The first thing you’ll be doing about taking your business through the web platform is to own a website or blog, to share your messages and stuff to the rest of the world. There are a number of sources and platforms for you to take up hosted websites including WordPress.com and Blogger.com. But the most reliable and the best choice for you would be, undoubtedly, WordPress for a self-hosted website!
The main reason why you can choose WordPress for a self-hosted blog or website is that it’s the easiest as well as the platform where you can have easy control over your website. You can make your message freely reach the world and your target readers.
To share your content online wishing that you need more viewers of your website, WordPress is the ideal platform. Statistics say that there are over 60 million blogs on WordPress viewed and read by over 400 million people each month. This number exactly shows how much traffic you’d be getting with a self-hosted WordPress website for your business.
All that business owners want is, their product getting known to potential customers, their words about their product and finally the sale that matters overall. But how’d this be possible over the web without a website or blog where you can share all your thoughts or promotions or offers that induce people to come towards your services automatically? Launching a self-hosted WordPress website will not make you regret, as this would be a wise and small investment to have a website that you can control as you wish.
Now, let’s move on to the interesting part of knowing how to launch a self-hosted WordPress website within 15 minutes. There’s no technical expertise needed and it’s not time-consuming too.
Five Easy Steps to Launch a Self-Hosted WordPress Website
STEP 1: Collect Your Resources
There are three things you need before launching your self-hosted WordPress Website.
- A domain name
- A credit card
- 15 minutes
It’s easier if you have not already registered your domain. You can know how to do it in Step 2. But even if you’ve registered, no worries either. Just an additional step would be required in the process. Have your credit card ready with you for doing the small investment for self-hosting your website. All this will be done by you within a solid 15-minute time frame.
STEP 2: Hosting Account Setup and Domain Name Registration
Hosting account is where your blog will reside. It’s a server in a remote computer where you’ll rent space to install the WordPress software and manage your blog or website. There are so many sites like Bluehost and GoDaddy offering these services and Bluehost seems to be the most recommended one. This is because it offers best services in terms of ease of use, reliability and support. So, you can set up your hosting account by going to this website and selecting an appropriate plan for you.
Next comes the part of registering your domain name. If in case you already have a domain name, you can just type it and continue by the flow of the page. But if you’re registering a new domain, you can do in the same platform itself.
Screenshot of Bluehost page for registering your domain
After this, you’d see the prices of different plans and select whichever suits you. Next comes the billing part (make use of your credit card here) after which you’d be taken to the ‘Welcome’ screen and your new account gets created once you create your own password.
Once the login screen appears, you can enter your domain name and continue getting into the Control Panel.
If you already have a domain name registered with some other service, say for instance GoDaddy.com, but you need to host it, you have two good options.
- Transfer the domain registration to Bluehost.
- Change the name servers on your domain to point to your new host.
For example, if its GoDaddy that you’ve registered your domain, just log in to it, and go to ‘Domains | Domain Management’ screen (Shown below):
Click on the domain name that you want to point to your new host, say, for eg, Bluehost. The ‘Domain Details’ page gets displayed. Scroll down to the section ‘Nameservers’.
Click on ‘Set Nameservers’. A new screen shows up.
- Enter ns1.Bluehost.com in the field for Nameserver 1.
- Enter ns2.Bluehost.com in the field for Nameserver 2.
Click OK and log out. Simple! Most probably it may take up to 24 – 48 hours for these changes to take effect.
Take note that be it Bluehost or any other hosting platforms, they may change their settings and policies from time to time and this is just an example of doing the process.
STEP 3: Install WordPress
Now you can easily set up your WordPress software through your host (example: Bluehost). Otherwise, go to WordPress.org to download the software and then upload it to a host.
In Bluehost, the process is very simple.
- Scroll down the page to the ‘Website’ section.
- Click on the ‘Install WordPress’ logo and wait until the new screen appears.
- Click on the ‘Install’ button.
- Next, click the domain name for which the WordPress needs to be installed.
With this, you’ll be almost done with your installation.
STEP 4: Log Into WordPress
Click on the” Admin URL” link. This will take you to the WordPress login page shown below.
Now enter your username and password and click on the ‘Login’ button.
WordPress ‘Dashboard’ is now displayed on your screen. This is where the bloggers work for their site, or in other words, the ‘back end’. What the readers of your site can see is the ‘front end’. This is the control panel which you can make use of to control your website and what your users can see.
STEP 5: Write Your First Post And Start Blogging!
Yes, you’re all set and ready to write up your first post for your website via self-hosted WordPress. Click on the ‘Posts | Add New’ option on the left-hand side menu. You can see the New Post screen.
When you start using your WordPress account, there’ll be a collection of awesome themes with beautiful designs and templates for using in your website. Simply play with them and make use of the best theme which suits your website’s purpose and apply it after previewing a number of themes. All these themes are mostly free and you can get a customized one after a while, once you get used to WordPress.
Start framing the title of your post and continue writing up your first post below the title. Perhaps, since it’s the first post, it could be something interesting and inviting stuff for your readers. So, be smart enough to make a clever start. After finishing your post and proofreading it, click the ‘Publish’ button.
Here you are with your first post published on your self-hosted WordPress website!
You’ve published it and just click on the ‘View Post’ link and you can view your post as of how it looks to your website readers. With this, your new blog is loaded in a neat theme as background with your first post for your website viewers.
That’s it! With this simple 5 – step implementation which takes less than 15 minutes, you can have your own self-hosted WordPress website. You no longer need to stay invisible on the web platform, but can have a quite solid visible presence over the internet, and start making profits out of it.