Start A Blog On WordPress With Free Themes
Do you wish to start up a new WordPress blog or website and wondering how to do it on a budget? Well, WordPress is a free, open source CMS that allows for 100% customization. In this short guide, I am going to show you how you can start a WordPress blog/website on a budget or without any technical knowledge.
This guide would come in handy to bloggers who intends moving from their blogging platform to WordPress, web hobbyist, and those who just bought a WordPress hosting server and wondering how to put their business online.
The pre-requisites to starting a new WordPress blog?
To start a blog/website on WordPress, there are some important things you must have beforehand. Under listed are some of these fundamental tools.
ü A registered domain name (e.g. naijatechguy.com)
ü A web hosting account (shared, cloud or VPS)
ü Reliable internet connection
They are just the three primary requirements for starters. Any hosting package you buy comes with a cPanel (control panel/dashboard) where you can manage your files and websites. It is on this cPanel that you’d gain access to create your first free WordPress blog/website.
There are lots of packages available in the cPanel, among them is Softaculous App Installer. This package offers you free access to install various CMS platforms freely and easily. All the packages on cPanel are important and serve for specific purposes. But since our interest is on creating WordPress websites, we’ll only focus on Softaculous App Installer.
Starting the blog
#1. Install WordPress
Log in to your hosting cPanel and scroll down until you get to the Softaculous Apps Installer. Now, click on the WordPress Icon to trigger the website installation process.
Choose between quick or custom installation. The “Quick” installation creates a default WordPress website with preset settings while the “Custom” installation allows you to customize your website from the root.
Now, you will be required to enter the following details
ü Domain name
ü Desired website name and description
ü Your admin details (username and password). Note: This will be what you will use to log in to the website/blog admin panel/dashboard and it has to be private.
ü Choose your website language
ü Scroll down and click on “Install WordPress”
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After the website installation, the next thing to do is to start with free themes. To access your new blog/website admin panel/dashboard, attach /wp-admin after the initial domain name. This is how your admin WP admin URL looks like; http://tutorial.wordpress.com/wp-admin/. Log in to your admin dashboard by using the admin details you defined during the installation.
#Install themes
WordPress works with highly customizable themes/templates. There are many free themes to customize the look of your new website. Usually, the screenshot below shows you how your website will appear immediately after installation.
This appearance does not appeal to anyone, so it needs to be changed. To change this default theme and use a visitor-friendly theme that would interest your visitors, locate the themes option on your dashboard and click on it. It’s normally found at–Appearance ==> Themes
Click on the “Add new” button
You’ll be redirected to a new page where you’d find lots of free beautiful themes with user-friendly templates. However, you can define your theme choice by filtering the results to the latest, featured, popular, no. of columns, and etc.
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Once you see a theme you like, hover your mouse over it and click on the preview button to see what it actually looks like on the front-end (appearance to visitors).
If you are comfortable with the preview, go ahead and install the theme as your new website theme. It will override the previous theme template and your website will now be acceptable to the people viewing it.
Note: I’ll normally recommend a SEO friendly theme that comes with social media sharing buttons and newsletter marketing tools. They’re necessary for your marketing and/or blogging success.
#3. Customize the free theme to taste
In other to make the theme more convenient and load faster for your readers, WordPress allows you to customize the theme’s appearance via a built-in customizer. You can access the customizer here – Appearance ==> Customizer.
What more?
Your new website/blog is now up and running, you should start creating engaging contents that will bring more traffic to the new website. Also, you may need to install certain plugins to make your new blog/website modern, attractive, and good enough for advertisers.