WordPress is known as the most popular website builder in the world, powering 33% of websites on the internet. But before you install WordPress, you’ll need a domain name and a good web hosting company. 

There are a lot of options available when it comes to web hosting companies for you to choose from. Most of them will boast 99.99% uptime and offer you some sort of guarantee if they don’t hold up. One thing that is important when choosing your hosting company is speed and customer support. 

Speed Matters

Site speed affects your website’s SEO and user experience, ultimately affecting your website conversions. So, it’s a good idea to start with a hosting company that can deliver the fastest speeds. 

Once you decide on your hosting company, you can get your domain name with them if you don’t already have one. While you can get your domain name from anywhere else, we generally recommend having your domain name under the same hosting company as it is easier to manage. 

Next, we will cover how to get your WordPress installed and set up on your hosting company. Most of the hosting companies make it very easy to install WordPress with their guided installation process. Today we will use SiteGround as an example. SiteGround is WordPress endorsed, offers excellent speeds, and superb customer service. Yes, we absolutely love SiteGround and use them to host our website with them. 

Installing WordPress

Once you have signed up for SiteGround, you will gain access to your hosting dashboard. From there, you can add your website. 

The first step is choosing a domain. Here you get 3 options: 

• New domain - Create and buy a new domain through SiteGround
• Existing Domain - Use an existing domain you already have. Need help assigning your domain? Contact us.
• Temporary Domain - You can assign a temporary domain (I recommend to avoid this where possible). 

Next, select WordPress or WooCommerce if you are creating an eCommerce site. 

Finally, enter your email address and password you want to use to access your website’s admin panel. 

And that’s it! It’s that simple. Now you have your WordPress installed on your domain and you are ready to build your website. You can choose to run the WordPress starter and install a theme but this step isn’t necessary if you are using a custom theme from elsewhere. 

Additional Things to Consider

Choosing The Right WordPress Theme For Your Website

There are hundreds of themes available for WordPress. Are they all good? No. In fact, most of them are outdated and well... simply shit. So how do we avoid the bad ones and decide on a good one that fits your business? Here are some tips on choosing the right theme.

• Think Speed: Make sure the theme is well coded and optimized for speed.
• Think about the Future: Make sure the theme allows flexibility in design to really customize your website and embrace your branding.
• Think Support: Make sure the developers of the theme are providing fast frequent updates and respond fast if anything goes wrong.

Essential WordPress Plugins

In general, it is always best to keep plugin use down to a minimum. This helps prevent unnecessary slow-downs of your new website. Whenever possible, try to have simple functions (i.e Google Tag Manager) hard-coded into your website. And when you are installing a plugin only use what is absolutely necessary and make sure it is lightweight as possible. Here are our 3 must-have WordPress plugins.

1. RankMath SEO

Rank Math is a Search Engine Optimization plugin for WordPress that makes it easy for anyone to optimize their content with built-in suggestions based on widely-accepted best practices. Easily customize important SEO settings, control which pages are indexable, and how you want your website to appear in search with Structured data.

1. WPForms Lite

WPForms lite comes with a very easy to use form builder that can set you up with a contact form within minutes.

1. SG Optimizer

This is a caching plugin specifically designed for SiteGround and WordPress. If you are not using SiteGround as your hosting company, we recommend WP rocket or Autoptimize as an alternative.