Want to build a website in Nepal? But you don’t have any coding experience? Try WordPress!
WordPress is a free content management system (or CMS). As a CMS, WordPress makes it extremely easy to manage various aspects of a website. You can publish blogs, create traditional webpages, change the design of internet forums, upload media galleries, make membership sites, and start online stores with payment options.
Using WordPress is so straightforward that first-time users are often in disbelief due to the perceived simplicity of the platform. WordPress’s efficient and versatile nature lets business owners shift their focus to improving and delivering their products. Furthermore, its robust SEO capabilities, like metadata optimization, permalink structure customization, and XML sitemap generation, enhance online visibility while providing an optimal user experience for visitors.
This guide provides detailed information about WordPress and enables readers to build a site in WordPress through a handful of simple steps.
Step-by-Step Guide to Build WordPress Website
1. Get Web Hosting, a Domain Name and a Nameserver
- Choose a web hosting provider: Securing web hosting should be the first step when creating a new website using WordPress.
Web hosts are powerful servers (or computers) that store web files and are transmitted upon request by internet browsers. With a web host, website owners will have a place to install and publish their WordPress site.
Many reputable hosting companies like Bluehost, SiteGround, DreamHost, and GoDaddy are available on the market, but as each has pros and cons, buyers should research to pick the best one that suits their needs. - Select a Domain Name: Domain names are easy-to-remember names that represent the IP address or the location of websites. A domain name provides an easy way for people to find and access the website using a simple nameable address (www.google.com) rather than remembering long strings of numbers (216.58.221.46). While web hosting providers often include domain name registration services among their services, buyers can also purchase a domain name from a different domain name registrar. Namecheap, CloudFlare, Hostinger, Cloudways, and Hover are some of the best domain name registrars at this current date, offering a plethora of features at bulk discounts.
- Set the Nameservers: Nameservers are specialized computers that store DNS records: pairs of IP addresses and respective domain names. Whenever a browser sends a request to a nameserver with a domain name, the latter responds with an IP address. To ensure visitors can access a website using their domain name, the DNS records for that domain must be configured with authoritative nameservers, which most domain registrars and web hosts provide as part of their services at no additional cost.
2. Install WordPress
- Download WordPress: The next step is to install WordPress files on your web hosting account. First, WordPress, preferably the latest version, must be downloaded from its website. Since WordPress is distributed under the GNU General Public License, it is free to download and use.
- Pre-configuration: WordPress has a few requirements for running it on a hosting server, which include a web server (Nginx or Apache), 1 GB of disk space, PHP v8.0 or higher, MySQL Database v5 or higher, 512 GB of RAM, a 1.0 GHz CPU, and support for HTTPS. Most web hosting providers have the option to configure the servers. In the event of confusion, website owners can hire a webmaster to set up the server.
3. Configure Basic Settings
The first installation of WordPress will ask users to create a username and password to secure the WordPress admin panel. Users are also prompted to enter the site title with the prefixes for your database and other configuration files. Users should change the default prefix, ‘wp_’, to a more suitable one to increase security and prevent potential breaches.
4. Choose and Install a Theme
All websites have a theme that they run on. A theme is a pre-designed template that controls the visual appearance and layout of the website. They give the website its overall look and feel, with colors, fonts, page layouts, and styling. At their core, WordPress themes are collections of style sheets and template files that control how content is displayed.
WordPress comes bundled with some free default themes, but thousands of additional free and premium themes are available. Themes can be installed, customized, and switched effortlessly on WordPress sites without altering the underlying content/data. Neve, Hello Elementor, Astra, GeneratePress, Sydney, OceanWP, and Zakra are some of the best WordPress themes based on speed and performance.
Aside from WordPress, popular commercial theme providers include ThemeForest, StudioPress, and Elegant Themes.
5. Install Essential WordPress Plugins
Plugins are an important part of WordPress that extend the functionality of websites. They allow you to add new features and capabilities beyond what the core WordPress software provides natively. WordPress plugins are built using PHP code that is attached to the WordPress core. Web developers can create their own plugins, buy them from the marketplace, or choose from over 59000 freely available ones.
