A lot of content is available on the web and YouTube related to “Setup WordPress Blog in 5 easy steps”. But when I was learning to set up my blog, I had to refer many articles. However, I decided to write some content through which all the practical aspects and findings for creating a Pro Blog or Website using WordPress.
I have written an E-Book which is an extension of this Blog, if you want to go into more details of it then you can refer the E-Book which is “Setup WordPress Blog in 5 easy steps”. Moreover, there are video tutorials available on my YouTube channel Info Talks.
Also, I will always keep sharing my new findings on this topic with a purpose to provide value and support to my subscribers.
So, I have designed this practical handbook or you can say a WordPress Tutorial “The 5 Steps of creating a WordPress website/blog’ so that a robust blog can be created in less time.
Before going through this set up I recommend you to first read How to create a WordPress Blog in easy steps: Complete guide for beginners in 2019
I am sure you already have your domain and hosting, but if you have not yet purchased than must read The ultimate guide on how to choose the best web hosting which will help you choose the right hosting for your blog.
Table of Contents
5 Steps to set up a WordPress Blog
Step 1. How to Install WordPress in your Cpanel or Plesk Panel
First Login to your Cpanel or Plesk Panel
(Note: Setup of Cpanel or Plesk differs from one hosting to other so for that, you can take help of the hosting support team or refer our E-book describing the setup for the most popular hosting from buying the hosting to its setup so that you can easily set up WordPress )
You will find a logo of WordPress as below, click on it to install WordPress. Now you will see a screen like this, click on install to install WordPress for your Website.
The installation will complete in a minute or so, after installation you can access the blog panel through the link i.e. www.yourdomain/wp-admin.
Here the domain name of your blog will appear in place of “yourdomain”. As the login panel appears, you can log in using the username and password kept before installing WordPress.
You can watch my in-depth YouTube video for this step 1
Step 2: Setup of WordPress Theme
Installing Theme after installing WordPress is an important step in the WordPress setup. When you log in to your WordPress panel you will find an option of Themes under Appearances Menu as shown here 
When you click on Themes option the available themes by WordPress which are free can be selected or you can add a premium theme if you have purchased one. You can also search according to your blog or business using the search option provided.
Once you select a theme then you have to click on the Activate button displayed to make the theme active for your blog or website. As it is activated then the option to customize the theme will appear through which you can customize theme looks by adding a logo, changing colors, providing footer content and so on.
There are a number of free themes available in WordPress which you can use. But there are few limitations of free themes. As a beginner, you can start a website or blog with any of these themes.
Using premium theme have so many benefits like:
- Many functionalities i.e. Plugins which you will study later in this article work in a better way in case of a premium theme.
- You can define different layers of the menu which will be helpful to get more subscribers and at the same time enhance the looks of the blog.
- Many types of widgets are available to use which may not be there with free themes.
- You can customize the footer text. But in case of a free theme, the name of the theme provides will always be there.
- Finally, your blog is better if you use a premium theme, there are many other benefits of using a premium theme which has been described in the E-Book in detail.
To customize the theme installed you can follow the following steps which will appear after you click on customize option of the theme.
Steps to customize themes:
- Theme Options – this option is normally available in a premium theme where you can change the footer text, color, define multiple sidebars, multiple headers, and menus, etc.
- Site Identity: Here you can define the Logo for the website, Title & tagline for Website and the Icon file to be displayed in the browser tabs ( Note this Icon file is of extension*.ico)
- Colors: The Colors section is to change the color of the website, links, text matter, etc.
- Header Image: Here you can set the header image if you want.
- Background Image: You can add background image through this option to the website which is in default white color, it normally works with the box type layouts and not with wide layouts which you selected in the Theme Options above.
- Menus / Widgets can be defined from here or there is another option in Appearance below the Customize option which gives a wide view to manage it better, also practically it will be better if you install the plug-in before setting up the widgets/menu.
