How to Create a Free Website
Looking for a way how to create a website free? Today, we are going to show you how you can create a free website in less than an hour. Configuring your website’s settings is amazingly simple, so buckle up because this is going to be an exciting journey!
A Guide to Create a Website in Minutes
Step 1: Install WordPress
The first thing you need to do to build a website is to install WordPress. To do this, log in to your control panel and scroll down to Softaculous Apps Installer. Click the WordPress icon.
You will be directed to the WordPress PHP screen. From there, click Install Now.
Fill in the necessary details to install WordPress. Make sure the WordPress version is the latest one. Delete “wp” in the Directory field. Fill in the Site Name and Site Description fields, ensuring the description describes what your business does and contains the right keyword(s).
Change the username and password into something unique and more personalized to prevent hacking. For the password, you can click the key icon on the right side to generate the details. Add more characters to it to reach 100/100, which is the target score.
For the plugins, we recommend to tick Loginizer and Classic Editor for security and easy blog post editing.
Scroll down to Advanced Options and leave Database Name and Table Prefix as is. Select Upgrade to Minor versions only for Auto Upgrade so your website’s format will not be affected when WordPress does major updates.
For Automated backups, choose the frequency you like. Leave Backup Location and Backup Rotation as is.
For the theme, select from the options that WordPress is giving you. Make sure to get the paid ones because they are coded with extra features like speed and have more options to configure.
In this example we will use a free one to show you how you can get started for free when creating a website for your business.
For the theme, Choose one that suits your business, in this example we are going to create a plumbing website.
Fill in the email box with your email address at the bottom. Click Install.
You can also upload a paid theme from your computer by clicking Add New Theme in the Themes section.
Step 2: Install Plugins
A message will show up that the installation was successful after installing WordPress. Click the Administrative URL link to log in to your website.
You will be directed to your Dashboard page. The theme you selected might need some plugins to be installed, and WordPress will tell you that. If so, click the Begin installing plugins link to install them.
Tick the plugins to be installed, click the Bulk Actions button, select Install, and then click Apply.
You will then see a message that the installation was successful. These are all the plugins you need to launch a business website and for customers to contact you.
Delete the installed plugins that you will not be using.
Step 3: Configure the Settings of Your Installed Theme
Check Themes under the Appearance section to see your installed theme. Click Customize on the theme to configure its settings.
These are all the plugins you need to launch a business website and for customers to contact you.
On the left side of your screen, you will see the settings for the theme, check each feature and apply the necessary changes you need for it.
If you want to change the image of the Header Banner, make sure the picture is not too large, which you can go with 1500×884 pixels resolution. You can use free photo editor applications that you can download online as well, such as GIMP (GNU image manipulation program).
To change the image for your header banner, click Change image to upload the picture from your local drive.
Once the image is uploaded, fill in the alt text details for it. This helps Google to tell blind and visually impaired people what the image is about.
Fill in the Title and Description of the image and then click Choose image.
You can also change the colour of your Header Banner by clicking Select Colour and then on the colour selection. Once done, click Publish at the top.
If your template has a header banner with buttons that are not functioning when you installed the theme, you can fix these. Go back to the Header Banner section and select Banner content.
Enter the URL of the page or #[name of the section] you will link the buttons to. Click Publish to save the changes made.
Step 4: Create Pages for Your Website
When you are done customizing your theme, go to Pages from your Dashboard menu to create the number of pages you want for your website. Click Add New to start adding your pages.
You can start with a page for your contact information. On the new page, enter “Contact Me” for the title.
Go to Page Attributes at the right side of your screen and you will see Order. That is the order of the pages that will appear on your website.
If you want this page to be third, enter “3”. Click Publish once done.
If you want to add another page, repeat the same steps in adding a new one. You can add an About Us page also.
Check all your pages by clicking All Pages from the Pages section.
If you want to edit a page further, you can configure it using the Page layer program that your theme is using.
Page layer will give you edit options that help improve the appearance and presentation of your every page. It includes adding sections to each page.
