If you’re serious about your business, you’ll want a Self Hosted WordPress Website. There are over 75 million WordPress websites now!
While you can create free hosted websites using WordPress.com, Google Sites, Wix and others, you will get the most control and advantages by using self-hosted WordPress. This is what I use for all my sites and client sites at LovettWebDesign.com.
I love creating, customized wordpress websites that get top Google ranking for small businesses and I’ll be happy to do the same for you so you can spend your time doing what you do best.
If you would like to understand more about what is involved in setting up a basic self hosted wordpress website, below is some helpful information. For more current helpful web hosting info, check out Web Hosting.
How To Set Up a Self Hosted WordPress Website
Domain – You will need a domain name for people to type into their browser to get to your website. You’ll learn exactly where and how to purchase it, and point it in the direction of your website.
Hosting – You will need a server for your website to reside. You’ll learn exactly how and where to purchase it and set it up.
WordPress – Your website needs WordPress software to “power” it. You’ll learn how to set up a WordPress website safely, securely. Note that this is the free self-hosted WordPress.org software not free or paid WordPress.com service.
Design – WordPress allows us the ability to create a professional website and to customize it as needed. You’ll learn how to setup this WordPress website.
How To Setup Hosting For a Self Hosted WordPress Website
A domain name is what people type into their browser to get to your website (ie, www.lovettwebdesign.com). A hosting account is a computer server where your website files live.
How To Purchase A Domain Name
Note – if you already own a domain name, you can skip this section.
Purchase your domain separately
To save money and keep it simple – I recommend purchasing your domain separately from your hosting. Hosting and domain registration are two different activities – and usually companies only do one well (and at a good price). When you purchase separately, you get better pricing and the advantage of separation the activities.
For purchasing a domain, I recommend NameCheap or GoDaddy – but not hosting.
Go to either NameCheap or GoDaddy and search for the name you want, and proceed through the checkout. You do not need any upsells. You can get everything you’ll need from your hosting company.
Often clients, ask me to help them choose and purchase a domain name. I don’t mind doing so but this can be time consuming and expensive. So if you want to keep your costs down, do it yourself.
Once you have your domain name, we need a hosting server to “point” it to.
(Note – We do not need to transfer the domain to the hosting company. I’ll show you how to “point” it).
Choosing Hosting For a Self Hosted WordPress Website
Choosing a good web hosting company is critical for your website. Web hosting companies tend to make things too confusing with useless feature overload, short-term discounts (then expensive long-term prices), and over-promising customer service. They also create confusing offers like “WordPress hosting” – even though sometimes WordPress hosting is no different than standard web hosting.
There are many web hosting companies on the Internet. Here are the 3 hosting companies that I often recommend for small businesses.
SiteGround – Independently-owned hosting company with great customer service & cutting-edge features. Siteground consistently maintains the highest ratings and over-all customer satisfaction. Cost a little more than the other two, but the time saved working with them more than offsets the cost.
In a word, “support” is why I love SiteGround. SiteGround has some of the best, more responsive and knowledgable support experiences in the industry. On top of that, in our incredibly deep and diverse experience, they’re also among the best value for your money. But it’s the nearly unbeatable support experiences in both phone and email we love. No long wait times, no upsells. Just a great product that has just what you need.
InMotion – Independently-owned with good customer service and well-priced plans (with some caps). InMotion is a newer company and ranks below Siteground.
HostGator – Very affordable all-around plans. Good customer service & performance for the price.
Allow me to set up your site on my Siteground web hosting account
Most of my clients prefer to have me host and maintain their websites on my super fast, Siteground cloud server. They prefer to have me professionally maintain their website, and would therefore rather not get involved in the process setting up their own hosting account. It often saves time.
Your site will run much faster on my siteground account because I purchase an expensive, fast hosting package. No I won’t hold your site hostage. Im happy to provide you a download of your site files and database if you ever want to move the site to your own account.
If you would like to learn how to create your own hosting account, read on!
Step 1. Choose the hosting plan that fits your current goals.
Go to Siteground.com, select your preferred Hosting plan.
To purchase and set up your own hosting account with Siteground, click the banner below to get started.
Choose from the following siteground hosting plans:
StartUp – While we love SiteGround hosting for WordPress, we find that StartUp is lacking in both the features and speed most need. Avoid StartUp.
GrowBig – For sites that don’t get a ton of traffic, GrowBig combines great value, features, and speed. GrowBig is the best fit for most sites.
GoGeek – For WordPress developers wanting advanced features, or getting more traffic than GrowBig supports (>25K visits/mo), GoGeek is fast, feature-rich, and geek-friendly. GoGeek is great but pricey, especially on renewal.
Purchase your preferred hosting plan, and your done!
You now have chosen Your Domain and Host. What’s Next?
This can get tricky for a DIY’er, which is why my clients contact Mark Lovett Web Design for help.
Name Servers
In any case, the domain name servers need to be pointed to where the domain resides. This will vary depending on whose Siteground account is hosting the site. The name servers will have to be pointed where the domain was purchased. How name servers are pointed will also depend on how email will be handled. Here is a good tutorial on pointing name servers to siteground.
Configuring Addon Domain
Next, an addon domain needs to be configured in the cpanel. Here is a tutorial to configure the addon domain.
Configuring SSL
For security and SEO, we want the site to have an HTTPS protocol rather than the insecure HTTP protocol, so we need to configure SSL. Here’s a great tutorial on configuring SSL.
How To Install and Configure WordPress
So now that we have a domain, a host for the web files, the addon domain has been setup, SSL is setup, we can now install WordPress on your hosting server.
Check out this tutorial to learn how to properly install WordPress on the server.
I honestly don’t know a DIY’er that has the time and energy to tackle the substantial learning curve necessary to set all this up properly. If you click into the tutorials you’ll see there is quite a bit involved. It doesnt always go so smoothly either. There can be some hiccups. So the purpose of this article may be to give you an over-view of all the tricky work involved, as well as some basic notes for me to refer to on occasion.
Now We’re Ready To Choose, Purchase, and Install a WordPress Theme
So now that we have a domain, a host for the web files, the addon domain has been setup, SSL is setup, WordPress has been installed and configured, we’re ready to choose, purchase and install a WordPress theme, and then design and develop the website!
We are ready to get started designing and developing the website now. That was quite a lot of work that we had to do before we even started building the website wasn’t it?
If you’ve followed the instructions above, you now have your very own self-hosted WordPress website!
The next step is to install a theme. There are literally thousands of free ones available. However, not in any particular order, but I prefer the below premium themes. I can customize any of these themes with your branding, style and design preferences.
- Avada Theme
- Salient Theme
- Beaver Builder Plugin and Theme
If you want to learn more about WordPress, I recommend browsing the articles in my website, and visiting wordpress.org.
Contact me, if I can help with your web design, development or SEO project.
