WordPress Tutorial for Beginners - Step-By-Step

What's up, guys? In this video, I'm going to be showing you a complete WordPress tutorial for beginners. So in case you're looking to start a website and you're not sure how to use WordPress yet, I've got you covered. I'm going to do a complete walkthrough of the dashboard so that you know what everything is. I'm going to show you how to do things like add pages, write posts, install themes so you can customize your website, and so much more. And I'm even going to be setting up my own website as we do all this so that I can show you in real time as you're making your website. And it's all step-by-step, so it's going to be super easy to follow. And in case you're not entirely sure what WordPress is or how it works, I've got a whole other video on that that I will link in the description below. I use visual examples and make it super easy to understand. Okay, so if you're ready, let's get this started. Okay, so for step number one, I'm going to show you how to install WordPress. And if you already have WordPress installed, feel free to skip to the next step. And you can do that by going into the description and clicking on one of the timestamps. Okay, so to get WordPress and start making your website like a professional, you're going to need web hosting. Web hosting basically just allows you to rent space on the internet so that you can fill it with all of your text and pictures and buttons and so on and start using WordPress. And web hosting is 100% necessary if you want to own your own website. So, yes, you could do a free website, but you're going to be limited to the following things. You won't be able to monetize the free website with ads. You won't be able to install helpful plugins. You don't have an unlimited amount of themes that you can use to customize your website. And you won't own your own domain name. It'll be something like yourdomainname.wordpress.com. So this is why I recommend getting a hosting plan and installing the WordPress software. So let me show you how to do that right now. Okay, so first thing you want to do is click on the first link below this video. And this will take you to a special co-branded landing page that I have with HostGator where I worked out a huge discount for you to get on your hosting. And I get it. We're not all made of money. So not everyone's just going to jump for the highest paid plan with all the bells and whistles. But what I recommend and what HostGator recommends is to go for the hatchling plan. It is more than enough to get started with your first website. You can get your very own domain name. You can install WordPress with just a single click and a few other goodies. So let's just go ahead and click buy now. And here is where we're going to be able to choose our own domain name. So if you already have a domain, you can click on this button. But for now, I'm going to register my own. So I'm going to type in beginnerwptutorials.com. And then click enter. And awesome, it's available. And it's going to give you a bunch of extra recommendations here. But you can just skip all those. I recommend sticking with the .com. And here you'll see the domain privacy protection. And it's checked. So I highly, highly recommend keeping this checked. Because otherwise, your information will be public, and then solicitors will call you left and right saying that they can build your website for you and all that. And it's super annoying. And that has nothing to do with the web hosting company. That's why they offer you this protection so that you can stay unbothered. Okay, so leave that checked. And we're going to scroll down and choose our type. So we've got our hatchling plan, which is correct. And we'll choose our billing cycle. Right now it's set to 36 months, which is going to be your cheapest plan because you're committing to longer. But if you don't want to commit to 36 months, I do recommend doing 12 months. Because no matter what, you have to buy your domain name for 12 months as well. So you might as well get your hosting plan for the same amount of time. But if you're not sure and you just want to try this out for a month or two and see if you like it, go ahead and click on the one month. And then just simply make a username. And then enter in your very own PIN. And from here we can enter in our billing info. So I'm just going to do that really quick. So now we can head down to the additional services. And you want to leave this free SSL certificate checked. Because what this is, is that little lock symbol on your website that lets people know that this website is safe and secure. So go ahead and just leave that checked. And what we're going to do is uncheck protect your site from hackers. Uncheck back up your hard work. Because I have videos on my channel that show you how to do a lot of this stuff for free. So we're just going to scroll down some more. And make sure that your coupon code says creator pro website, which it does. And this coupon code is my affiliate link. So I do get a little bit of commission off of this. But it also saves you up to about 60% depending on which plan you choose. So it's a huge discount. So it's a win-win for both. But if you don't like me and you don't want to use it, then that's okay. Still going to do the WordPress tutorial. So let's keep going. So as you can see, we've got our domain name right here. And we've got that for one year. Which was $15 and it's now only $5. We've got our one month of the hatchling plan. And then the privacy protection is the add-on. Which, again, I highly recommend keeping. So at only $27, this is ready to go. So what I'm going to do is click on the Yes, I have read the HostGator's Terms of Service. And then just check out now. Awesome. So they are now setting up our account. And this should really only take a few minutes. Okay. And you'll get this little pop-up that wants you to tell HostGator about your experience with websites. Just go ahead and click on the X. Okay. So now we can get WordPress installed. So to do this, just simply go over to the