In this article we will talk exclusively about WordPress.org, the WordPress you certainly know — free, open source, and very flexible. You will learn step by step how to create a blog easily and quickly. But above all, do not forget that creating a website, whatever it may be, is a tedious task that will require time and passion!
1. Choose Your Hosting and Domain Name
To create a WordPress blog you will need two essential elements:
- Hosting: what allows you to store your site, in this case your WordPress blog.
- A domain name: what gives your site a location. Your site must have an address on the web in order to be accessible.
Buying hosting and a domain name and configuring them for WordPress is extremely simple. However, choosing a good solution is far too often neglected. There are tens of thousands of hosting services and domain name registrars. After having tested many, I can only recommend Kinsta for hosting and for your domain name. With a starter plan, which is more than sufficient, you should budget around €25/month. For the domain name, budget around €10/year. If this is too expensive for you, know that you can also consult our article to create a site for free.
1.1 Install WordPress on Your Hosting
There are an infinite number of possibilities depending on the hosting you choose, but it is never difficult to install WordPress automatically. If you need to install WordPress locally, you can visit our dedicated article. Here, we will briefly describe the procedure for setting up WordPress on Kinsta:
1. Go to your Kinsta account then select Sites → Add a site:
2. Select the “Install WordPress” option:
You will then simply need to complete the form asking for your site name, site title, and other details.
For the location of your data centre, choose the server closest to your users — if the site is intended for French users, choose Belgium (Belgium).
That is it! You have installed WordPress on your Kinsta hosting. We also detail the step-by-step procedure for creating a WordPress site.
1.2 Choose Your Domain Name
The domain name is the path to your site — for example, the domain name of this site is www.createur2site.fr. The choice of your domain name must be carefully considered: think of a name that can reflect your services or assign it the name of a brand (this is ideal). A few tips for a good domain name:
- The domain name must be short and without hyphens “-“
- It must not contain numbers
- It must have a simple extension (.fr / .com / .xyz)
- It must be easy to remember
I strongly recommend choosing a registrar such as Google to avoid many future problems. Here is their site: https://domains.google
2. Choose a Theme for Blogging
The majority of users use what are called WordPress themes. They allow you to create a modern, visually powerful site, and easily. While the best-known themes are Divi and Elementor, I strongly recommend . It offers an equally visually powerful editor and allows the creation of beautiful pages. Even if it does not go as far as Divi, Elementor, or in terms of design (which you would never use for a blog), it is the most complete and lightest theme. This will save you from tearing your hair out with your Core Web Vitals and Google telling you your site is too slow. A blog using the Generate Press theme is the best possible combination.
3. Configure WordPress for Blogging
On Kinsta, domains automatically have SSL certificates so your site is in https. You simply need to go to “Settings” → “General” and add an “s” to http:
To make your WordPress site a blog and display your articles on the home page, simply go to Settings → Reading → then select “Latest posts”. If you want a special section dedicated to the blog within your site, you will need to click on “A static page” then select the “Posts page” — this will create a blog directory if you want a showcase site and a blog within the same site.
Change the URLs by going to: Settings → Permalinks → select Post name:
4. Download Plugins for a Blog
To make your blog work even better, here are some essential WordPress extensions:
- Yoast SEO: allows you to optimise your natural SEO (to be visible on Google).
- Akismet Anti-Spam: prevents spam in the comments on your articles.
- Subscribe To Comments Reloaded: allows your users to post a comment and be notified only when someone replies to that comment and/or to receive a comment and an email every time someone participates in the discussion on the article.
- WP Rocket: to further increase your site speed (less effective with Kinsta which already does a good job, as does GeneratePress)
5. Create Your 1st Blog Article
All you have to do now is create your articles! The creation of your WordPress blog is now complete — do not forget that this is the 1st step in a long process for your blog! Go to your WordPress admin area then click on “Posts” → “Add New”. After writing your article you simply need to click the “Publish” button.
However, you will quickly realise that creating the best articles is not enough — you will need to successfully generate traffic to your site and earn money from your blog in order to be profitable.
It is also necessary to put in place a publication strategy and precisely target what you want to address, otherwise you risk being penalised by Google. The regularity and quality of articles are key factors for your success. But that is not all.
(6.) Do SEO
The first thing you will surely want to do after setting up your site and your first articles is to be visible on search engines like Google. To do this, you will need to optimise your natural SEO, more commonly known as SEO. If you do not do this, you will never be indexed and therefore not visible on the first page of Google search results. Even though many think otherwise, this does not happen “naturally”! You are certainly millions of people on the same theme and Google will have to make a choice to display the 10 best pages, considering content quality, relevance, and authority. You will need to get into SEO! To put it bluntly, more than 95% of sites generate no organic (natural) traffic.
Can You Create a Blog Without WordPress?
Yes, it is entirely possible to create a blog with other CMSs such as the undeniable . If WordPress is the most well-known and especially so for creating a blog, it is not for nothing. However, if this solution does not appeal to you, nothing stops you from seeing our Webflow vs WordPress summary for creating a super powerful site.
Can You Create a WordPress Site for Less?
It is possible to not have to pay for hosting, a domain name, or WordPress themes by using WordPress.com rather than WordPress.org. However, with WP.com you do not benefit from all the advantages of its open source counterpart. But nothing stops you from starting small. There are also other ways to create a blog site for less, although I strongly advise against them.