Step 5: Add a Contact Form
You can also add a contact form to your Contact Me page, so people can reach you and you can reply to them easily and quickly. We already installed the Contact Form when we installed the recommended plugins for the theme.
To do this, go to Plugins from your Dashboard menu and click Settings on the Contact Form Plugin.
Enter the plugin and then make sure the details of the settings are correct. Click Save once everything is set. Copy the code that you see at the top and paste it on a notepad for later use.
Go back to Pages and then select Contact Me from the list of pages. Click Edit on the plugin
Paste the code in the body and you can add a call to action in there, too. Click Update once done.
Step 6: Install LiteSpeed Cache
To ensure your website runs or loads fast, you need to install a plugin. Follow the same steps when you install a plugin and then look for LiteSpeed Cache.
Once it is installed, you will see that in the Dashboard menu. Hover over to it and select General to configure its settings. Click Save Changes once done.
Move on to the other settings of the plugin and continue to configure. Always click Save Changes whenever you change something.
Click the LiteSpeed Cache icon at the top of your screen and select Purge All to complete this configuration.
Tips to Boost Page Loading
Although we mentioned earlier not to install too many plugins and to install a plugin called LiteSpeed Cache to make page loading faster, there are other important things you might need to consider for making your website faster.
1. Purchase a Fast Theme
Make sure to buy themes with code designed to be lightweight and quick to ensure fast loading speed. Getting paid themes from Themeforest that are easy to install does not assure that these will load fast. These themes are made with Page Builders which are to slow to load.
If you opt for using Visual Builders, you can select a Generate Press theme using Beaver Builder or Elementor as its page builder, they are lightweight and load fast.
2. Configure Images
Images converted to the WebP version can help increase the speed of your website. WordPress stores these images in its Media folder, and when the page loads that contains those images, these images will be served to the browser as default.
3. Install a Content Delivery Network (CDN)
For international websites, installing CDN helps with the page loading. It is better to use the paid version of Cloudflare to get the maximum benefits of its features, that is, better security, faster bandwidth, and optimum traffic routes.
What to Do Next?
After making sure that your website is ready to go live, there are activities you must perform to ensure business success.
1. Test Your Website on All Browsers
Your website should load on all major browsers because you want to make sure you connect to all markets. Load your website on Chrome, Safari, Firefox, Microsoft Edge, and Internet Explorer and check each page if it loads fast.
In case your website does not load well on one of these major browsers, you will have an idea of how to fix it.
2. Maintain Your Website
Configuring your website does not stop in successfully creating a website. The challenge starts with how you maintain it.
Stay relevant by checking updates for your WordPress version and plugins every few days. This also prevents hacking when your website or plugins are not up to date.
3. Use Social Media to Advertise Your Website
Social media is becoming powerful in marketing businesses nowadays. This means you should keep up with the trend and use your social media accounts to let people know about your website.
Provide links to your website and post updates about it on your social media accounts. It is important that you start creating accounts on these platforms if you do not have any.
Do You Need Help Creating a Website?
Building a WordPress is easy but if you do not have time or need professional help to take care of the more technical aspects.
Innzone Hosting is here to support you, we can help you build a website for your business. We are a web hosting company that offers affordable, reliable, and superior services to businesses around the world.
We are very affordable.
The secret to building a fast, reliable, and performing website is not a web hosting service with a high price but how you set up your website correctly. Having said that, we can make it happen for you with our affordable offers.
We are exceptionally reliable.
We have already proven that we can make sites load fast. Innzone Hosting can reduce the loading time of your website from 408 ms to 158 ms, which is a dramatic difference. We can do the configurations which influence page loading to help your website load faster.
We provide clients with superior services.
We conduct before and after tests to see how fast our clients’ websites were before and after the improvements we made to their sites.
Aside from ensuring faster page load times, we can help you with your Google rankings. After we make sites faster, we normally see Clients sites rankings improve in the search engines.
Conclusion
The technique we showed on how to create a website free of cost using WordPress does not require too much time. It is even quicker when you already have the content you will place on all your pages.
If you need help with creating a website, please contact us today!