How-To Create a Website with HostGator and WordPress in 7 Easy Steps
Creating your first website can seem like a daunting challenge at first. Maybe this isn’t your first website, but rather you would like to use HostGator and WordPress this time. With so many web hosting registrars and domain name registrars competing for your business, it seems like the skies the limit when it comes to choosing how you will host your website files. The two big players in the web hosting and domain name hosting industry that you may come across are; HostGator and GoDaddy. I always recommend HostGator. HostGator’s pricing plans and overall customer service is unmatched in the online industry of web/domain name hosting standards and practices…at least from my experience. HostGator has a wide range of web hosting packages to choose from…such as the Hatchling Plan, Baby Plan, and Business Plan…each with varying degrees of standard and optional features such as; single or unlimited domain name hosting and/or an SSL Certificate and even your own business phone number. You may have seen some web addresses that start with “https://www.” rather than “http://www.” An SSL Certificate…also known as a Digital Certificate is a “Secured Sockets Layer” connection. Which means a secure connection is installed on the websites hosting server and provides a layer of data encryption. Security should be one of your highest priorities when you plan on running a blog or website and plan on having a decent amount of organic traffic. Put yourself in your readers shoes…would you want to browse an unsafe/unreliable site with unreliable security measures in place?
If you do decide to go with HostGator as your primary host for your website files and domain hosting, then you may also be interested in their many other types of standalone hosting packages, including; Cloud Hosting, Dedicated Hosting (Dedicate Server), Reseller packages, VPS (Virtual Private Server), and even a WordPress Hosting package. If you do decide to go with HostGator, you can usually find various discounts going on for both a web hosting package and a domain name hosting package. I can’t say anything bad about HostGator, they have been great and continue to be great with me in terms of web/domain name hosting and excellent customer service. Oh yeah, they have a great chat/telephone support service as well if you don’t like to send in support tickets through your billing center dashboard.
As far as why I recommend WordPress…WordPress is unmatched in terms of a reliable and safe blogging software which provides a fun discussion platform to run your own personal blog. You can do all sorts of things with the WordPress code framework if you know or are interested in learning PhP, Css3, and Html5. PHP(Hypertext PreProcessor), CSS3(Cascading Style Sheets), and HTML5(Hyper Text Markup Language) are all various coding/programming languages that allow you to create, modify, and run scripts for your website. With the WordPress software you can easily create mobile apps to strictly cater to mobile users first, you can run a forum through your WordPress installation by using the ever so popular bbPress plugin for WordPress, and if you plan on going the “social” route in terms of user activity streams, member messaging, and online networking between you and your users, then you may want to check out the ever so popular BuddyPress plugin for WordPress. The two most popular WordPress themes that I enjoy working with the most this year are; Twenty Sixteen and GeneratePress. There are many, many more WordPress themes and plugins available to check out. You may want to check out our Top 5 Reasons why WordPress is the BEST Blog Software if you are still unsure on whether or not you do want to go with WordPress, or rather their CMS(Content Management System) competitor…Joomla. I like Joomla, but I love WordPress.
Now that I briefly covered the various Hostgator services and the WordPress blog software, lets go over how you can create a website with HostGator and WordPress in 7 easy steps.
Step 1. Find a Web Hosting company and Choose/Purchase a Web Hosting Package that’s right for you.
Step 2. Find a Domain Registrar company and Choose/Purchase/Register a Domain Name of your choice.
Step 3. Browse to your web hosting control panel and Create a Database.
Step 4. Create a Database User with a specific Password and set of Permissions(usually “all privileges/rights for the database user). Assign the Database User to your Database. Be sure to make note of the Database Name, User, and Password as you will need that information during your site installation.
Step 5. Download to your computer then Upload via an FTP(File Transfer Protocol) client such as FileZilla or Control Panel’s default FTP client…the latest WordPress version files from WordPress.
Step 6. Follow WordPress’ Famous 5-Minute Installation Process. Here you will need the Database Name, User, and Password information you created in “Step 4.”
Step 7. Create your own personal User Profile(Username/Password) for your newly created WordPress website to login to your admin dashboard.
That’s it! Now you will need to keep up with the latest in SEO(Search Engine Optimization) methodologies, the latest in security measures, constantly post unique and fresh quality content related to your subject niche, advertise and promote your new blog on various forums and social networking sites, and choose the theme and plugins that you want running your new website. Have fun blogging!
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