Learning how to host a webiste is actually much easier than you may think, but it’s a question that a lot of beginners ask. So it needs to be answered!

Let’s first define a few things:

Hosting – It’s best to think of this as your hard drive in the sky. In order to get a website up on the Internet, you need this hard drive and it’s where all your website files are going to go.

These days you really don’t have to worry about FTP or anything like that.

FTP – This stands for file transfer protocol. What that means is… it’s a program that lets you transfer files from your computer to your hosting account. However with WordPress these days, you really don’t need that anymore. I rarely ever use it.

Cpanel – This is the backend of your hosting account. It’s where you can install WordPress, where you can set up email accounts, and do a bunch of other very complex things that you will never have to worry about.

Our Assumptions For Your Website

I am going to assume and recommend that you will be using WordPress for your website. This is the best CMS by far and you really don’t have to worry about using anything else. At least in the beginning.

Step 1: Get A Good Hosting Account

You first need a good hosting account. Trust me, there are some terrible hosting accounts out there. And here is the thing…

When they are trying to sell you on using them, they all say the same things. It’s like the cell phone companies. They literally all say the same thing, but some are clearly better than others.

I personally use two different hosting companies for the majority of my websites.

My favorite is Hostgator.

They have been really good to me and I run some really large websites on their shared servers. They are barely down and when there are some issues, I just call them and they let me know what is going on.

What is really great about them is their pricing. You can get a good business account for about $14 a month and they only charge you the $14 a month.

Some other hosting companies say it’s only $14 a month, but they will charge you for a full year in advance. So you end up paying over $100 all at once.

They use Cpanel so working with our websites is super easy. Like I mentioned above, you only have to get WordPress installed through it then everything else you can control through WordPress.

That is really all you need to know about them. They are good and they do what you need to host your own websites.

Click here to grab your Hostgator account today.

My second favorite is Bluehost.

Bluehost is very similar to Hostgator, the only real difference is they do charge for a full year in advance so you will have to come more out of pocket with them.

Other than that, they are very similar.

You might be wondering why I have all these different hosting accounts. Since I have a lot of websites, I prefer to spread them out over different accounts. It helps me to better hide my ownership of the sites.

That is a topic for another article.

Step 2: Getting Your Website Up On Your Hosting Account

This is really easy. All you are going to do is use a program in Cpanel called Fantastico. This will let you install WordPress in about 5 clicks of the mouse. You will also have to fill out some information, but it’s super easy.

Make sure you watch the video I made for this article and you will see exactly what I’m talking about.

That is exactly how to host a website. It’s really easy and once you do it once, you will never have an issue with it again. If you do run into problems, just call their support and they will definitely help you out.

You should know that a CMS is a content management system. And there are many to choose from, but there is one that is far and away the best CMS.

It’s WordPress!

But we’ll get to more detail about WordPress in just a minute. First I want to look at a few others that you probably know about, but what to know if they are for you or not.

Joomla

I am sure you have heard of Joomla. It’s got a funny name but it’s a really great CMS. When I got started on the Internet, I paid a guy $800 to learn how to use it. Looking back I got ripped off, but it is hard to learn.

The great thing about Joomla is you can do almost anything with it. But that is why it becomes really hard. I have used Joomla as a membership site in the past, but these days the developers that build up WordPress has made that a clear winning choice.

WordPress

Let’s just spend the rest of this article talking about WordPress because it is by far the best CMS. Here is why you should be using WordPress:

• Easy for Google to index. It’s really easy for Google to get the whole site indexed. It uses different plugins that help make all the pages easily read and followed. Plus it it’s easy for you to control the follow tags of each page and link.
• Easy to learn. If you just take the few hours to really learn how WordPress works, you will be set for life. Plus it’s so easy to update and keep your site dynamic.
• It’s not always a blog style look. WordPress is so versatile that you can make it look like a regular site and take the blog out of it completely.
• Great developer network. The developers for WordPress are always making updates and really improve the system.
• Great premium themes. I’ve talked about this in another article, but the premium themes make creating a great website easy to do.
• Don’t need crazy hosting plans. You can save money by getting easy hosting plans from either BlueHost or HostGator and you don’t need to go crazy.
• Easy to install. The two hosting companies above are built on cpanel and have three click installs of WordPress.
• One click updates of almost everything having to do with WordPress.
• Plus so much more!

