step process to create a WordPress website in 2024 for beginners. Free guide to start from scratch and build a brand new site.

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Creating a WordPress Site in 2024: In this tutorial you will be guided with a complete step-by-step process for building a WordPress website for beginner.

It is useful for those who wants to create their first website without hiring any web developer company or agency. I will guide you to build a WordPress website from scratch.

Therefore, I recommend you to bookmark (Ctrl + D) this webpage and follow every single step to make your first WordPress site.

Create a WordPress Website using any Web Hosting Service

There is only two things required to build a website using WordPress. The first is Domain Name and second one is Web Hosting.

For understanding purpose, you may consider domain name as your home address and web hosting as a space/land on which you build your home.

Most of the WordPress hosting plans offers a free domain for one year. That means you have to pay only for hosting service.

Step-1 Before installing WordPress

Before we go for installing WordPress, you have to take care of all these things:

Website Address

What is a website address? Website address or URL (Uniform Resource Locator) is the unique web address that specifies the location of a site.

Website address is commonly known as Domain Name. It is unique name that defines your website identity on the internet. It is used by visitors to open your website.

So, you have to get your domain name for building a website. I have already discussed many factors for choosing best domain name for your website. My website domain name is SuperWebtricks.com.

For Example: Suppose you have purchased a domain name Example.com. In this tutorial, I will use this example domain for illustration purpose.

You may choose any domain extensions from top level domains TLDs, gTLDS, ccTLDS. Most popular top 7 domain extensions are .com, .org, .edu, .net, .us, .in and .uk.

However, if you have not yet bought any domain name for your site, don’t worry you may get a FREE domain along with web hosting plan.

Website Hosting

Website hosting is a service that provides space for your website on server.

There are lots of web hosting providers but you have to select the best one. It depends on various factors and the types of website you are planning for.

Generally, a web hosting organisations sell three types of shared hosting services e.g. Basic, standard and advanced shared hosting.

Bluehost provides free domain with its every hosting plans. Did you know? WordPress itself recommend Bluehost for WordPress hosting.

Suppose you want to create your website for blogging purpose then select very basic hosting plan. You may check out for premium or Business shared hosting to claim a domain name absolutely free of cost.

However, if you are going to sell products online or provide premium services then you have to build a WooCommerce website. It requires standard plan or Ecommerce hosting.

WordPress Requirements

To run WordPress make sure your hosting plan supports:

  • PHP 7.4 or greater
  • MySQL 8.0 or greater OR MariaDB 10.4 or greater
  • Nginx or Apache with mod_rewrite module
  • HTTPS support
WordPress Hosting

You may choose the web hosting provider offers for high quality WordPress hosting with best price upto 75% OFF i.e. ₹149.00/month +3 months FREE. Showeblogin hosted on Hostinger – Select Your WordPress Hosting Plan.

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Step-2 WordPress Installation

You have purchased domain name and WordPress hosting service in step-1 above. Now, you are ready to install your WordPress.

How to install WordPress?

Most of web hosts offer WordPress auto-installer tools like Softaculous, Fantastico, APS, and Installatron etc. After login to your hosting company, you will find WordPress auto installation service in your account dashboard itself.

But, if you want to install WordPress manually then follow these simple steps:

Create Database

To install WordPress manually, You have to create a database for WordPress on your hosting server.

Install WordPress on cPanel Manually: When you purchase any web host service, you will get login credential for your cPanel account.

You may log on to your cPanel using YourDomain.com:2082 or YourDomain.com/cpanel

Now, you have to create MySQL database and its user as shown in the screenshot below:-

  1. Login to your cPanel account
  2. Click on MySQL Database Wizard
cPanel Database Interface
cPanel MySQL Databases
  1. Create a new Database [example_wp1database]

MySQL Database name best practice: While choosing the name for your database, please keep these things in your mind:

  • MYSQL is case sensitive. So, you should use lowercase which help speed typing and avoid mistakes.
  • MariaDB/ MySQL Database name can be up to maximum 64 characters (63 characters if enabled database prefixing).
MySQL Database Wizard
MySQL Database Wizard

4. Create database user [example_wp1user] and password [wp1userpassword]

Note that MySQL limits the database username to 16 characters.

MySQL Database User
MySQL Database User

You may separately create database name and user using MySQL® Databases and add user to created database.

Note: Keep your created MySQL database name, database user and password in a text file as it will be required later.

Download WordPress

Visit official website WordPress.org and get the latest release of WordPress without paying any amount. It is absolutely free of cost and trusted by 60+ million people.

You may directly download latest version of WordPress.

Upload WordPress Files

You have to upload the downloaded WordPress files into the root directory on your server.

  1. Go to File Manager from your cPanel dashboard.
cPanel File Manager
cPanel File Manager
  1. Click on Upload button from the root directory i.e.public_html . Here is the screenshot of root directory.
public html
public html

Now, upload the downloaded WordPress (WP) ZIP file into public_html and extract files.

