When you are starting your own online business, one of the first things you will have to do after choosing a profitable niche area to work in, is to set up a website. You may think that this will be a huge task and so decide to use one of the free sites to do this. If you are serious about your web business you must use a self-hosted WordPress site instead, and not the free alternatives.

Here are six easy steps that you can use to set up your first website yourself.

1 Choose And Register Your Domain Name

Find a recommended domain name registrar, and reserve your own domain, which has one of your primary keyword phrases contained in it. Having your keyword in the domain name will allow people to know what your site is about, and could give you access to some free organic search traffic. If the name you want is taken, try adding some ‘modifier’ words to the end of the domain name.

2 Sign Up For A Hosting Service

You will need some space on the web to house your website. In order to be able to do this we use a hosting service. Do a bit of research to find one that is recommended by others. Your hosting provider will send you an email when you have successfully signed up with them. It contains the important details of how you will access your service with them, and the name server details.

3 Change Your Name Servers

It is important to change the name servers at your domain name registrar so that your domain is directed to the hosting account, otherwise your website will not be seen by your web visitors.

4 Install WordPress On To Your Domain

Now it is time to start creating your website. To do that, first you need to install WordPress on your domain, and you do that by accessing your ‘cPanel’ hosting dashboard. Find the ‘Fantastico’ button, click it, then click ‘WordPress’ in the side bar menu to the left. Then click ‘New Installation’ and select the domain you want it on. After that enter your desired administrator username and password to the fields and click ‘Install WordPress.’ Take a look at your site by typing your domain name into the address bar. It does not look much like a website yet but you can customize it now by adding themes and plugins.

5 Choosing And Installing A Theme

A theme will make your website look the way you want it to. To add a free theme access the back-end of your dashboard in WordPress. Click on ‘Appearance’ then ‘Themes’ and ‘Install Themes.’ Here you will be able to choose a theme using the special filters functions, or the other ‘tabs’ which will suggest new, featured or recently updated themes. Choose a theme, preview it then upload it and finally activate it.

6 Add Plugins For Functionality

Finally, you will need to install some basic plugins, which add functionality to your website, and allow you to do things you need without the need for knowing all that coding. Some basic ones that you’ll need will be a spam filter plugin, one to back up your website, one to help with search engine optimization, and one to allow your blog visitors to comment on your posts and be subscribed when they do.

So, as you can see, it is not difficult to create a website yourself when you are starting your own online business. Learning a few skills like these can save you time and money as well allowing you to take control over your own online business.

AD2 (adsbygoogle = window.adsbygoogle || []).push({});

Source by Moira Wight