Remember a CMS is all about making it easy for you to run a site and control your content. WordPress does this very well. That is what makes it the best CMS.

If you want to learn how to properly setup your WordPress site the best, click here.

I’ll teach you how to use the categories to set up a site that is based on the the proper keywords and how to use pages properly too. Plus I’ll show you some tricks with certain themes to make a site that funnels the best visitors so you can capture them to your list or help them become a customer. Then you will be sured to be using the best CMS that you can grow for a long time.

Setting up a website, especially when you new to it, is often not thought out enough. In fact, one of the reasons most websites don’t convert well is because the website structure is created on the fly. Avoid doing this and really make setting up your website a plan.

Here is the process I prefer to follow when creating a website that helps the end user and increases the chances of having them do what I intend.

Step 1: Keyword Research

I really like to know all of the keywords that I am going to target and that will bring in traffic. This helps because it will give you structure to your website. This will also help you begin to structure how you are going to monetize the site too.

The best way to start your keyword research is with Google’s keyword tool. However, there are two other paid tools that I use…

• Market Samurai (learn more about it…)
• Keyword Blueprint (learn more about it…)

These two are very helpful and give great competition data which is very important.

Step 2: Choosing My Platform

99% of the time, my platform will always be WordPress. It’s free and once you learn it, it’s stays more of less the same from theme to theme. However, for membership sites and other things I may choose a different platform.

Since you are just getting started, the best thing to do is stick with WordPress. You can’t go wrong.

Step 3: Write Content

Just like this article, you need a lot of really good base content that can actually help people. So before you really build anything, it’s a great idea to build all of this out. The reason I like to know the platform before I write the content is because I might have to writer teaser content if it were a membership site.

I suggest you do all of this yourself when you are first starting. If you can learn to write fast and give good information, it makes it much easier to find the right person to hire when you want to outsource.

Step 4: Map Out Each Page On Paper

Not many people really do this, but it helps me out so much that it’s worth the time. Draw out your site the way you want it to look. Here are somethings you will want to consider when designing your site…

• What goes in your sidebar(s)
• What banners are you going to use
• Where are your call to actions going to be
• What colors are you going to use
• What do you want your menus to look like
• Where are the opt-in boxes going
• Etc…

There really is whole lot to consider. But here is something that I think is key for you.

Map out the big stuff and build it. Don’t get stuck on thinking of every last detail.

Remember that your site will evolve over time as more traffic hits it.

Step 5: Think of My (Your) Visitors

Finally, I really try to put myself in my visitors shoes. This helps me take as close to an objective look at my site has possible. Most of the time I look at the site this way and I am always asking…

How can I make this simpler?

That is a key question because simplicity is what people like. Just look at Google which became huge because it was simple.

Start thinking about these steps and make setting up a website more methodical. When you think of building it through these steps, you will end up building it much faster.

One of the reasons that WordPress is so effective is it’s ease of use. Just spend a few hours learning it and everything will unfold to you quickly. But in this article, let’s to a fundamental WordPress theme tutorial and look at the major parts to get everything set up correctly.

WordPress Settings

The settings tab is at the bottom of the navigation on the left side. When you click on the settings tab, you’ll see quite a bit of options. Here are the ones that I always change.

• Writing: Change the lines shown to 20. It’s probably set on 10 right now, but I also think the new update chooses 20 by default. Just makes sure it’s 20 so you will have an easier time editing content.
• Reading: I use this tab mainly depending on if I want he front page to be a blog or a static page. Here you can change that, but make sure if you want to move the blog to a separate page, you create that page first.
• Permalinks: This is really important. The permalink is how your link will look in the address bar. By default, WordPress uses a bunch of numbers and strange characters. Select custom permalinks and always use this setup… /%post name%/

That is about it for settings. After I go there, I typically choose the theme that I will go with. Here are my two favorite themes and using them depends.

