You have chosen to build your website with WordPress? WordPress is used 4 times out of 10 for every site created worldwide, making up more than 60% of the CMS market. And for good reason: its usability and power are appreciated by everyone — from well-known sites like TripAdvisor’s blog to a small local business website. Overall, you can create any type of site with WordPress.
A small clarification: WordPress has 2 different versions. WordPress.com is a very limited hosting platform offering a turnkey formula to create a site without any flexibility and with a very poor economic model, while WordPress.org is the open-source WordPress. Today we will see how to create a WordPress site with WordPress.org — the free, open-source version of WordPress that your hosting installs when you choose the WordPress tool. This solution is ideal as it offers absolute freedom, modifications and much more, while being free in itself.
1. Choose a hosting provider and a domain name
The foundation of any website is having a domain name and hosting. The domain name is the name your site will carry. This name is unique. Hosting stores all your website files — whether lines of code, images and other elements. You can also install WordPress locally.
Making the right choice for your domain name
A domain name is essential for having a website. It is simply the name your site will carry — for example, this site’s domain name is “createur2site.fr”. Your choice of domain name should be well thought through: think of a name that can either reflect your activity or be a brand name, even if you do not yet have a “brand”. Here is a list, though non-exhaustive, for a good domain name:
- The domain name should be short and without hyphens “-“
- It should not contain numbers
- It should have a generic extension
- Overall it should be easy to remember
Finally, choose a good extension for your site. If the extension is .xyz, I would be surprised if your prospects remember it — they might even question your professionalism. If you want a presence solely for French speakers, “.fr” is fine; otherwise .com is obviously a reliable extension. If you are uncertain about your domain name choice, you can also continue reading on to make the right choice for your domain name.
Buying your domain name
You have an enormous variety of options for purchasing your domain name — you can buy it from any registry imaginable. For this example, we will look at the procedure for buying a domain on Google Domains. Since we are doing things correctly, we may as well choose a good registrar that is more transparent than others and much more reliable. By way of comparison, GoDaddy charges $12 for a .com in the first year, then following their commercial practices charges $18 for subsequent years. With Google Domains you will always pay $12 — which corresponds at the time of writing to €10, which is very fair. The advantage of having a domain name on Google is also:
- Well-designed interface (Google user account, good dashboard, etc.)
- Free privacy protection
- DNS servers powered by Google
- Two-factor authentication
- Optimal professional email management
- And much more
Just go to :
After visiting the site, you can already check whether your domain name is available — if it is, all you need to do is purchase it for around ten euros:
All you have to do is fill in a few forms and proceed with payment for your future site that is going to be amazing!
Choosing the right hosting for WordPress
Choosing hosting should not be neglected at all and must be carefully considered. Moreover, the very concept of paying for cheap hosting is unfortunately entrenched in people’s minds after years of wanting increasingly attractive and competitive prices. In reality, if you have the means for your ambitions from the start, you should move towards good WordPress hosting (and hosting genuinely made for a WordPress site). I have absolutely no desire to recommend a hosting provider that will only drag you down (and even scam you in some cases). I will therefore only recommend Kinsta in this article. The reasons are too long and complex to explain here — you should really read my complete article on WordPress hosting and Kinsta. Here is the process for creating a WordPress site on Kinsta:
Choosing your hosting plan
Unless you already need multiple sites or astronomical monthly visits, you should choose the starter plan which already includes all possible optimisations for a very good WordPress site. You do not need to worry about other plans — to reach more monthly visits or GB of disk space, you will have time to see that coming. You can also select the button at the bottom of the plan to pay annually and benefit from 2 months free. to choose your plan on Kinsta.
2. Create the WordPress site
Now that you have purchased your domain name and hosting for WordPress, all you have to do is create your WordPress site! You will see that the very concept of creating a site is very easy. If it seems complicated, you do not need to stress — just follow this guide step by step. If you ever need help, Kinsta support is available 24/7 and responds in under a minute!
Installing WordPress on your hosting provider
To start, your WordPress site must be created on your hosting. For this, go to your Kinsta account then select Sites → Add a site:
Then select the “Install WordPress” option:
All you have to do is complete the form and add the domain name, site name, site title, etc.
For your data centre location, choose the one closest to your users. If it is a site for French users, choose Belgium.
Now that your site is created, all you have to do is link your domain name and hosting so your site is accessible on the web!
Creating DNS records and pointing your registrar’s DNS to your hosting provider
To start, you need to add your first domain — for this, go to Kinsta DNS → Add your first domain:
→ Then enter your domain name.
You will then have something that looks like this:
The red box shows your nameservers. There is no need to go into detail about what they are, but you will need them.
Just go to Google Domains and add your Kinsta nameservers. For example our records are:
- ns-1896.awsdns-45.co.uk
- ns-1489.awsdns-58.org
- ns-476.awsdns-59.com
- ns-992.awsdns-60.net
Which gives:
Finally, you need to create an “A” DNS record. For this, go to Kinsta DNS → Manage → Add a DNS record:
Then:
Then click on IPv4 address and choose your site — all you need to do is “Add a DNS record” without FORGETTING to check “with and without www”:
Add DNS records on Kinsta including with and without www (world wide web)
Done! Everything is perfectly in place to tackle creating your 1st page on WordPress!
