Introduction & Core Concepts
Hey, what's up guys? Welcome to another video of mine where today I'm going to be teaching you how to use WordPress and then ultimately how to set up a cool little website just like this one. And now just like all my other videos, even if you have no experience making a website, that's totally okay because I'm going to be walking you through this whole process step by step.
So before we get started, I'm just going to go over a couple of things and then I'll show you how to make a website with this free wordpress theme. Website hosting is where your website is going to live online. It's where all your content is stored, all your photos and videos and basically everything that's on your website is stored there. Another way I like to explain this to people is like this: think if you're going to build a house, before you can actually start building you would need the land to put the house on. So just try to think of the domain name as the house and the hosting is the land. Website hosting normally cost about 60 to $100 a year, sometimes more, but today I'm gonna show you how we're gonna get website hosting for just 30 bucks for a year that also includes an automatic WordPress installation and a free domain name. Your website domain name is the address of your website. So for example some domain names are ebay.com, google.com, youtube.com, you get the idea. Alright guys, so that should pretty much cover everything.
Getting Discounted Hosting and a Free Domain
Now we can move on to the next step which is installing our hosting. So what we're gonna do first is go over to my website so we can get a discount on the hosting and so the link we're gonna go to to do that is createwpsite.com/promo-go. And so once we land on this page, we're just going to click on this GoDaddy coupon right here and that's going to automatically apply our discount code for us. So now what we're going to do is get our free domain and install hosting and wordpress. Okay guys so the first thing we're gonna do is click on this green get started button. And this is where we're going to choose our free domain name. So whatever you want your website to be called, you can check here to see if it's available. And once you decide on the name you can just enter it here. I'm gonna enter mine, and now I'm gonna click on search to see if it's available. Okay, it is.
Creating Your GoDaddy Account & Purchasing
So I'm going to click on select and continue. And as you can see our promo code has been applied to our entire year of hosting so we got the discount which is cool. And now we're just gonna click on create account. Alright and now we're gonna fill out this form for our GoDaddy account and some of this information is going to be blurred out just for privacy reasons obviously. But all we're gonna do is enter our email address. If you don't have one, I just recommend maybe going to Google and signing up for a free gmail account. And then you're going to come up with a username and a password and then also a PIN number. And these can be anything you want, just make sure you guys save all this info somewhere so when you need to login to GoDaddy you can. So now I'm just gonna enter in my information. Okay and then after we have all that filled out, we're just going to click this green create account button. Okay now I'm just gonna put my billing info in. Alright and once that's all done we can go ahead and click on save. Okay, now I'm going to be using a card to pay, they also have PayPal too. You guys can choose any method you like though, they'll all take us to the same place in the end so it doesn't matter which one you choose. All right now my payment info is in so I'm just going to click on this blue Save button and then we're ready to complete the purchase so we're just going to click on this green button here. Alright guys and that's it, we got our hosting now and we're ready to move on to the next step.
One-Click WordPress Installation
Okay, so what we're gonna do now is click on this blue add site button. And then we're just gonna leave everything like it is: build a brand new site. And then wherever it's recommended you can just put it there. And now we're going to come up with a wordpress username and password. So just like for the other stuff, just come up with a username and a password and then make sure you save that information somewhere. Okay and then after you do that you can just click on add. And this is just currently installing WordPress for us. Alright and that's it, WordPress is installed. That's the simple one-click WordPress install right there for you.
And now we're just going to click on this blue WP admin button. And then once we get to this page just go ahead and click on no thanks and that will just automatically take you to your WordPress dashboard. And this is the place where you go whenever you want to edit your site.
Verifying Your Email & Setting the Primary Domain
Ok guys so before we do anything we're going to go verify our email from GoDaddy. And so we're just going to go to our email accounts and there should be a mail from GoDaddy that says 'please verify your email address'. And here's mine and just click on verify email now. Okay, and that's it. It's been verified.
Okay now I'm back over on my WordPress dashboard and I'm just going to refresh this page right here. And then after you do that where it says no just click on change domain and now click on add domain and find your domain right here. Mine's already selected and make sure this is selected and it says 'make this primary domain for the account' and then after you have everything selected, add. Okay we're just gonna wait on this to update, just take a couple minutes. Alright now that's been updated and what that just did is changed the location of everything that we're going to be making on our WordPress website. So it's no longer to this FTP upload site, it's now going to all be on our main domain.
How to Log In to Your WordPress Dashboard
Okay guys now I'm going to show you how you log in to your WordPress account anytime you need to edit something on your site. So what we're gonna do is open up a new tab and then you're gonna take your website and you're gonna put it in and then you're gonna put /wp-admin after the .com or .net whatever your domain is. And then after that click enter and then when it comes up here all you do is put in your account information that you created earlier. So again it's just your domain name /wp-admin anytime you want to log into your WordPress account. Alright, so I just put my information in, now I'm just gonna click login and now this will take us right back to the wordpress dashboard.
Installing Your Theme & Setting Site Info
And now we can start finally building the actual site. So the first thing we're gonna do is install our theme. So we're gonna go over to appearance and then we're going to click on themes. Then we're going to go over here to add new. These are all the different themes, there's tons to choose from, but we're gonna go over here to search themes and we're gonna type in Nico portfolio. And then we're just gonna click on install and activate. Okay, now our theme has been installed. The next thing we're gonna do is edit some of our site info, so we're gonna go down here to general. And then we're just going to edit our site title and then we're gonna add a tagline. And so after you add in your site title and tagline you can just scroll down here and click on Save Changes.
