To set up any WordPress blog post, you need a domain and a hosting provider. You can use any hosting providers like Siteground, Bluehost and Hostgator.
Let’s get started with Siteground hosting as this was my first hosting provider. You are free to use any of your choice.
In case you have already purchased your hosting and domain, scroll down to the bottom to Step Six – Blog Setting.
1. Registration At SiteGround
The first thing you need to do is go to SiteGround.com and sign up with your email id.
2. Choosing Hosting Plan
Select one of the hosting plans. SiteGround has three plans and you can sign up for any one of them with a great discount here.
The Startup Plan
The Startup plan is perfect for people with one website that are starting now.
But you should also keep in mind the price offered with the other plans which allows more than one website usage.
The hosting price starts at $3.95/mo. Check it out here.
The GrowBig Plan
The GrowBig Plan is a great value for money offer which have the option for multiple websites and the SuperCacher that greatly improves a WordpPress and Joomla website speed.
In fact, I find that this is the best plan even for a newbie.
If you are seriously trying to make money with online business, then I would strongly recommend you to go for the GrowBig Plan. You won’t regret it. Trust me.
It also offers free website transfer with this plan.
The price starts at $5.95/mo. Check it out here. I opted for this plan and I am very satisfied with the plan.
The GoGeek Plan
The GoGeek Plan is perfect for people with e-commerce and larger sites or more geeky development needs like staging and GIT integration.
It also offers free website transfer with this plan. Opt for at least 12 months to save more money.
By signing up for a minimum of 12 months, you will get a lower price and you won’t have to deal with an expired website month after month.
Imagine a situation where you couldn’t renew your hosting on time due to any reason like card expiry, you completely forgot or due to any reason, then your website is down and you risk losing visitors.
It’s also exceptionally more expensive to pay month-by-month rather than paying in one lump sum. In fact, the more years you sign up for, the lesser you will pay.The price starts at $11.95/mo. Check it out here.
SiteGround Hosting Pricing
You can also see the full feature comparison by clicking the ‘compare’ option which is below the plans.
You have a choice for more hosting options and extras too. However, these extras are not required unless you are running a bigger business online.
You can read my candid review on SiteGround here
3. Choose A Domain Name
The next thing you have to do after choosing your hosting plan is to choose your domain.
You have two options here. You can register a new domain of your choice or your existing domain.
If you choose the ‘Register a New Domain’, you will taken to the option as you see the image below.
Now, choosing a domain name is kind of the tricky part. You need to keep some important points in mind when choosing a domain name.
How To Choose A Domain Name will help you come up with a suitable and catchy domain name.
Type in any domain name of your choice (if you have already chosen your domain name) and click on the ‘Check Domain’ for availability.
Or you can transfer your domain from GoDaddy or other sites but it will cost another $30 or so if you buy the StartUp Plan.
The GrowBig and GoGeek Plans offers transferring of domains for free. I have transferred few of my domains in Siteground hosting with ease and with no extra fee. That was great.
4. Completing Your Purchase
Unlike many other hosting providers, SiteGround provides discount price for the whole one year period regardless of the plans you have chosen!
Many hosting providers will give you discount price for the first few months only.
Click on the ‘I confirm’ box of the Terms of Service and Privacy Policy.
You can leave the second box unchecked if you don’t want to receive SiteGround news and special offers by email.
And Lo… Your site is ready now.
If you are just planning to start, you can get both the hosting and domain together at SiteGround. In fact, it is more easier without going through the headache of setting your DNS for domain transfer.
Another feature which I very much like in SiteGround is you can choose the data centre (Server) of you choice.
You can choose which one will serve you well. If your targeted traffic is from the European countries then you can go for Chicago. And for more of Asian countries, you can go for Singapore.
The benefit it gave was, once your server centre is chosen, it will be on default for all your hosting. You don’t need to pay extra fee.
But on the downside, if you want to change your server later, then you will have to pay $30 separately for each of your site.
