You clicked on the link to come to this page! Awesome! This is the first step to learning WordPress and saving money! One step at a time!
This is a full text tutorial. I used to type these for every video lesson but stopped because I didn’t think people needed them since the video explained everything. But I think it’s a good to have and not everyone learns the same. Also, sometimes people teach or talk too fast and it’s not fun to have to pause stop and rewind and everything. So here is a step by step guide!
First, let’s just put the links at the top for the resources of the things we’ll be using in this video. Everything I am recommending are things that I am using and paying for. I will not recommend anything that I do not use and I will not recommend anything I would not use. I only am going to recommend things that you need to make a website as professional as possible and also what I would tell anyone in my life if they asked for help.
Resource Recommended In This Tutorial
- Hosting with Hostinger (we get a free domain and install WordPress here)
- WP Astra Theme (this is the template we are using)
- Elementor Plugin (you do not need the pro version)
- Woocommerce Plugin (only if you want to make an e-commerce website)
First, we need to setup our website.
Remember, we are going to do this ourselves. This means we will have more control and know what we are doing so if we ever do decide to hire a server admin, we’ll know what they are doing.
Hosting is needed to run your website. It’s like the engine. It’s also the database that stores all the content that loads on your website. Every website runs off servers.
Click on the link to go to the Hostinger website. This is where we are going to get Hosting and also what I currently use for my own websites. I’ve used them for a number of years.
Why I like Hostinger over other host providers?
- They are fast and I have no issues with them.
- They are priced well. We don’t need to have the cheapest or most expensive hosting. We want to focus on quality.
- It’s easy to use.
One the Hostinger website, we want to choose the plan for our hosting. The premium plan is fine for your first website and most likely more than you need right now. You can always upgrade later but you are also welcome to use any of the hosting plans available.
For checking out with Hostinger, create an account, enter your billing information and make sure to put in the coupon code SUPER10 so you can save some addition $. We like saving money here!
Once you check out. We are going to register our domain during the WordPress installation process.
The next step is how we set up WordPress. You are going to see how easy it is. And if you ever paid anyone to do this or if you ask someone to do this in the future and they quote a $ amount that seems too high, don’t do it! Because you can literally do it yourself in less than a minute with a few clicks.
First select to install WordPress.
Then just select the site you want to build. I like to go with “other” or skip
Then just search for a domain that you want to use for your website and one that is available
Then click to install WordPress
That’s it! Now we just wait. See how easy that was? I haven’t checked recently, but I think people are charging hours of work or hundreds of dollars just to get a WordPress website up and running with hosting. We just did it in a couple minutes at most. We’ve already gained a lot of knowledge and saved a lot of money just doing this. But there’s more coming!
Now we install the theme. The theme is your template that you will create your website using. It comes with options for styling, layout options, and nowadays, it also has demo content and starter templates so you don’t have to start with a blank slate.
You should now be on the WordPress dashboard. This is where we go to create all the pages and posts and also where the links are for the settings and everything else.
You can always go back to the hosting dashboard if you want to access the files, the database or even manage the server. But everything you need in order to get your website up and running, install themes and plugins and change the settings for the website is here.
Before we install the theme, I think it’s important to track the progress we’ve made!
- You’ve already learned how to set up the server and why you need one.
- And you’ve installed WordPress and registered your domain!
- We’ll learn how to set up an email address with your domain in another video but….
Now you know where everything is for your website…on the WordPress dashboard! And to come to this page directly instead of going through Hostinger, which you can also do. You can always login from this URL (just substitute your own domain) https://website.com/wp-admin/
The hard part is done! We’ve set up the website. Now let’s install a theme. We’re saving so much money!
To ge the theme we are going to use, we want to go to the WordPress dashboard and on the left hand side, you will see Appearance. Hover over that and click on themes.
Click on Add New at the top.
We are going to search for a theme to use.
I like to use one of the popular ones because they’re updated and supported best. Plus they are popular so you know they are designed in a way that a lot of people like.
