May

How to set-up a website in under 30 minutes

Setting up and configuring a new website can feel like a daunting process. From URL registration to hosting, through to selecting a Content Management System and optimising for search engines. 5 years ago the complexity was a technical one. Now it’s all about having too much choice!

This post details step by step exactly how we created, configured and optimize our website in a our goal to generate a passive online income stream in less than 1 hour.

1. Register the URL. We use 123-reg.co.uk for all our URL registration. There are companies out there that offer pretty cool URL registration services, which help you to select Search Engine Optimised URL’s. Using SEO optimised URL’s is a good tactic, however we can always reserve URL’s at a later date and point them to our new website

2. Host the website. We use HostGator Baby Plan ($7.97 per month) – a one stop shop for all webhosting. Customer support is excellent, as is the functionality. The Baby Plan allows us to register unlimited URL’s and host unlimited number of sites. This is ideal if you plan on creating multiple product websites (or armada sites as we like to call them)

3. Point the DNS servers to the hosting company. Using reg-123 together with Hostgator is straightforward. Hostgator publish the primary and secondary DNS servers that you need to use in order for your URL to point to the correct ‘piece of the Internet’. Most URL registration companies will have a section titled something like ‘change DNS Servers’ – This is where you would add the DNS for your hosting companies

4. Install a clean version of WordPress on your new Hostgator account using the Fantasico Wizard. Search YouTube for ‘fantastico and wordpress’ and you’ll find lots of videos on how to do this.

You should now have your own URL and website, with a clean install of WordPress. The above 4 steps should take about 30 minutes (assuming of course that you have the relevant accounts).

The next stage in the development involves installing themes and widgets on your website. Installing widgets and themes is as easy as ABC. The hard part is in selecting which ones to install! However this is really where the power of WordPress becomes some obvious.

5. A google search for ‘free WordPress themes‘ returns over 21 million results, so there is bound to be something for everyone. Download the theme onto your local hard drive, unzip and upload into the themes directory on your WordPress Installation (normally under wp-content/themes). Once installed, log into your WordPress admin page, navigate to themes and activate the new theme. Your website is now ‘skinned’ with your new theme.

7. The next stage involves installing those MUST have widgets, the most crucial of which is without doubt Google Analytics. The plug-in we recommend is called ‘Google Analyticator’. Before you install the plugin, you will need to set-up a Google Account and register for analytics (www.google.com/analytics). Add the URL of your created blog to your analytics account. You don’t need to worry about installing the code that google provides, as the Google Analyticator Plugin allows you to Authenticate with Google automatically. To install plugins, go to wp-admin on your blog and navigate to Plugins ~ Add New and search for the plugin you want to install, simply click on install and activate and the plugin becomes usable immediately. Once this widget is installed you’ll now have total transparency on your web traffic. You don’t even need to login to Google to see basic traffic information as that will be available on your WordPress dashboard.

8. Next up are a couple of SEO optimiser type plugins, which I list below. Install them all!

All in One SEO Pack
Google XML sitemaps
SEO Friendly Images
SEO Slugs
SEO Smart Links

You will need to spend a little time understanding how to maximize the use of these plugins, but effectively what you have now is all the tools you need to SEO optimize your newly created blog

9. The default edit post and page editor in WordPress is great as a start point, however in order to provide more functionality, I like to install TinyMCE Advanced which delivers great functionality to your WYSIWYG WordPress editor

10. Making it easy for publishing to various Social Network sites is an absolute must in today’s Web 2.0 environment. I recommend installing ShareThis. This widget deploys the standard ‘Share This’ button on each and every post.

11. We are now almost done. Your blog is created, you’ve hooked in all the MUST HAVE WordPress Plug-ins and now it’s simply a question of writing good content.

We hope this quick guide helps you to set-up and create your new blog.