How To Start A WordPress Website With Bisend

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In terms of the best content management system for bloggers who are looking to monetize their sites, WordPress is always my top recommendation for its intuitive interface, beautifully designed themes and plugins, mobile responsiveness, affordable pricing, and a huge powerful support community.

As always, you don’t need to acquire any knowledge of programming or coding but a domain name, a web hosting service and some spare time to build this WordPress website.

Today I’m going to guide you through the whole process of getting a WordPress website started with Bisend, including buying a domain name, installing WordPress, and setting up a WordPress website, etc. I’m quite sure that you can create a gorgeous, one-of-a-kind WordPress website which lets you earn a profit from, after reading this a little lengthy but useful, practical tutorial.

Step 1. Register A Domain Name

The domain name can identify your WordPress website to users. When they type your domain name into their URL bar, for instance, bisend.com, they land on your website!

Finding a most suitable domain name could be difficult. You should keep it simple and easy to type, while ensuring it fit with the content you’re about to write and the people you want to attract to your website.

There are many domain registrars available on the web. For example, Bisend also offers domain registration service alongside web hosting solutions and SSL certificates. There is no need to hung up on whether buying your domain name and your web hosting service under the same roof. You can always change your domain name later and transfer it from one hosting provider to another whenever you need.

If this is your first project, I would like to recommend you to register with the hosting provider you’ll be using for the sake of easier website creation. Currently, Bisend Domain comes with many top domains at cheap pricing. All you need is choosing one that suits your business best and register it for yourself.

Step 2. Buy A Hosting Package

You might feel a little frustrated when facing multiple hosting packages with both Windows and Linux operating systems and optional server locations. Don’t worry, I will make it more straightforward enough that lets you do a correct choice as quickly as possible.

Windows vs. Linux

Bisend web hosting has been tailored to different needs. You can choose from Windows web hosting and Linux web hosting. Although Windows web hosting supports PHP scripts and MySQL databases, I still suggest using a Linux web hosting as it has been proven that Apache and Nginx are the most robust and featureful server for running WordPress.

After deciding the operating system, you need to choose from the Standard, Pro, and Business hosting package in accordance with your specific business needs. Considering the fact that you’re just starting your WordPress website, I think the most basic and cost effective Standard plan can be your best choice.

Even as your website grows, you can always easily upgrade your plan to a larger solution or to a higher-end VPS.

Hong Kong vs. Chicago

Bisend gives two data center location options: Hong Kong and USA. Typically, your choice of server location should depend on your target audience and the data center’s performance. Bisend promises state-of-the-art data center facilities with cutting-edge technologies and rock solid network, the server speed, security and reliability are guaranteed. So, you just have to consider which is closer to your end users.

1 vs. 2 vs. 3 year(s)

You can get 38% to 64% discounts off based on different billing cycle for the Standard Plan. If you take your WordPress website serious, purchasing a 3-year plan is good because Bisend is running an insane deal currently.

Just in the case of a 3-year service, you can save 64% off regular price $7.99/mo to make it at only $2.95/mo. See? Really cost effective, isn’t it?

Step 3. Install WordPress

Since you’re a beginner, you’re best suited to creating a WordPress website in help of the 1-click installation. Bisend has this feature integrated as standard within the Plesk Onyx, it’s ready for you when you log into your control panel.

Don’t know the username and password?

I bet you forgot checking your email inbox, where there is an email from Bisend that includes all your login and account details.

Add Domain Name

Before start installing WordPress, you should add your domain name to Plesk Onyx first. Go to Websites & Domains, click Add Domain on the top of the page.

Type your domain name, and the location of your website’s files and the path to your WordPress website home directory will be created automatically. Then click OK to save the changes.

Install WordPress in Plesk Onyx

To install WordPress in Plesk Onyx, you can go back to the Websites & Domains page, find the WordPress icon right beneath your domain name bar.

If you fail to find it in this page, you can go to Applications > Featured Applications, where WordPress, Joomla and Drupal are presented as the most popular CMS solutions.

You may have found that Plesk Onyx by default offers three installation methods for WordPress, including Install, Install (Custom) and Install (Version). Typically, you are recommended to use the first option—Install, not only for the quick operation but also for the optimal parameters that have been pre-configured.

Click on Install, and then you go to the next page, where you’re required to specify the location where this web application should be installed. Click on Install button to start installing WordPess in your Plesk Onyx.

Once WordPress is successfully installed, you will be presented with all information for WordPress. So, you can make some changes to the settings to better meet your needs.

Step 4. Pick A Theme And Plugins

To venture into the online world with your new WordPress website, you should make it look professional and impressive at least. No matter which theme and plugins you want install, you should login to your WordPress Dashboard first. There are two options available: typing your web address with the form of http://www.yourdomainname.com/wp-login or accessing to it via your Plesk Onyx.

