Before we jump into the WordPress universe, we want to tell you what to expect from the guide.
First of all, it’s important to say that this guide covers all the essentials of WordPress. We’ve put together the most essential material in one guide. Our goal is to teach you everything you need to know about how to manage and build your own website in WordPress. Our experience tells us that video is the best way to learn, as you can actually see how it should be done. That’s why we’ve compiled more than a handful of videos, combined with a lot of text, that will make you a WordPress master.
Why is WordPress popular?
Over 400 million people visit a WordPress website every month. This corresponds to approximately 39.6% of all websites in the world.
The reason WordPress is so popular is a mix of factors. At first, many people use WordPress because it’s a simple blogging tool, but it’s much more than that.
Because WordPress is free, it allows everyone to improve and edit their website according to their own needs. WordPress offers thousands of free themes and features that beginners can use. In our opinion, WordPress is a beginner-friendly program, but it will require a bit of research before you start. There is no way around it. All these free themes and features allow you to build all types of websites. It can vary from simple blog websites to web shops.
As the owner of a WordPress website, you have the opportunity to access the large community of enthusiasts. Through this community, you can ask questions and get help from WordPress experts. In these forums and discussion groups, there are thousands of materials available in case you need answers to various WordPress questions.
What is a CMS?
CMS stands for Content Management System. In other words, it is a program that manages, publishes and edits digital content.
For example, in WordPress it is possible to create different administrative users, where each user has a specific role. That is, it’s possible to give users varying degrees of control, editing and control over the content on WordPress.
With a Content Management System , you also have the option to upload videos, photos, audio and code yourself (if needed).
Phase 1: Install WordPress
You have several options for installing WordPress. First of all, you can go to WordPress.com and download the files there, and install on a server via a File Transfer service such as FileZilla. This requires you to have an online server or a local server. The process itself is not that complicated if you are used to playing with IT.
Conversely, if you’re not that used to playing around with IT, it might be a good idea to use a web host, which also offers you to buy your domain and mail through them. The advantage of using a web space is that they offer so-called one-click installations. Here, as the name suggests, you just click one button and you’re on your way. There may be some technical stuff you have to go through, but it’s a lot easier than doing it yourself.
We recommend you use either simply.com, one.com or flywheel. We use the latter with simply.com, as FlyWheel has optimised their servers exclusively for WordPress, ensuring speed as well as security.
In addition, Flywheel gives you a number of premium features that the others do not have. For example, you can make a template of a WordPress page where you installed all the plugins you want and then use this if you make a new website. Additionally, they have a “staging” feature where you can create a copy of the live page and work on the staging if you want to test out new designs or features.
The installation itself
Once you’ve worked out how you want to install the files, you’ll automatically start the process. Here you will be guided through everything from which email you want to use, username, password and the name of the page. The process is the same whether you install manually or one-click via webhotel.
The above may look a little confusing, but luckily if you install on a one-click installation, this is often filled in automatically. Otherwise, you will have to find the information yourself in your database, which is either online or local.
Database Name is the name of the database where you install WordPress. Just call it like the picture above.
Username is the username of the database itself.
Password is the password of the database itself.
Database Host is the host. If it is local, type localhost.
Table Prefix just leave as “wp_”. The only time you can change this is if, for example, you have an installation already installed on your database. In this case, you can call it “wp_xwebsite”.
Here you choose the language of the website, which in your case is most likely Danish.
Here you fill in the title of your website, your username, your password and last but not least your email. The email you drop here will be the administration email for the site. Search Engine Visibility has something to do with whether you want Google and other search engines to start indexing your website right away, or you want to wait until later. Here it is difficult to recommend what you should do, as it depends on your SEO situation. In general, though, we do internally have visibility off, or what’s called no-index, for the entire site. Only when we’ve finished developing do we add it back.
When you’re done, you’ll get this message.
If you’re still having trouble installing WordPress, we recommend you read more about it on this page: Make your own website in WordPress .
Phase 2: Navigating WordPress
Once the installation is complete, log into the WordPress administrator dashboard.
If you are unsure how to do this, simply add wp-admin to the end of your domain name:
This URL will send you to a login page where you will need to enter your username and password. Remember that you have entered your username and password in the previous section (installation).