- Last Settings in Customize Themes Option is the additional CSS which can be used for additional changes to the appearance and other such functionality by adding the Style sheet code, it can be done by programmer having an understanding of style sheets i.e. CSS.
If you want to use a premium theme you can buy from here at a discounted price.
You can watch my in-depth YouTube video for this step 2
Step 3: Plugins
Plugins are additional features that may not be available on the WordPress theme which you install. For example, you need to add a contact us form to your website or a blog or you need to add a Google Map showing your location and so on.
Let me share with you the list of recommended and optional plugins.
Recommended Plugins:
These Plugins are recommended to be installed.
- Akismet Anti-Spam – Checks your comments and contact form for Spam.
- Broken Link Checker – Checks broken links on your website or Blog.
- Yoast SEO – Complete SEO Tools for your website or blog.
- Jetpack – Protects your website or blog from viruses and hacking attacks. ( Click here to Get this Plugin )
- WordPress Importer – Helps import WordPress content.
- No Self Pings – Stops WordPress pinging your own links in your articles and saves resources.
- MailMunch – Build beautiful forms, landing pages & popups for free.
- WinForms Lite – You can build forms like contact form easily.
- WP-DB Manager plugin – Manages your database to increase its efficiency.
- Updraft Plus – Creates schedules backups of your website and also links to cloud spaces.
- Smush Image Compression and Optimization – Reduces the size of the images placed.
- HTML Page Sitemap – Use to generate sitemap.
Optional Plugins:
These Plugins are optional, so read their use before installation.
- Classic Editor – This is an old version of the editor to submit posts.
- WP Google Maps – If you want to add Google maps to your blog.
- Social Media Share Buttons & Social Sharing Icons – Add social media share icons if your theme is not providing such functionality.
- GT Translate – If you don’t have Google Translate option and you want to add a language translator for your website.
- AMP for WP – This although is optional but still if you want to increase the speed of your website on a mobile device then you can install it. ( Click here to Get AMP Plugin )
- WP Rocket – This is optional but this increases the speed of your website up to 20 percent according to my experience and its better than WP Super Cache or W3 Total Cache. If you do not want to buy it then install WP Super Cache or W3 Total Cache.
I recommend you to go through the E-Book “Setup WordPress Blog in 5 easy steps” for the configuration of the above plugins in detail.
You can watch my in-depth YouTube video for this step 3
* Keep revisiting this link once in six months as we keep on revising the Links.
Step 4: Setup Widgets, Menu, Settings & Tools
Setting up Widgets, Menu, Settings & Tools is a very important part of WordPress tutorial and even to start a WordPress blog or website. Without Menu, you cannot display any content on your website.
Widgets not only add options to attract and facilitate the subscriber but even to increase subscribers of your blog.
Widgets:
You can define widgets in the appearance section where you can select the location you want to add widgets.
There are a number of widgets available, you can also add new widgets through plugins.
You will have more locations to place widgets if you are using a premium theme. So I recommend using a premium theme if possible. Use of widgets improve the following functionality and more like
- Subscription form
- Language translator
- Advertisement
- Create a footer menu and other options in footer
- Show recent posts
- Recent comments
- Show Calendar and the list goes on…
Menu:
The menu is an important part of a blog or website as without which you cannot add new pages or posts. You can find a menu link in the appearance section and can configure it. In the case of a premium theme, there can be multiple menu bars. You can add pages to the menu or you can create new categories that will display as a menu where your posts will be there.
Settings:
Before starting to write a post, configure your settings properly which consists of the following sections :
- General Settings: here you can change the site title, email, default user role & tagline.
- Writing Settings: You must save these default settings as below:
Post Category – You can select the default post category which will be displayed while adding a new blog.
Post Format–It should be kept, Standard.
Editor – It can be selected as per choice.