5. Installing WordPress
Now that you have chosen your awesome domain and made your hosting purchase, it’s time to install WordPress. Don’t worry, it is completely free.
STEP ONE
Go to the dashboard – My Account – cPanel – WordPress Tools – WordPress Installer and install WordPress.
STEP TWO
You will be a window open like below. All you have to do is just fill your details in all the indicated boxes. This is for your WordPress log in details.
STEP THREE
Enter your preferred language. Then click on the ‘Install’ button. Now your WordPress site is installing and after few minutes, your site will be up and running.
STEP FOUR
You can go to the cPanel or My Accounts and your website will be there.
You can either click on the https://yourwebsite.com or the Go to Admin Panel.
Enter your WordPress Username and Password which you created in Step Three.
You might see an ‘ERROR-Page Not Found’ message, but don’t panic.
All you have to do is contact the SiteGround Agent and the agent will check what the matter is!
In most cases, it needs an installation of SSL Certificate. The support agent will install it for you then and there. It’s free!
Then, you are good to go! Really, it’s that fast and simple.
Getting Assistant From SiteGround Customer Care
Incase you need any support while setting up like your site not opening, it may be most probably due to SSL certificate.
Go to the dashboard of User’s Area and select the Support Button on the menu and look for your problem in the services listed below.
If you couldn’t find one or don’t want to waste your time or don’t have time in going through all the tutorials, it’s fine.
Just type your exact problem directly in the ‘Get instant help’ box below and you will get instant help!
After inputing your question scroll down to the bottom of the page and select ‘Proceed to contact us here’ under the request assistance from our team.
You will be connected to an agent immediately or within a minute or two.
The services are very prompt and available 24×7.
On top of that, the agents are knowledgeable and it’s also worth mentioning that SiteGround is famous for their ‘top-notch’ customer support too!
6. Theme Setting
There are thousands of free themes you can use. However, the drawback of using these free theme is that you won’t be able to customise many features.
So, I would recommend that you purchase a theme of your choice so that you have full control over the settings.
When you hover your mouse over the ‘Appearance’ on the left side of your WordPress dashboard, you will find the options for theme.
Click on the first option ‘Theme’ and you will find different themes that you can install. Or you can select the ‘Customize’ option and select the WordPress.Org Themes.
Literally, you will find thousands of free themes according to your niche. Remember to delete any unused theme after you try them out and finally settle with one.
The downside with free theme is that you cannot customize the colors or settings. Getting a premium theme which can be used for unlimited website (preferably) will allow you to design and change the fonts and colors of your website according to your wish and choice.
The theme I am using for this site is the premium version of GeneratePress theme. It is light and faster to load. You can get here with a discount.
7. Blog Setting
After you log in to your WordPress account, you will find all the features on the left side of the dashboard.
You can select any function and get started right away. But, before you started with you post, go to the Setting – Permalinks – Postname – Save.
Instead of your post showing something like this –https://passiveinflow.com/wp-admin/post.php?post=3706
It will show your site with easy-to-read post name –https://passiveinflow.com/how-to-set-up-a-wordpress-blog-with-siteground
8. WordPress Plugins You Must Install Before Writing
Before you start writing your first post, here are few essential plugins you must install first.
Go to Plug ins >> Add New.
All you have to do is type in the following plugins or you can just download it directly from the links itself. All these plugins are free.
1. Elementor
Elementor is one of the easiest WordPress Builder. It is easy to use. It has a free and pro version. If you want more pro theme with premium functions, you can go ahead and update it too.
Contact Form 7 is a form-builder plugin for WordPress. Contact Form 7 allows you to create simple contact forms for your site.
Really Simple SSL automatically detects your settings and configures your website to run over https. It’s alright to activate it even if your web host provides you with one.
Yoast SEO does everything in its power to please both visitors and search engine spiders. A dedicated team of developers, testers, architects and SEO experts work daily to improve the plugin with every release.
