WordPress installed and now

Congratulations! You have gotten WordPress installed within the hosting of MijnHostingPartner.nl. And now you want to start building your website. With this step-by-step plan you can make sure your WordPress website will be a success.

WordPress is a Content Management System used by a large part of the internet to create a website. With its easy interface and way of working anyone can easily get a website up and running. With a WordPress website you have a lot of advantages over other methods. Namely, the easy change of the whole look with a theme, and working with the editor which is simpler than many other solutions. The WordPress editor is meant to be as easy as possible for anyone who wants to work with it.

Choosing a theme

Creating a WordPress website is easy with a theme, with a theme it is easy to pick how your website is going to look. MijnHostingPartner.nl always recommends to pick a simple theme, with good reviews, regular updates and a light format. With the light format we mean themes that are designed for speed. A heavy theme with lots of unnecessary features can not only slow down your website, but can also make it unsafe if it is not updated regularly.

So do your homework on a theme to ensure that your website does not have a disadvantage that can bite you back at a later stage. The right theme will ensure a stable website.

Creating your first posts and pages in WordPress

After installing and activating a theme you can play around with it for a while, make sure your logo is in a nice spot. And further customize the website layout using the WordPress customizer. With minimal efforts you can already set up a nice looking website.

After this however you will have to start working on the content of your website. A website has little to no chance of success without some form of content. This can be writing interesting product pages, showcasing your latest projects in a portfolio. Or writing content in the form of blog posts or otherwise. With content on a website you show that it deserves a place in the rankings. Search engines, ad networks and more all look at this. If you have little content on your website then hardly anyone will want to have anything to do with your website. Thin content will then get you back with a rejection.

That's why it's important to hold off on applying to an ad network or expecting much in the first few months of your WordPress website. And spend those first few months writing and creating content. Creating a WordPress website is often a quick task, expanding the content, and seeing the results of your efforts is really always a marathon, not a sprint. Only a few people manage to really go viral with their blog or website in those first few months or even longer of a website.

Installing a few useful plugins

With a WordPress website, installing more functionality using plugins is also easy and quick to do directly from the dashboard. With just a few clicks you can add a plugin to your WordPress website hosting. After that you can use it immediately.

Some handy plugins that we always recommend to install are:

• WP mail smtp
• The SEO Framework
• And a caching plugin
  

With these three plugins you already have everything you will need, perhaps a cookie plugin is also applicable when you want to collect information with Google Analytics or another statistics tool.

Never try to install a plugin for every random job, always be critical if you really need a plugin and do the research for a plugin in the same way you did for your theme. A wrong plugin can also make your website vulnerable to external attacks. With a little knowledge or research on HTML and CSS you can also apply many solutions without having to install a plugin right away. It is not necessary to install a plugin for a nice table of contents with sitelinks. This case as an example.

Set up Google services like Analytics and Search Console

To measure how your WordPress website performs, it is often necessary to set up a number of Google services. Google is and will continue to be the search engine everyone uses. And that is why it is advisable to use its services. Privacy aside. With Google Analytics you have a powerful tool installed on your website that provides insight into how users interact with your website. And which pages are the most popular. You can then apply this success to reproduce your latest pages or blog posts.

Google Search Console is a service from Google that gives you a glimpse of how Google views your website. So you can see what positions you are in with various searches, and whether your website is up to speed with mobile and speed. This can then be solved or improved. All you need to use the services of Google is a Google account. And installing a DNS record and a code snippet in your WordPress website.

Hopefully you now know where to start with the first steps of a WordPress website. Make your WordPress website a success together with your hosting partner!