We’ll be able to customize it.
The one’s I really like are the Blocksy theme for ecommerce and the WP Astra theme for business websites. I think you can use any one you really like though. We’re going to learn a lot of the same tools and tricks with any of them.
- For this tutorial let’s use the Astra theme since it has a bunch of really great templates and we can easily import everything.
- All you have to do is look for it in the list or you can search for Astra and then click to Install it
- Once its installed click activate
Just know that there is a premium version of the Astra theme. You do not need to use it but you can always upgrade if you need. The free version is fine to learn how to use WordPress and to customize our website!
Once we install the theme, we’ll see the theme’s page on the dashboard. We want to click to get started with the starter templates.
Clicking the starter templates button will install a plugin and activate it. Then we can go through the website templates and choose the one we want to use.
Next we’ll click on the classic starter templates option. You are more than welcome to try out the AI builder though!
Then select the elementor pagebuilder option
Once everything is loaded, now we can check out the starter templates and choose one we like.
The one that we’ll use in the video will be the personal website option so we can make a site for you or your business and any service you offer. This will give a great overview of how to customize your website and how to use WordPress. It also shows you everything you need so you can save money.
** If you need to, you can refresh the page to load all the templates**
Amazing! We should have a congratulations message!
Now we can check out the site! And you should celebrate a little or give yourself a pat on the back. We just set up a website with WordPress and we did it ourselves! Never forget how easy this was and how difficult you may have thought it would be, before actually doing it!
On the WordPress dashboard (However over the website name and click on Dashboard)
What you’ll see is a lot of information. But don’t feel overwhelmed!
On the main screen you’ll see information about WordPress and the WordPress community. You can see what is new, what’s updated, events and so forth. There are hundreds of thousands of people in the WordPress community and they often have meet ups to discuss things. It’s really great. A lot of businesses have been created because of WordPress and who knows – maybe yours is the next big thing!
On the top of the page you’ll see different links. You can log out on the upper right and you can also click on the screen options to select things you want to show or hide on your Dashboard.
On the left hand side is where we will spend most of our time whenever we are on this page.
The labels are there so you can see where you go to make new pages for the WordPress website, the blog posts, edit comments, and install plugins and your settings.
We already installed the theme using the left hand side but let’s go through these other tabs so you know about them.
Let’s go to the settings to just show how to edit those. Then we can go to the users to edit
In the settings we can change the website name, the tag line, the admin email and the date and time format. You can also go to the reading tab to change what the homepage and blog post pages are. And the permalink are where you go to modify the URL structure.
The plugins tab is where we can install plugins. Plugins are tools that help you customize your website.
You can change your password in the username tab.
And to create pages or edit pages (and same with post), you can click on the pages tab to check out the pages and post that are published. And you can click to edit them there.
The WordPress dashboard may look overwhelming but it isn’t. Don’t let it scare you!
Now let’s learn how to make some changes to our website because this is going to save us a lot of money also!
The first thing we’ll do is learn how to change the theme settings for the layout and color options.
Let’s go to the theme settings. This is something that almost all, if not all, wordpress websites have. To go to it, you should see a customize tab at the top of any page…but on the dashboard you can hover over appearance and click on customize. The alternative option is to hover of the theme name if its in the left hand side and click on the options there.
On the theme settings, this is how we edit the header and the footer section. We can also edit the colors, the spacing, the font styles, and some of the layout options for pages, posts and even the online store.
There are a bunch of tabs, and if you go into them you can choose whatever options you want. I don’t really change anything when I am using a starter template since most of the stuff is already set. But you can if you want!
If you want to edit the header you can go to the header builder and customize it with whatever widgets you want. Just click on them.
Same for the footer.
For the other pages and post layouts, just click on them and choose if you want a side bar or the title for the pages and everything!
That’s all you have to do! And guess what? We just saved more money doing this ourselves!