Thereafter, move all WP files from WordPress directory (folder) to the root directory.

  1. After uploading all WP files, your root directory will look like as shown in the screenshot below.
WP files into root directory
WP files into root directory

Add Database Information

Setup configuration file: Now, right click on wp-config-sample.php file and rename it to wp-config.php

Again right click on wp-config.php file and edit with the following changes.

  • Replace database_name_here with your created database (example_wp1database)
  • Replace username_here with your created database (example_wp1user)
  • Replace password_here with your created database (wp1userpassword)
/** The name of the database for WordPress */
define( 'DB_NAME', 'database_name_here' );

/** MySQL database username */
define( 'DB_USER', 'username_here' );

/** MySQL database password */
define( 'DB_PASSWORD', 'password_here' );

Then visit WordPress API to generate secret key and copy the generated keys.

https://api.wordpress.org/secret-key/1.1/salt/

Now, replace or change all (put your unique phrase here) with your different unique secret keys!

Once all changes done, click the Save Changes button on the top right, then Close to exit and return to the File Manager.

See the screenshot below, how the wp-config.php file looks after edit.

WP Config PHP file
WP Config PHP file

Run WordPress Installation Script

To complete WordPress set up, we have completed almost 95% of WP installation process.

Now, open a new browser window or Tab and enter your domain name (www.example.com) to run the WP installation script.

If you uploaded WordPress to the domain’s root folder, you will be automatically redirected to: https://example.com/wp-admin/install.php

However, if you installed WordPress (uploaded files) in its own subdirectory called blog, for example, you should visit: https://example.com/blog/

Complete WP Installation:

To finish the WP installation, you have to provide some essential details while running WP installation script.

  1. Once you access your correct WordPress Address in a browser, you will see a WordPress setup page prompting you to select your preferred language (By default US English). Click the Continue button.
  2. Thereafter, you will see a welcome page that says, “Welcome to the famous five-minute WordPress installation process!“. Now, you have to provide the following information:
    • Site Title: Enter your website title. Don’t worry, you may change it later.
    • Username: Provide your site Admin User Name. It will be required for login to your website.
    • Password: Choose a strong password that will be used for login to your site.
    • Your Email: This email ID shall be used as WP admin email address. You can use this email instead of username for login purpose. So, you should double check the email address before you click on install WordPress button.
Install WordPress
Install WordPress

After providing all required information, click the Install WordPress button.

Finally, you will be taken to the final screen of success!, which says, “WordPress has been installed. Thank you, and enjoy!“.

WP Installed
WP Installed Success Message

After successful installation of WordPress, it will display the username you chose on the previous page and a placeholder for your chosen password.

Click the Log In button to log in to the WordPress Admin Dashboard to begin customization of your site!

Step-3 After Installing WordPress

After creating WordPress website, these are the recommended steps for making successful site.

WP Dashboard

This is the first place where you are redirected after successful login to your brand new WP site. This is Administration Screen commonly know as dashboard.

WP dashboard screen presented in mainly four sections viz. Toolbar (at Top), Navigation (Left side), Work area (center) and the toolbar (and header), and the footer.

WP Dashboard Screen
WP Dashboard Screen

Initial Task

These are the initial very important tasks that should be done immediately after you login first time to your newly created WordPress Website.

From Navigation, go to Appearance => Customize and under Site Identity upload your website Logo and Site Icon.

Other important WP customizations are discussed hereunder:

  1. Delete Default Contents:
    • Delete the default “Hello World!” post.
    • Edit default “Uncategorized” category to blog or any topic/niche.
    • Remove “Sample Page“.
    • Default comment should also be deleted.
    • Delete unused Themes and default plugins.
  2. Change Default Settings:
    • From navigation, go to General Settings and change the Site Title, Tagline, Timezone, Date and Time format as per your location.
    • Change the “Default Post Category” under writing settings.
    • Go to “Permalink Settings” and select the post name (recommended for blog) or you may set custom URL structure of your blog post Permalink (Permanent URL).
  3. Create Initial Pages:

WordPress Theme

There are more than 12,252 free WordPress theme available in the WordPress directory. After installation of WordPress, your site will be live with default WP theme (Twenty Twenty-Four or latest one).

Premium WordPress themes & website templates are available in the market starting from as low as $2.

WP Plugin

Following are the recommended WP plugins:

  • Site Kit by Google – For Analytics, Search Console, AdSense and page Speed test.
  • Caching Plugins to make your website fast
  • WordPress Backup Plugins
  • WP Security Plugins
  • WP Spam Protection Plugins
  • WooCommerce Plugin for eCommerce site to sell products online and provide premium service online.

For more detail, you may read essential things immediately after installation of WP site.