Comprehensive Guide to Custom WordPress Website Development

Quick Summary:  A WordPress website is a great option for companies and individuals who don’t have the in-house expertise to build one from scratch. This flexibility has made WordPress a popular choice for people from all walks of life. From freelancers to small businesses, entrepreneurs to established companies, everyone can benefit from a professionally designed website. This guide will walk you through the process of building your own WordPress website and give you everything you need to know about how to make it stand out.

WordPress Website Development – How to Create a Website

Get Web Hosting and a Domain Name: 

Choosing web hosting is the first step in building a website. When creating a website using WordPress, it is possible to get free web hosting by using WordPress’ built-in servers. But if you prefer more control over your site, it’s best to choose a web host that offers premium features for your website.

Choose a Domain Name

When you create a website, you need to select a web hosting service and a domain name for your website. You can choose to register your own domain name at any time. However, initially, you should use the domain name that was provided by your web hosting service or the one that you purchased directly from a domain registrar.

Install WordPress

After you purchase a hosting account, there are some steps you should take to install and launch your WordPress blog. First, you will log in to either your control panel or your user dashboard (depending on which plan you have purchased). Then, search for “websites” from the horizontal menu bar. From there, click “Manage Websites.” This will bring up a list of all the websites attached to this particular hosting account. Click the one that has your web address (for example, resourcepage.com), and then click, “Install WordPress” in the center of the page by your website name.

Find and Install a WordPress Theme: 

Choosing a WordPress theme is one of the most important jobs you’ll have during the building of your site. A lot goes into this decision, as the theme you choose will affect how your site looks and behaves, and will dictate what options are available for you to extend it in the future. 

WordPress themes are site templates. There are thousands of available theme sites such as ThemeForest, with thousands more available for free from the WordPress Themes Directory via WordPress.org. Some of these are premium themes, which you purchase and download.

There are a few different types of WordPress templates, and which one you should choose depends on a number of factors, including the specifics of your project, the skill level you possess, and your budget. Your chosen template will determine how your site functions as well as how it looks – so choosing the right one for your specific target market is important.

Install Plugins: 

When you install a free or premium WordPress theme, the theme usually includes useful features. However many people find that customization doesn’t go far enough. And a lot of them need more features added to make their website more functional or visually appealing. 

We know that your next step after installing your theme is to install and activate all required plugins in WordPress. In addition to those that come with your theme, there may be other plugins you need just to ensure that the features you need are fully functional. In addition to the plugins that come with your theme, there are thousands to choose from that can do anything from enhancing site security to adding live chat or turning your page editor into a drag-and-drop editor. However, try to limit the number of plugins you use as too many can slow down your website or cause other plugins to break.

Import Demo Content: 

When you choose a premium theme from ThemeForest, your theme should come with demo content that can be imported into WordPress to populate your site. However, if your theme doesn’t have demo content available, you will want to find an alternative source. When choosing a commercial theme without demo content, it’s important to ensure the product has comprehensive documentation so that you can add the sample data yourself. Adding sample data helps accelerate development as you can build out pages with design and layout without worrying about customizing the look and feel.

Configure WordPress Settings: 

The moment you launch your site, the real work begins. You will make adjustments to your website, develop new pages, and further optimize your core features in order to gain more visibility and traffic from search engines like Google (and Bing). Therefore, it’s very important that you update your settings before you begin to work on building out your site.

Create Pages: 

Pages in WordPress are the main content areas of your website, which are made up of varied web elements, such as text, images, and video. These are what you would expect to find on a ‘regular’ website. Pages have many uses aside from just being the content within your website. You can use pages to create custom 404 error pages or redirect specific pages using 301 redirects (which should be used when changing domains or URL structures).

Set Up Your Menu: 

Now that you’ve set up your pages, add some navigational elements. Menus are used to provide navigation links through a website, and then there are also drop-down menus. Drop-down menus are perfect for providing more options (such as filter options) in the header area of your site and they can be configured to appear when a user hovers their mouse over a link, or in other cases, just clicks on it.

Write Your First Blog Post: 

Aside from web pages, numerous businesses choose to incorporate blog posts to enhance their visibility on search engines like Google. To compose a blog post, access the “posts” option in the vertical menu on the left and select “add new.” From there, you can modify the blog post much like a web page. One notable distinction is that, unlike a standard page, you have the flexibility to draft a blog post and set a future date for publication.

Market Your Site: 

A strong marketing strategy is one of the most important things that will help your business grow online. Though search engines are the main places people get their information, you want to be sure that your business receives all of the organic traffic possible. These marketing ideas are intended to help small business owners get more traffic for their business websites.

Conclusion  

WordPress is an open-source Content Management System (CMS) that has undergone continuous development since May of 2003. For over a decade, WordPress has been one of the most popular and reliable blogging platforms available. It’s extensibility and flexibility allow it to be used as the foundation for a variety of websites, ranging from simple blogs to complex eCommerce sites. Brain Inventory is a WordPress website development company that specializes in creating intuitive, high-quality online platforms. We are focused on delivering business-oriented, cost-effective solutions for startups and businesses of any size. Our professionals design and develop your website to give you an edge with strong conversion rates which results in more business leads and sales.