Marketplace tab over here. And then from here, just scroll down until you see One Click Installs. And click on this big blue button. And then just simply click on WordPress. Now, just select your domain. And then click on Next. Now give it a title. So we'll just say Beginner WordPress Tutorials. Admin user is my name. First name. Last name. And email. Now just agree to the Terms of Service. And then click on Install. Cool. Now WordPress is installing. And boom, just like that, it's already done. So while we're here, what I want you to do is just copy this information right here. And save it to somewhere safe on your computer. Because you're going to need this ridiculous password to log in to WordPress in the next step. And don't worry, I'll show you how to change that password to your own unique password. Okay, so now if you were to go up and create a new tab and type in your new domain name, you're going to be brought to a page that looks like this. And the reason you're brought here is because your site has to propagate. And what that means is that HostGator has to send this new domain name out to the entire world so that everyone in the world can access it. And this process takes about 20 to 30 minutes. It says it could take up to 24 hours, but I've never had it take that long. So take a break and in about 20 to 30 minutes, come back and we'll get going again. Okay, so step number two is how to log in to WordPress the right way. Okay, so now that we're back after about 20 to 30 minutes, we're going to check on our website. So all you have to do is type in your new domain again and hit Enter. And whenever you're brought to a page like this, that means your website has finished propagating. So instead of logging in using the Admin Login button down here, I'm going to show you how to log in the right way. So just simply go up to your URL and click behind it and do forward slash wp-admin, just like that. And then click Enter. And here you're brought to the WordPress login. So this is the way that you should always get used to signing in because once you publish your website, that other Admin Login button is going to be gone. So my username was my name. And then just copy and paste that ridiculously long password that we copied from earlier. And then click Login. Cool, so now we've logged in to WordPress for the first time. And it looks a little crazy. So let's clean it up. So just simply start clicking on all the X's on everything on this dashboard. Okay, so step number three is how to navigate the WordPress dashboard. So I'm going to show you all the important things. And I'm going to leave out the things that you don't need to bother with. So first up with the name of our site, which is for me, Beginner WordPress Tutorials. So if you hover over this, you can just click on Visit Site. And this will take you to what your website looks like. And as of right now, it's super boring because we have not actually installed any themes or customized in any way. So I'm just going to go back. And over here on the left is your main menu. And your main menu houses all the tools that you're going to use in WordPress. So Posts is where you can write new blog posts. So for instance, a blog post could be the Top 10 WordPress Secrets. And I will show you how to make a blog post later in this tutorial. And moving down, you've got Media. So this is where you can add all of your pictures and things like that to use on your website. And below that, we have Pages. And you can create an About Me page that tells all about who you are and what your website is. Or you could, say, create a Contact page or plenty of other things. And underneath, we have Comments. And people can leave comments on your page if you so allow them to. And then you can respond to those comments here in this section. And we have WP Forms. And what this is, it's just a way to create a new contact form that you can use on your website. And if you want, I have a whole video explaining exactly how to do this that I will link down in the description as well. And next, you have the Marketplace, which, in all honesty, I don't really use that much. This is where you can buy paid themes that will increase the customization and the functionality. But I use other websites to get these themes, and then I install them into WordPress. So you really don't have to worry about this one. And underneath, you have Appearance. And Appearance is how you install themes. So if you wanted, you could just click on the Themes button. And then you could go searching through over 11,000 different free themes to customize your website. Which I will show you how to do all of that coming up. So underneath that, we have Plugins. And Plugins is how you can install different plugins and apps to increase the functionality of your website. So this could be things like being able to put your Instagram feed onto your website homepage. Or if you wanted, you can install backup software so that you can backup your website. And again, I will also show you how to install plugins coming up. Then underneath, you've got Users, Tools, and Settings. And these are all just for backend WordPress stuff for your user profile. So for instance, this is how you could change that ridiculous password that you were given from HostGator. So let me show you what I mean. I will click on Users, and then go to All Users. And from here, I'll just click on my name. And if you want, you could change the color scheme of your WordPress. So I could do a light version, a blue version, coffee, whatever you want. But I'm going to stick to the default. And we're going to skip all this other stuff and scroll all the way down. And here, you could upload a profile picture if you want. But nobody will really see this unless you're responding to comments left and right. So I wouldn't worry too much. But underneath here is where you can change that password. So what we're going to do is click on Generate Password. And it will give you this new crazy one. So we're just going to delete that. And we're going to put in our own password. And then