And once again, you will be required to type in your username and password.

WordPress Theme

WordPress automatically installs a very basic theme to get you started, it looks like this:

If you think this theme is too simple and clean in design to make your WordPress stand out from competition and grab visitors’ attention, you can change to any of the thousands of themes designed by WordPress developers.

Navigate to Appearance > Themes, you will find three free themes out there. For more options, click on the Add New button at the top. Turning to the next page, you can easily find that you’re given the ability to select a WordPress theme from different categories, like the picture shows:

According to your search, you will be presented with a single theme or a list of themes when click on the Apply Filters button.

If you find one that perfectly suits your needs, you can click on the Preview button to have a brief look at how it will look like and then click on Install button to have it installed for your website.

WordPress will show you a success message along with options to activate or have a live preview of the theme. If you find your WordPress theme a little rough in appearance after activating it, you can customize it from layout, background color, background image, and other settings.

WordPress Plugins

Depending on the type of your WordPress website, you need additional plugins to extend the website functionality.

There are thousands of WordPress plugins available, free or paid. And the easiest way to install a WordPress plugin is to use the plugin search as long as you are sure of the plugin being offered in the WordPress plugin directory. Here is a step-by-step tutorial to do this:

1.     Navigate to Plugins > Add New at your WordPress admin area

2.     Type the plugin name or search for it with keyword, author or tag.

3.     Pick the preferable solution from a bunch of listings, click on Install Now button and then activate it.

By now, the WordPress plugin has been successfully installed on your website. The next step is to configure it as per your specific requirements.

Step 5. Create Website Pages

When everything has been set up, you can start adding content now. While what you add is up to you, there are some must-have content for all websites, including some that is legally required.

Home Page

WordPress enables you to create either a static home page or a dynamic home page. The best way to build a custom home page is making a combination of WordPress admin panel and a custom page template.

1.    Go to Pages > Add New

2.     Set the page title, configure the page by editing it with the front-end tagDiv Composer, adding the desired elements and select a page template.

3.     Publish it.

4.     Navigate to Settings > Reading and set the newly created page as a homepage.

About Page

No matter you’re building a blog or website, you need an “About” page to tell your history or include information about your company.

1.     Go to Pages > Add New

2.     Add a page name, for instance, “About”, and add content to show yourself or your business and let readers know what they can benefit from your website.

3.     Publish it.

This is not the end, you should also make sure the page shows up in your website’s menu. To do so, go to Appearance > Menus, mark the “About” page and click on Add to New button. Then it will show up in the list on the right, where you can open the context menu and change the title as you like. The last step is to save it when you are done.

Contact Page

Having a contact page is necessary especially when you’re doing business with your WordPress website. After all, people including both your customers can potential partners can find a way to reach you if you have a contact page.

Instead of create a contact page by your own, I would like to suggest you harness the power of a form builder plugin, such as Ninja Forms, that simplifies the process of creating contact forms, email subscription forms, order forms, payment forms and other more basic contact information. Besides, you can use Google Maps to indicate a location by installing a plugin as WP Google Maps.

All above are essential pages that would be required for almost every WordPress website. If you’re selling products online, you may also need to create more pages involving content like terms of service, privacy policy, and refund policy.

Step 6. Secure WordPress Website

Website security is of great importance to all webmasters, which is related to both user experience and search engine rankings. It’s no surprise that you can find a huge amount of resources on the web that tells you how to keep your WordPress website as secure as possible.

I won’t go into the painful details of recommending the backup and security plugins. Instead, I want to reiterate two simple rules that you are very likely to ignore but which are very important to secure your website.

  • Always update WordPress and all plugins to the latest version available.
  •  Always use strong passwords and change them regularly.
  • Add an SSL certificate to your WordPress website.

As to the last rule, as a beginner, you can start from a free Let’s Encrypt SSL, the detailed information of the installation process has been available in this page: How To Set Up Free SSL Certificate in Bisend?

Step 7. Analyze Website Traffic

You care much about whether your WordPress website is popular among readers or customers and where your main visitors come from, etc. Therefore, you need analytics for your website.

As well, there are many useful advanced analytics tools you can make use of to approach potential advertisers, increase value of your website or offer you an insight into your visitors. Google Analytics Dashboard for WP can be a good option if you considering using a plugin to help you do this.

Summary

It is true that creating the perfect WordPress website is not easy as many people think. You need spend time and efforts as well as continual investment to keep it that way.

But there is still no need to worry too much about it since there are many detailed, helpful tutorials and tools available on the web to help make the process easier. Never mind if you fail to have everything in place to perfect a website. Just do the best as you can and remember practice makes perfect.

If you’re not Bisend web hosting customer yet and have interest in it after reading this tutorial, just visit https://www.bisend.com/shared-web-hosting or contact our support team via livechat or email/ticket.