Some essential WordPress plugins that most websites need include Akismet Anti-Spam, Contact Form 7, Rank Math, Smush, Elementor, UpdraftPlus, WooCommerce, and Wordfence
6. Create and Organize Content
- Add Pages: The next order of business is adding some content to the website. WordPress allows you to create static pages like an About page, a Contact page, and a Services overview using its built-in visual editor. These are typically used for timeless, non-chronological information on a website.
- Create Blog Posts: In addition to pages, WordPress has a dedicated Posts section for blog posts or articles. These are dynamic content entries, typically in reverse chronological order, ideal for timely updates, news, tutorials, or any content organized by date.
- Organize the Content: Categories and tags can be used to organize content on a website, thus making it easy to review, change, and update web pages as well as posts. Categories are collections used for grouping relevant posts together within them, while tags act as keywords that provide particular labels to such posts. On one hand, categories help group similar posts, while on the other hand, tags assist with providing more information about such posts. However, by using several categories and tags simultaneously, webmasters are able to simplify management processes linked to their sites while also improving the user experience of visitors navigating through the site.
7. Customize Appearance
WordPress lets users configure the theme to match the brand and the products. The number of available layouts depends on the theme selected; however, most of the WordPress themes do not restrict the color choice or font family. Additional styling can be done using custom CSS, giving the website any design one desires. To allow easy navigation between the pages, WordPress has the option to set up menus that can change based on the categories or pages.
8. Optimize for SEO
It is normal for website owners to want their site to show up in search results, so to facilitate this, WordPress has various SEO settings that are intuitive and do not require any coding skills. New posts are created using in-built editors that have options to structure the text in HTML formats. Furthermore, adding meta descriptions and sitemaps is also user-friendly. The process becomes even simpler with WordPress plugins like Yoast SEO and Rank Math that analyze the text and give relevant suggestions to make it better.
9. Set Up Essential Features
Website owners have the flexibility to incorporate different features when they build a site in WordPress. The user registration element is a common element on many websites that can either be implemented using custom coding or by using a user registration plugin. Similarly, other interactive features like contact forms, newsletter opt-ins, and conversion tools can also be integrated using various free and premium WordPress plugins.
10. Backup and Maintain
The final stage of building a site in WordPress involves ongoing maintenance practices. As WordPress releases new versions at certain intervals with better features than before, it is important to keep the websites up-to-date to maintain competitiveness in the market. Maintenance involves updating the WordPress version, themes, and plugins, along with performing regular backups of the website data. Monitoring the site’s performance and security is also crucial to ensuring the optimal operation of the site.
Why should you use WordPress to build a website?
43.3% of all websites use WordPress as their CMS, and they have strong reasons for such continued usage. Here are some of the benefits provided by WordPress.
- Easy to Use: WordPress boasts a user-friendly interface with a shallow learning curve, making it easier to learn compared to other Content Management Systems (CMS).
- Open Source and Free: WordPress is natively free to download and use, which makes it an attractive option for individuals and businesses on a budget.
- Extensive Plugin and Theme Library: WordPress has a vast library of free and premium WordPress plugins and themes, allowing users to swiftly customize their website’s functionality and appearance with ease.
- Search Engine Optimization (SEO) Friendly: WordPress has in-built features that focus on semantic content structure, making it inherently SEO friendly. Brand owners find it easier for their websites to rank well in search result pages by utilizing SEO strategies within WordPress.
- Scalability and Flexibility: WordPress can be used for different types of websites, which range from simple blogs to complex e-commerce stores. The websites can also be scaled without bounds with WordPress, with seamless integration of WordPress plugins adding a multitude of features and functionalities to meet evolving needs.
- Large and Active Community: WordPress has a vast community of active developers, designers, and continuous users, which means quick help and support through forums and tutorials is possible.
Conclusion
WordPress has gained widespread popularity among the web developer community for its simple and easy-to-use interface. It also gains more attention because of its open-source license, which makes it free to download and use. Due to the large community of developers actively creating better WordPress plugins and themes, new website builders find it lucrative to build a site in WordPress rather than paying other CMS that they do not know.
The process to create a website in Nepal with WordPress is not complicated; however, business owners might not have enough time to spare and would be rather interested in hiring a webmaster or team to build a site in WordPress to best represent their business online.
If you want to increase your online visibility by building a site in WordPress, contact us at Krizmatic Digital Solution, one stop for all your digital needs, and work with our experts to take your business to a new height.