Smush will compress all your images without a visible drop in quality.
Cookie Notice allows you to elegantly inform users that your site uses cookies and helps you comply with the EU GDPR cookie law and CCPA regulations.
W3 Total Cache (W3TC) improves the SEO and user experience of your site by increasing website performance and reducing load times by leveraging features like content delivery network (CDN) integration and the latest best practices.
There will be other plugins that you would want to install other than these like Table of contents plugin, WP Table, Social Share, etc.
It’s also not advisable to install every plugins if you really do not have the need or use for it. Always uninstall any unused plugin so that your site can load faster.
9. Start Writing
Now, when you see the left side of the dashboard again, you will see a below the ‘Home’, you will see ‘Pages’. Click on the Pages>>Add new.
Write your About Me, Contact, Privacy, Disclaimers in pages. There is also no comment option in the pages.
You can look for free privacy and disclaimer policies and download them. Do the necessary corrections. Then click the save and update button.
After you are done with that, you are almost ready to write your first post.
Now, when you click on the Add New in Post, at the bottom, you will see your Yoast SEO plug in. Enter your desired keyphrase.
After doing your keyword research enter your desired title with your keywords.
For keyword research you can use Keywords Everywhere, Jaaxy, SEMRush, Wordtracker or Ubersuggest. You can even use TubeBuddy, even if it’s not for YouTube videos.
When you are satisfied with the outcome, you can finally start to :
1. Add your blog title.
2. Select the Private option. Then after you are done with your content, do not FORGET to change it to PUBLISH.
3. Press the Update button.
4. Select the Edit with Elementor button.
When you clicked on the ‘Edit with Elementor’ option, you will see a panel like the one below –
Select the ‘+’ button at the middle.
This will open the ‘structure’ column. If you want your post to be in two columns, it’s up to you.
Then press the ‘Dot-square’ icon at the top right. You will see the ‘drag-and-drop’ buttons.
Now drag the ‘Text Editor’ to the panel as shown in the image above.
Now, you can start writing.
One thing you have to make sure is that when you write, it is in the ‘ VISUAL ‘ option and not in the ‘ TEXT ‘ option. If you are asking why … it’s because the text option is used for pasting those html codes.
Meaning, if you past any html codes in the visual option, it won’t work.
That’s it. You are ready to go!
Write whatever you want and press the UPDATE button found at the left bottom. Your work is saved and updated.
Congratulation! Your Brand New WordPress Site is ready for you to pour out your heart’s content.
Conclusion On How To Set Up a WordPress Blog With SiteGround
If you are just starting out, this whole process will look a bit intimidating. However, once you get the heck of it, you will be able to do it with ease.
Apart from what we talked about, there are many more things that you will learn along the way on your blogging journey.
VERY IMPORTANT:
1. Always have the habit of hitting the ‘Update’ button every time you do any editing or after each paragraph or so that you hard work won’t be lost in case your computer turns off.
And if you are wondering where the update button is, its on the left bottom of the text editor panel.
2. Use pages for about, contact, privacy policy, disclaimer only because it doesn’t allow people to comment on it.
3. You must use the post option for blogging. This allows people to comment on your post and hence shows positive engagements.
SiteGround might looks costly, however I am more than satisfied to use their hosting provider as I faced almost no problem in using their service for years. And I would strongly recommend it to you too.
Get started with SiteGround here.
Did You Find This Guide Helpful?
Share With Your Friend & Also Give Your Views & Experiences In The Comment Section Below!
MLian’s passion for writing is to help you understand that ‘All That Glitters Is Not Gold’. Her mission is to show you Practical and Actionable Ways To Earn Money online and offline to save your time and money – that you won’t get “SCAMMED” into buying something that promises Big but really doesn’t profit anyone except the owners.
Thank you from the bottom of my heart for everything
You are welcome, Stan. 🙂