Allow users to switch editors – Here users can change the default editor settings if kept Yes. Also, update a few URLs in this section for which you can refer the E-Book as it will be of great help to rank on search engines.
* Keep revisiting this link once in six months as we keep on revising the Links.
- Reading Settings: These settings are for a blog website, for normal websites leave it default.
- Discussion Settings: You can tick all options defined under the headings “Default Article Settings” & ” Email me whenever”. Further, these settings are best as given in the E-Book, if you want to change it according to your needs then you can.
- Media Settings: These settings are for the images and files used for the blogs must be kept the default.
- Permalinks Settings: In this settings, Post should be selected as the Permalink i.e the Link of the post on the browser should be the post title.
Tools:
Tools consist of import and export options which are important, other than that the options you will see are related to the plugins installed.
You can get the E-Book “Setup WordPress Blog in 5 easy steps” by clicking here “buy e-book”
Also, you can watch my in-depth YouTube video for this step 4
Step 5: Creating Pages, Categories & Posts
This is the final step in our blog which describes how to create a WordPress blog for free. In this, you will see how to create pages, categories, and pages.
Let’s take each topic one by one.
Pages:
First, you have to create pages for the website or blog. For the website, it is according to the business but in the case of the Blog website, there are few pages that are mandatory to create in order to take Adsense approval from Google.
Click on the Pages Option in the Menu and click on Add New option which will open the Page creation option where you have to specify the :
- Page Title:
The heading of the page which is for a blog i.e.
Disclaimer
Privacy Policy
Terms and conditions
Sitemap
About
Contact Us
- Page Content:
You can get the website links in the E-Book through which you can create the content of legal pages like Disclaimer, etc. in a professional way in minutes by yourself. Now Save the draft when it is final then Publish it, this will start showing on the website.
Categories:
You can create the Categories for the posts from this section.
- Name: Name of the category has to be defined which will appear on the website.
- Slug: It is the URL friendly version to be specified.
- Parent category: you can also define Child categories and select the parent category.
- Description: you can give a description of the category.
- Tags: You can define the tags which you will use in the posts, these tags are automatically created from the posts section also.
Posts:
For a blog website, it’s the most important and repetitive section. Like Pages are created Posts have the same options but in the description section, you have formatting options to create.
- Paragraphs: paragraphs for the post content can be created.
- Lists: Lists with bullets can be created.
- Media: Media can be added by upload on the server.
- Links: You can create the links which are to be placed on the blog posts.
You can watch my in-depth YouTube video for this step 5
Comments:
In the comments section, you can see the comments which reader or subscriber posts on the blogs. You can also approve, delete and manage the comments.
Conclusion
I hope this step by step guide to set up a WordPress blog will be useful for you and you would be able to create a pro blog. I would very happy if you share your blog link once you set up.
If you need any help or find any query please feel free to comment in the comment section below. I would try to answer it as quick as possible.
You can refer to the E-Book “Setup WordPress Blog in 5 easy steps” where you will get much more details and tricks related to creating a WordPress account without a blog. This you can get through this discounted link. Buy E-book
There is a bonus topic in the E-Book wherein I have described how to add SSL for free to your website or blog
You can watch my in-depth YouTube video for this Bonus Tip
Bonus Offer
You can get this E-Book “Setup WordPress Blog in 5 easy steps” worth $29 (approx Rs. 1999/-) and a Bonus Gift worth $50 (approx. Rs. 3500/-) for FREE. To claim offer buy any hosting below and mail me the receipt at infotalks.in@gmail.com
Also, Recommended to read:
- How to create a WordPress Blog in easy steps: Complete guide for beginners in 2019
- The ultimate guide on how to choose the best web hosting
HAPPY BLOGGING
Gaurav is an IT Professional with 17+ years experience, a blogger, entrepreneur, digital marketing expert and trainer. He is founder of InfoTalks and on a mission to help startups, businesses and individuals to grow online to earn money online. You can follow him via his social handles.
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