Create a website in WordPress in about 5 minutes, and it’s free to setup.

So you have a great idea, or someone has informed you to “just create a website using wordpress”? You’ve come to the right place. The first step is to make sure your idea or niche aligns with what you love to do (what are you creating this website for?). See our post on solving real world problems to make sure you truly have a good business idea and are on the right track. It’s also a good idea to do a little market research before moving right in to buying your domain. Often times you can find some great keywords that integrate well with a domain name that can get you started on the right foot.

Step 1: You need a domain (if you have a domain name or know what you want, skip to step 2)

You need a domain to create your website from scratch, this is going to be where it all happens, the home for your idea. If you want details on how to buy your domain name, check out our post on buying a good domain name. This post will help you come up with a decent name that has some good SEO value for your business, and hopefully describes what you do in the name. If you use our automatic wordpress installer with hosting, you can purchase the domain name directly from us. If you’d rather keep accounts separate, you can always buy from another hosting provider or domain broker.

A few good resources for buying domains that already exist (this might save you some leg work up front).

flippa.com (buy or sell domains)

auctions.godaddy.com (godaddy domain auctions)

namecart.com (a little less competition, but sorta old school looking site)

Good resources for buying domains direct (cheaper than auctions)

moniker.com

cheap-domainregistration.com

namecheap.com

Step 2: Find a WordPress hosting company (requires PHP and MySQL)

Finding the right hosting company is probably one of the most important things you do. With all of the options out there, it’s really hard to find good hosting companies that have the following.

1. Reliable hosting that doesn’t go down periodically. Don’t believe the “up-time” guarantees, they mean almost nothing.
2. A hosting company that you can get support from quickly if things go south.
3. A hosting company that doesn’t outsource their support to India. (I really don’t care if I offend some people here, I’m looking out for your best interest).

Step 3: Setting up WordPress on your hosting provider

If you sign up for our automatic WordPress install, we perform this for you for free. Immediately after your signup you should receive a few emails with details on how to login to your new WordPress control panel. The other hosting companies make it a little bit more difficult to setup WordPress, but it’s still quite easy with a little time and reading.

Steps you need to take in order to setup WordPress on other hosting providers (using Fantastico)

1. Login to your hosting control panel (cpanel) and find the fantastico installer (see image below)
2.  Select WordPress from the Fantastico option menu

1. From this point forward, it will ask you a few questions about where you want your website installed and your administrator username and password for WordPress. These steps are very easy and self explanatory.

That’s all there is to it, you should now have WordPress installed and ready to go. Stay tuned to future tutorials where we will go through the entire post install setup for WordPress with a full PDF checklist that you can download.