After logging in, you will land on the control panel, which is also called the dashboard. Your control panel gives you an overview of your entire website and consists of three parts:
- At the top of the control panel you have a toolbar. It contains links to the most commonly used features and tools that WordPress offers. This toolbar also displays messages as updates.
- On the left side you have your navigation menu. This navigation menu may vary depending on what plugins and features you install. Hovering over specific menu items often displays subtopics with additional items in the menu item.
- Scope of work.
The first time you log in to the WordPress control panel, you’ll see useful links to get you started with WordPress.
If you need to install
WordPress content
Now you need to start creating content for your website. But maybe you’re wondering what the difference is between a post and a page?
The answer is simple. WordPress posts can be categorized, archived and tagged. Unlike a post, a page is static and they don’t have categories or tags. For example, use the “pages” menu to create your contact us or about us page.
Make a post
To create a new post, press add new under post .
You will then be redirected to a page where you can edit your post. The first thing you need to do is enter a title for your new post.
Next, fill in the page with content. To format your text, use the toolbar options.
On the right side of the page you can see the different boxes of functions where you have the possibility to categorize and archive the post.
Make a page
To create a new WordPress page, hover over the menu item pages and press new page.
You will then be taken to a page identical to the previous “create a post” section, where you have the option to enter the title and content.
You may also notice that WordPress pages don’t have the tags and categories that posts have. Instead, WordPress pages have a feature called attributes. Under attributes you can sort your pages in order, which is relevant in case you want to have many pages under a parent topic.
WordPress themes
One of the great things about an open-source system is that you often get a lot of choice. This is very much the case when it comes to themes. You can, for free, download a multitude of different templates.
However, in the 20s, we would no longer recommend basing your entire website on a theme based on how the theme looks in terms of appearance. Instead, it’s about speed, security and functionality.
Internally at TRIBE Media we have gone to using only Elementor Pro, which means we use the Hello Elementor theme. It’s a clean theme with only the bare essentials, making it an incredibly fast theme. It also means you have to design it mostly from scratch via Elementor.
Now you might be a bit put off, but luckily Elementor Pro has quite a few free design templates built into their library.
Thus, our recommendation is also that you look into page builders, as they have upgraded WordPress significantly. In fact, WordPress itself is also developing its own page-builder, Gutenberg, where in the future, you will be able to design everything from header, content and footer in Gutenberg.
WordPress plugins
The primary purpose of WordPress plugins is to improve the functionality of your website. Plugins are easy to install and activate, and require no programming.
Currently, there are thousands of free and paid plugins built for various purposes. For example, you can find plugins that can help you implement a contact form, table of contents, comment field, etc. In other words, you can find a lot of plugins to suit your needs.
The actual implementation of WordPress plugins is relatively easy. Even for beginners. There are both free and paid plugins on WordPress.
To install a WordPress plugin, press the
add new
under
plugins
. Then enter the name of the plugin you want to install in the search field. Press
install
and finally press
activate
.
Important WordPress plugins
There are a lot of WordPress plugins out there, so it can be hard to choose the right one.
In fact, many plugins offer the same purpose, so it’s important to have done a thorough research on which one(s) to choose.
For that reason, we’ve decided to list the best WordPress plugins that are essential for running a WordPress website:
- Yoast SEO : Depending on whether you spend time on SEO, we think Yoast SEO is an excellent plugin. This plugin allows you to make your pages and posts more SEO optimized.
- Google XML Sitemaps: this plugin automatically generates an XML sitemap for your website. An XML Sitemap is important for your pages to be found on Google. However, Yoast SEO automatically generates an XML sitemap for you.
- GTM4WP: This plugin allows you to implement Google Tag Manager and Google Analytics on your website. It is a great advantage if you can collect data of your visitors.
- Elementor Pro
- WPRocket
- Imagify
- FileBird
- GDPR Cookie Consent
- Jet Engine (advanced)
- Redirection
- Yoast Duplicate Post
Do you need help?
We think it’s so cool if you take the plunge and create your own website in WordPress! But if this blog is just gibberish to you, we can of course get support for your website or we can create a completely new website for you. All you need to do is contact us and together we can fix or create a brand new website for you.