just click on Update Profile. Okay, so now let's move on to using WordPress to customize your website. So step number four is going to be how to add a new theme. And a theme is basically just a template that you install for the look and the style of your website. And it allows you to control that website customization to a T. So let's go get one. Okay, so from here, just go over to Appearance. And then click on Themes. And from here, you can see that our active theme right now is the 2019 theme. And this is just a basic WordPress theme that they give you. And what you want to do is go get your own. But once you get your own, this area is where those are kept. So let's go get our own and add it to this list. So first, just go down and click on this huge box that says Add New Theme. And from here, you can use this little bar up here to search through themes based on the featured, popular, latest, and so on. So if I click on Popular, I can look at the most popular themes on WordPress to date. And again, WordPress has over 11,000 different free themes. So there are a ton to choose from in here. And I have currently tested just too many to count. And I can say that by far my favorite for beginners is the Hestia theme. It's just the cleanest looking and easiest to use theme. And it has a fair amount of customization. By the way, guys, if you're not sure what theme to pick because you're just starting out, I have another video called the Top 5 Free and Best WordPress Themes. And I'm going to also link that in the description below. So check that out. There's going to be just a whole list of helpful videos down there. So what I'm going to do is just click on the Install button and then just click Activate. Cool. So now it'll give us this little congratulations message that says we have now installed Hestia and it's now ready to use. And if you scroll down, you can see it in our list of themes now. So as you can see, the 2019 theme is no longer active. So if we go back up to our website title and then click on Visit Site, which I will open in a new window. And as you can see, we've got our Hestia theme now activated. And again, it looks pretty boring. So what we're going to do is work on customizing this. So let's just exit out of this. Okay, so let's move on to step number five, which is how to install plugins. So plugins are just helpful applications that allow you to expand the functionality of your website. So let's say you want to make an online store. You can do that through a plugin called WooCommerce. Or you can put your Instagram feed on your website. You can create a slider. Or you can even get plugins to help you with search engine optimization if you want to get to the top of Google rankings. Okay, so all we're going to do is go over to the Plugins tab over here in the main menu. And then we're just going to go over to Add New. And from here, you can see all the featured plugins, just like we did with the themes. You can search through the popular plugins as well. So we've got our search engine optimization plugin over here that I mentioned. And if you want to create an online store, you can use WooCommerce over here. And you can click on any of these plugins, and it'll show you a little bit about what it is. So it'll tell you everything that it features, everything that it can do, all in this list. And you can even click on screenshots and see kind of screenshots of what this plugin looks like whenever you're actually operating it. So this is for tracking sales. This is creating products and so on. But I'm not going to get into e-commerce in this video. So what I want to do is install a plugin called OrbitFox. And OrbitFox is just going to help me put some cool tools with my Hestia theme. So I'm just going to go up to Search Plugins and type in OrbitFox. And here you can see that OrbitFox plugin. So all you want to do to install a theme is click on Install Now. And then just click on Activate. And once that plugin's activated, it'll get added to this list of all of our installed plugins. And as you can see, WordPress has given us a bunch of default plugins, which, to be honest, if you're a beginner, you really don't need to worry about any of these. So in order to deactivate and delete the ones that you don't need, I'll show you how to do that. So just click on each one that you want to deactivate. I'll just start with these, for instance. And then just go up to Bulk Actions. And then click on Deactivate. And then just click Apply. So now, same thing. You can select all of the ones that you want to delete. And then just go to Bulk Actions. Click on Delete. And then just click Apply. And it'll say, Are you sure? And we're going to say, Yes, OK. And now those are successfully deleting. So before we move on, I'm going to get one more plugin. And this is going to be for my contact form. So I'm just going to go up to the Add New button. And then just go over to the search bar and type in Pirate Forms. And then you'll see Contact Form and SMT Plugin by Pirate Forms. It's just this first one right here. So just go ahead and click on Install Now. And then click Activate. Cool. So all that did was just add a contact form to the bottom of my Hestia theme. OK. So step number six is how to customize your website using your new theme. So as you saw, I installed the Hestia theme. And I even got a helpful plugin called Orbit Fox that puts a bunch of helpful tools onto that theme. And now I'm going to use that theme to customize my website, put my images in, the buttons, and everything. So I'll show you how to do that right now. So to do this from your WordPress dashboard, just simply go back up to the title and then go over to Visit Site. And now we're back to our ugly-looking website, but not for long. So from here, just click on the Customize button. And bam, now everything changes the way that we want. So this is actually how our site is going to look, minus all of the stock images and text and so on. So we're going to change all that, even the buttons. But this is more in line with how your website's going to look. And