Now we want to learn what we really came for, which is how to build the website. The great thing is, it’s already built but we can customize it and change and add what we want. So we are going to learn how to do that with WordPress and the elementor plugin.
Go to your pages and click to edit the homepage.
What you’ll see is the edit page. You can change the title. You can edit the layout settings. You’ll notice that on the upper right, you have some icons to change the settings for the theme, the page and so forth. Click around and see what shows up.
If you don’t have all the screen settings for the layout, remember you can go to the screen options and check the boxes for what you want to show up.
Once you’re ready, to edit the actual page and the layout and content, we want to click on the edit with elementor button.
The elementor page builder may look overwhelming, but it is nothing more than a place where drag and drop stuff then change the text, upload images and format your spacing, colors, styles and fonts.
To use the page builder all you have to do is click on the different elements and also sections. Once you do, you will see the edit section on the left hand side. You can edit from the three tabs
- Layout
- Style
- Advance
The options are different depending on the elements. For some there will be font and spacing, for others it will be images. It really depends on what the element is.
We’ll go through it in detail in the video and you can see what we do. Or you can play with the pagebuilder to learn more on your own.
To add new sections you can click on the plus button in any section at the top and it will create a new space for you to add a new section. You can also scroll to the bottom of the page and add a new section there.
If you want to add a pre-made template, just click on the icon on the right hand side.
To add a new section click on the + button.
Now you can add a new flex box and choose the styles you want. Once you have it. You can edit the formatting for the section however you want and also add new elements by clicking on the + button. This is all you are to do to add new sections.
For adding spacing and margin, do it in the advance tab. You can add spacing in the section or in each column if you hover over the columns and click to edit the column.
You can also edit the spacing for any element. Just add it, change it, and then go to the advance tab in the element to edit.
If you want to edit the layout for different devices, you can do so by going into the advance tab and clicking on the responsive section and hide any section on any device. Then what you would do is go to add a new section and also hide the section on the device you don’t want it to show up on but edit it for the devices you do. That’s how you can make sure your website is responsive if you need.
Make sure you click on publish at the top if you make any changes. You can review the page at any time and you can hide the side bar by clicking the arrow on the left.
To go back to the WordPress dashboard click on the W on the upper left and click exit to the dashboard.
Now you would do the same thing for all your other pages that come with the starter template. There is really no difference with how to edit and customize or even create your pages. The homepage is the same as the other pages. I often think people think they are different and in someways they are, in that people normally go to the homepage first, but in terms of creating the pages or how to edit, it’s all the same.
For the contact form, if you want to edit it, you can go to the contact page and then click to edit it. There is also a plugin tab on the dashboard called WPForms that you can click on to edit the contact form.
The last two things that we need to cover to learn everything about WordPress is making sure we understand how to edit the menus and the widgets. To do so we, would go back to the dashboard and hover over appearance and click on menus.
On the menus page you can edit the existing menus by changing and deleting or adding any links you want. You will see for the header menu that it is set as the primary menu.
If you want to create a new menu, just click to create a new menu near the top of the page and name the menu.
The same goes for any footer menus.
And for the footer widget section that you may see in the footer builder or any widgets for the sidebar, you want to go to the widgets page. To do that, we hover over appearance and we click on widgets.
On the widgets page what you do is just go to the section that you want to add or modify the existing widgets. Then just edit what you want to edit. You will see a + button that allows you to add new widgets. After you add them, similar to using the elementor page builder, then you can just customize them by clicking on them and modifying them however you want.
That’s about it!
If you want to add any additional plugins you can but the ones you need to edit the website should be installed for you when you download and import the theme.
If you have any questions or need some additional help, please contact us. But I am really happy for you and that you completed this course because now you know how to set up a server, install WordPress and also how to edit your WordPress website. This allows you to save a lot of money whether you want to make the wordpress website yourself or if you are planning to hire someone.
As always, you are more than welcome to reach out if you have any questions or want to get in touch.
Thanks for being a part of the NYC TECH CLUB and hopefully you’ll be back!