Changing the Background Image
Okay, now what we're gonna do is we're gonna go over to our home page and then we're going to change our background here. So we're gonna go up here to customize, we're going to click on background image. I'm going to click Change image and then you can just go here to upload files and then you pick your file. I'm just going to select mine right here and then we're going to want to set these to fill screen and then also scroll page and then after that's done click on publish. Okay now we're going to close this here and now we're going to go back to our dashboard.
Creating Your Website Pages
Okay, now what we're going to do is we're going to create some pages for our website. So to do that we're gonna go to pages and then add new. Okay and then this is where your page title is gonna go and then down here this is where the content goes. Okay, now I'm going to add my title for the page and then after that I'm going to click on publish. Okay now this page is done so I'm gonna go through and I'm gonna make two more pages just like this. Okay so now this page has been created. Now what I'm going to do is go and create two more pages just like this. Okay so we got all our pages made.
So now what we're going to do is go over here to appearance and we're gonna click on menus. And this is where we're going to set up our menu page that'll appear at the top of our website. So just go over here and select the pages that you want to add to your menu on the top of your website then click Add to menu. And then if you want to rearrange them you can just go like this. And then if you also want to put something in a subcategory, all you have to do is just move it a little over here to the right and that moves it into a subcategory. And then if you don't want to do that anymore just move it back to the left and it says all category again. And then make sure this is selected here, primary. Alright and then now if we go to our website's homepage you'll see that our categories have been put up here.
Creating Posts with Featured Images & Categories
Okay so we're gonna go back to our dashboard now and now we're gonna start creating some posts and click on add new. Okay and this is basically just like a page, same thing. You just add your title here and then you can add your content down here. So I'm just gonna go ahead and fill these both out. Okay and then after that's added we're going to add a featured image to our page. This is basically just an image that people are gonna see along with some of this text before they see the actual post. So to do that we're gonna click on featured image and then set featured image. Then we click on upload and then I'm just going to drop my file in, then click on and select.
Okay and now that's done and I'm just gonna click on publish. So now if we go to our website's homepage you'll see that our first page is up with our featured image and our title and some of our content here. So now we can go back over here and now what I'm gonna do is I'm going to make 11 additional posts in the same format with just with the title, some text, and then a featured image, and then I'll be back.
Alright guys so I just finished putting up my last post here and another thing I wanted to mention in this video too is that if you guys want to add categories, add your posts to categories, all you have to do is come over here to categories and you can just click on add new category and you can just type it in right here and then you click add a new category and then you just select which of the ones you want to have your post appear in. And then after that this is what my website looks like now with all those posts though.
Okay, what I'm going to show you now is how to get rid of some of this stuff down here that we don't need. So we're just going to go back up here to dashboard, then we're going to go to appearance and then widgets. Alright, so now we're just going to go over here where it says footer copyright area. And then this is all the stuff right here and anything you don't want all you have to do is go to it and click on delete and that will automatically get rid of it so you don't have to see it anymore on any pages on your website. So the ones I'm going to get rid of are the recent comments and then the archives and then meta. Then I'm gonna leave these three and you don't have to save or anything, they just update automatically.
Alright guys, so that's it. This is what the final product looks like. And of course when you're building your website you guys are gonna want to fill it with your own content, but this is just to give you an idea of what your website could look like. So I hope you guys enjoyed this video and if you did and hit that like button and also leave a comment below if you have any questions. I hope you guys enjoy your new website and I'll talk to you later. Bye.
Bonus Tips & Advanced Customization
If you guys ever decide that you want to change the structure of your URLs on your website, just go over to settings and then go to permalinks. And once you get here, you're gonna notice a bunch of different settings here. And the month and name is the default setting. And basically what that means is it's just your website anytime you have a post it's going to be your website slash the month and the name of the post. But you can also change it so it's just your website slash whatever the name is of your post. There's a lot of different ones to choose from. I think a lot of people like to go with the post name just because it helps clean up the URL a little bit, but you guys can do whatever you like and that's how you change your permalink settings.
So if you guys need to add a photo or any type of media to one of your actual posts all you have to do is basically do the same thing we've been doing the whole video which is just go up here to add media then you select the file you want and then you click insert into post. If you guys ever want to set a featured image it's really simple all you have to do is go over here to featured image make sure you're on the document section not the black section just come down here and click on featured image and then click set featured image and it's the same thing you just select it and then insert it in.
To get rid of it all you have to do is go over to appearance and then you click on widgets and then right here you'll notice your sidebar is and all you have to do is click on each one and if you want to delete it you just click the delete button.
I just want to show you guys how I set up this menu page right here real quick and also this breakfast page. And now all I did was I came here to my menu pages and if you just go and you click right here on adblock you'll see a bunch of different stuff pop up. And for each one of these all I did was I click the image and then inserted the image and then put each caption underneath it. And then also if you click on the image right here if you set it to custom URL you can put any link you want in here so anytime somebody goes and it clicks on your picture it'll send them to wherever the link is that you put up.
And also too I mentioned this in the video earlier but if you want to have your menu pages have extra subcategory pages like this all you have to do is go over to appearance and then go to menus and then you just select what pages you want here and then you click on add to menu and then you just take the page you want and you put it under the menu not directly under here but a little over to the side. This would make this page pop up at the top of the menu but if you put it down here this will put it into a subcategory and then of course after you arrange them where you want you just click Save menu. And if you guys have any other questions on this video just leave it in the comment section below and I'll get back to you as soon as I can.