3. Choose a WordPress theme and install it
Before you start creating your 1st page on WordPress, you need to know what a WordPress theme is — essential for creating your site. It allows you to create, among other things, your visuals, pages, contact forms and many other features.
A paid theme or a free theme?
Sorry — a website is not free. Choosing a free theme is a phenomenal waste of time, energy and ultimately money. Just like choosing poor hosting: when you publish your site and show it to prospects or advertise it, if it is not fast and visually attractive you will lose more money than if you had paid for services that are ultimately not that expensive. That said, feel free to have your own experience.
Which WordPress theme to choose for my project?
There are many WordPress themes, but the best are Elementor and Divi. In short, the advantage of Elementor is that it comes very close to the incredible animation possibilities without touching a single line of code — similar to the Webflow CMS. However, what I am talking about is the “Pro” version which has a somewhat off-putting economic model of $50/year. Moreover, it is quite difficult to master, unlike Divi — even though it remains more complete in design and animations.
Divi has a much more attractive economic model, with a “lifetime” plan of $250. It also has an offer of $89/year, and it is possible to then choose the “lifetime” plan before the end of your year and benefit from -$89 (on the lifetime subscription). This is really convenient for trying it out and getting an idea. Moreover, it is indisputably the easiest to master. to try its “visual builder demo” directly (free).
If you are fully invested in your site, I would say Elementor — but if your budget is fairly strict, Divi is a very, very good choice.
Installing your WordPress theme
Now that you have chosen your WordPress theme, go to your WordPress admin area then click on Appearance → Themes → Add:
The most well-known free theme is Twenty Twenty-One as an example.
All you have to do is upload the .zip file containing your theme as delivered by Divi or Elementor.
4. Configure the base of WordPress
Now that you have your WordPress site available on the internet and your theme to create pages, all you have to do is make a few basic indispensable modifications within WordPress.
General settings (submenu “General”)
Go to Settings → General and complete your website information.
On Kinsta, all verified domains are automatically protected by Cloudflare integration, which includes SSL certificates so your site is on https. However, you need to add an additional parameter in WordPress: simply add an “s” to http in the settings:
Done — your site is now on HTTPS!
Reading Options (make my WordPress site a blog from the home page)
Add a blog to a specific section of a WordPress site.
Your WordPress site automatically displays your latest articles on your home page — however, you would probably want to display a page presenting your business, a home page for example. For this, go to Settings → Reading → Static page.
You can choose any page that will truly be your home page. You can also select “Posts page” to create a blog directory — so you can place your “blog” page there which will be the home page of your blog. Feel free to consult our article dedicated to creating a blog on WordPress!
Permalink settings
By default, WordPress URLs are chaotic and will display as ?p=123 even when you name a page “home”. To fix this and display URLs with the names you give them, go to Settings → Permalinks → select Post name:
Done! You now have a well-structured WordPress site — congratulations!
5. Create your WordPress site pages
Now that your WordPress site is ready to use, you have a theme and it is well structured — all you have to do is create your first pages! Regardless of the theme you have, WordPress’s default text editor will always be present and usable, and a pop-up is always displayed to edit the page with your theme (the classic editor is catastrophic). Let us look step by step at how to create a page:
Adding pages on WordPress and editing them
To create your 1st page on WordPress you need to go to Pages then click “Add”:
Using Divi as an example: after adding your page you need to enter a title for your page — for example “home” — and then click “Use Divi Builder”:
You will then have 3 different options: “Build from scratch”, “Choose a layout” and “Clone existing page”:
For this example we will click on the middle choice “Choose a layout” — you will then have a multitude of pre-made layouts for your website:
Still as an example, I will choose the “Digital Payments” layout. After selecting the layout, all you need to do is click “Use this layout”:
By default the selected page is “landing page” but you can select another page on the right side and preview it in advance by clicking “View Live Demo”.
Then click “Build on the front end”:
Done! You now have access to the visual builder — just click on elements to modify them as you like. You have your website!!
All you have to do is click on the 3 small dots at the very bottom in the middle of the page then click publish. Your page will then be accessible by everyone:
Here are some example pages for a standard site:
- A “Home” page – the first page presenting your site
- An “About” page – the page to present your business
- A “Contact” page – a crucial page for prospects to reach you and also see your geographic location if relevant
- A legal notices page → essential to comply with GDPR.
Customise your menu and footer
To create your menu go to Appearance → Menu:
- Add the pages your site contains
- Arrange your pages in order of preference — you can also drag them to create sub-menus
- Give your menu a name
- Add your menu to a specific location (here: primary menu)
- Save your menu
After saving your menu, go to Appearance → Customise — you will then be able to customise your menu and footer for colours, font and many other things.
Install the necessary plugins for a WordPress site
Now that everything is in place and you have created your site’s pages, created and modified your menu and footer, all you have to do is download the essential plugins for your web success.
- SEO & Search Engine Optimisation → Yoast SEO
- Newsletters → MailChimp
- Messaging service (optional as themes have their own form) → Contact Form 7
- You do not necessarily need a security or cache plugin as Kinsta already integrates these basic best practices directly on the hosting side.
- E-commerce → WooCommerce
Well done for making it to the end! Feel free to contact us if you need help creating your site!