Setting Up WordPress

Setting Up WordPress

Now you have your hosting account and you have your domain name, you can start actually building your first website.

The good news here, is that you won’t actually need to have any coding skills or really much by the way of design skills. Instead, we’re going to look at how you can build a website with WordPress – and in just a few very quick clicks!

What is WordPress?

For those who haven’t encountered WordPress before, this is essentially a type of CMS. A CMS is a ‘Content Management System’, which is basically a platform that you use to organize and manage the content on a website. This means that you can install it on your server and then use it to upload new blog posts or web pages, as well as to edit the ones you already have.

WordPress goes much further than this though and also lets you completely change the design  of your website at the touch of a button, or install whole new themes created by the community (some of which will cost you money and others of which are completely free). Better yet, you can also use WordPress to install ‘plugins’ which are small pieces of code that add interesting and unique features to your website, many of which can help you immensely as an affiliate marketer.

There are many other CMS options out there such as Drupal, but none of them come close to providing the range of features and options available through WordPress. WordPress has by far the most users and which means more plugins and themes and greater support. This has essentially become the ‘industry standard’ and that also ensures that if something goes wrong with your WordPress site, any web designer or technician you work with should have an understanding of the platform and be able to help.

Of course there are some advantages to building your own website entirely from scratch but if you do this you are creating a lot more work for yourself and drastically increasing the up-front investment, thereby creating greater risk and also reducing your potential profit margin.

Another benefit of WordPress is that it’s known to be Google friendly. In other words, using WordPress ensures that SEO will be easier than it otherwise could be and this ensures you’ll know it’s not the basic code of your website that is causing you problems.

Many massive blogs that are incredibly successful use WordPress. These include the likes of Mashable, Forbes, some of the BBC websites, The Verge, Engadget, Smart Passive Income… the list goes on. As with picking an affiliate product that is already making sales, this is simply the smarter strategy when it comes to creating a website because it means you’ll be using a simple method to create a site that you know can be highly successful.

This again means that you’re taking an almost ‘cut and paste’ approach to your business and setting yourself up to win. Why overcomplicate matters creating a site that may have technical difficulties and investing a huge amount of time and money, when there is a tool available that can help you quickly create a highly professional looking website in minutes?

OptimizePress  is also a WordPress plugin and you’ll find that most autoresponders are highly compatible with WordPress. Again, using these ready-made elements saves you time and effort and ensures a product that has been created to a professional  standard. It’s just smart business and there’s no good reason to take any other approach.

Setting up WordPress is incredibly simple if you have a hosting account with cPanel. In this case, you should be able to find an option when you log in called ‘Fantastico’. This essentially installs WordPress on all your behalf, so all you have to do is to select that option and then choose a domain name and a username and password for yourself. If you don’t see Fantastico then look around, you might also see similar products there such as SimpleScripts, Softaculous or even just ‘WordPress’. Any of these will walk you through the installation and the whole thing takes a matter of seconds.

The other option is to install WordPress manually if you don’t have cPanel. To do this, you simply need to visit www.wordpress.com and then download the files in a zip format. Next, unzip the package and upload the entire folder to your server. You can do this using the file manager provided by your hosting provider, or by using FTP (file transfer protocol) software such as FileZilla.

Either way, add the files to the root directory of your server and then open your website in any browser. Then you’ll see a page letting you create a configuration file and from there you’ll be able to choose your username, password etc. Click ‘run the install’ and it will complete in a matter of minutes (if that).

If you have any difficulties, it may mean that you needed to create a new MySQL database first. You can do this through cPanel but if you struggle then you can find plenty of instructions online, including on WordPress.com itself to talk you through these more advanced steps.

Now if you navigate to your website again, you’ll see a blank website with a generic design and no content yet. Steer to www.yourowndomain.com/wp-admin  and you’ll be able to log in to the main control panel.

This is where you’ll start creating your website in more detail by adding custom ‘themes’ (to change the design of the website), by creating a name for your website and by adding your content and pages. Most of this is fairly self-explanatory and intuitive thanks to the user-friendly interface provided by WordPress.

One thing to note when choosing your theme though, is that you may do better to find  an alternative theme to the ones provided through WordPress itself. The themes on offer here are going to be fairly uninspired and generic and you may find that you encounter them quite regularly while surfing the web. Instead, buy a custom theme from a website like ‘Theme Forest’ and you’ll be able to find something that’s unique and that looks much more professional.

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