• Thesis Theme: I will go with thesis if I want a quick website. Thesis is really clean but it takes some coding knowledge. Besides I have come to like Authority Pro much more.
• Authority Pro: This theme is very versatile and it seems that the team that built it is standing behind it. You can do a lot with it from making simple site to making one that is a little more complex. It’s great for affiliate sites and list building.

After that, I will go through this process:

• Categories: If I organize the site through categories, I will typically set them up first. Depending on the site, I will make each one a certain keyword. But an easier way is to have a few categories, however you want to organize it, then use all your keywords for actual articles. I have been going to this route much more.
• Pages: My pages have been more for your customer things like a contact page, about page, and maybe some stable articles. Again this depends and it’s beyond the scope of this article.
• Plugins: I will then go through the plugins to make sure I have a few basics. Google XML Sitemaps is a necessary one. Contact 7 is one I like. Gravity forms is better but you have to pay for that one. TinyMCE, Akismat, and Duplicate Post is about all I really use. Too many can use up too much memory and it’s not advised.

That really gets things set up to the point where I can start putting in all of my content. This didn’t really go over the look of the site, but the process of changing that changes based on the theme you use.

Don’t worry about the rest of the options, most of them I really don’t tough at all. This is what I do and I hope it helps you get WordPress setup when you are first starting and I hope this WordPress theme tutorial helped you get started.

Make sure you join my Learn WordPress Step-by-Step Course. It’s free and it will really help you with full video as well!

Click Here To Get Your Spot!

Finding the best website builder is important. Many people say that ugly is good, however, I tend to disagree a little. It’s not so much that ugly is good, it’s that simple is good. Trying to build a simple website can be really tough. But the more simple you make it, the more your visitors will enjoy and use your site.

The Best Website Builder:

Without a doubt, it’s WordPress. WordPress is a content management system (CMS) that is open source. That means it’s free and it’s easy to install and use. It does have a learning curve, but if you get through it, it’s very powerful. However, what is really great about WordPress are the premium themes available. These themes do cost money, but I would caution you to be extremely careful using free themes. Many free themes are used for back links (or SEO) by the developer because they can hardcode links into the theme. These free themes are also used by hackers to get into your server and put in malicious code. With premium themes, you never have to worry about that, plus the options are amazing. Here are the best premium themes that will change your website and your business too. 1. Thesis Theme I have used the Thesis theme for many years. It’s about $147 or so, which is really worth it. The one thing that is not the best is the learning curve to customizations is pretty big. However, it’s great for SEO marketing and it’s built to be very clean. Clean means simple and that works really well. The support forum for Thesis is really great too and you can get any questions you have answered really quickly. Just make sure you commit to the learning curve. It will pay off when you work with other themes as well. 2. Authority Pro This theme is one that I am newer too, but so far it’s really great. It naturally looks simple and easy to navigate. But what is really great about this theme are all the widgets it has. A widget is just a predefined place in the site to place content. And it has so many options, it makes it easy to build the exact site you want. Another thing that makes this so good is it’s ability to make sales pages, squeeze pages, and reviews really easily. That is a huge timesaver because with all other themes, you will have to make these customized all by yourself. This site you’re on now is built on Authority Pro… so you can see how great it is. 3. Studiopress This is a suite of different themes and perfect if you are an existing small business. It’s pretty tough to learn to customize. I have only used it a little, so take my review as only my opinion. But what is great about it is the fact it has themes within the theme that you can buy that set up your site almost automatically. All you have to do at that point is get all the content in the site. Check out there site and you can see how many different child themes they have. But if you are more interested in making money with your website as a business owner, then I suggest you look at these in this order.

• Authority Pro
• Thesis
• Optimize Press (Only used for product launches)
• Studio Press

Keep something in mind… Your website evolves over time so make sure you get something up and running. As you see what happens with it, you can change it. Just get started building it. You can’t make a mistake choosing any one of these as each in their own way is the best website builder.