if you want a full-screen view of this, you can just click on the Hide Controls button down over on the left here. And now we've got a full-screen view of our new website. So pretty cool. So I'm just going to go click on this little blue button and open those back up again. So all these items over here in this left-hand menu are your theme controls. So these are all the buttons you're going to use to change around this theme. But, lucky for you, Hestia is so easy to use, and that's why I recommend it, because all you have to do if you want to change something is just click on one of these little blue pencil buttons. And that will take you exactly to the spot to change that one item. So in this case, I wanted to change, say, the title or the header. So as you can see, we've got the title, which is changed in the Customizer. So all you have to do is highlight that, and you can change it to whatever you want. And boom, it changes right here on our website as well. So we can do the same with the subheading text. So if we just go down to Text, we can change it here. And same with the button text. So we've got this pink button here, which we can change the color. But if you want to change the text, just go to Button Text and change that. And then there's a button URL. So I'm going to change this to, let's say, my YouTube channel that has all my tutorials on it. So I'm just going to put that URL in there, which I already had copied. But if not, you can just go up to a new tab and grab whatever URL that you want, and then just paste it down here. Cool. Now before we move on, let me show you how to save your work. So in case you don't feel like publishing just yet by clicking on this button, you can just click on the little gear icon up here. And this will allow you to save a draft. So I'm just going to click on Save Draft, and then just click on, again, the Save Draft button here in blue. Cool. So now that draft has been saved. So for whatever reason, our internet went down. We could come back, and all of our work would still be here. So now I'm going to show you how to update the image over here. So right now, it's this little teddy bear thing. So we're going to get rid of that. So first, you can just click on the Remove button. And then we're just going to go over to Select Image. And from here, you can upload your own images. So in my case, I get my images from a site called Pixabay. And they're actually all royalty-free images. You don't have to pay for any of these, which is awesome. So you can search in the search bar for whatever you want. But in this case, I'm just going to scroll around and see what I like. And I'm just going to grab this one just for an example. And you can download any image by clicking on Free Download. And I'm going to grab the 1920 by 1078. And just say, I am not a robot. I'm a real human being. And then Download. And cool. So that image just hit my downloads. So I'm just going to go back to my WordPress. And I'm going to click on Select Files. And then you can navigate through your computer to find where you put those downloads. So mine's right here. So I'm just going to click on the image and then click on Open. And then just click on Choose Image. And boom. Now that is now updated on our website. So pretty cool. And if you want to see what it looks like full screen, again, you can just hide the controls. And there's our full screen. Okay. So let's open up those controls again. And a cool little feature is if you don't want these words right in the middle, you want them on the left or the right, you can just click on this Extra tab over here. And this is still under the Big Title section. So just click on that Extra button. And you can change the layout of those words. So that's the left. That's the right. And then back to the middle. Cool. So just go back. So now I'll show you how to change the color for this button here as well as the color for our contact form down here at the bottom. So let's just go up. And we're just going to go to the Back button right here. And then back one more time. And then just go down to Appearance Settings. And then go to Colors. And then just change the accent color. So in this case, I'm going to do, like, a blue. But green and orange are also really good colors that stand out. But in this case, I'm just going to do kind of a blue color like that. So as you can see, it changed our button as well as our contact form at the bottom. Pretty quick and easy. That's why I love this theme. So now I'm going to show you how to change these fonts as well as the font sizes. So let's just go ahead and click on the Back button. And then just go down to Typography. And here is where you can change that font. So I'm just going to click on this first box that says Default. And I'll just change it to something so you can see the difference. So I'll do Comic Sans. And there you go. The font just changed. But I don't really like that, so I'm just going to go back to the Default. And then if you want to change the size of this, all you have to do is just go to the little Font Size tab. And we've got our Posts and Pages section, which we don't actually have any blog posts or pages written yet. But once you do, that's how you change those font sizes. But for this case, we've got our Big Title section. So I'm just going to go to Big Title section down here. And you can drag that down like that to change the size. So that's also pretty quick and easy. And just make sure you save your work by clicking on Save Draft. Or you can Publish. So if you ever look at your website and you're not sure why it didn't update, it's probably because you only saved the draft and you didn't publish. So if you want to publish, you can just go over to the little gear and then click on Publish. And then just click Publish here in blue. Okay, so that was how to customize your website using your theme. And in this case, that was the Hestia theme. Now I'm going to show you for step number seven, how to add pages. So this is in case you want to add a contact page or an About Me page or a blog post page. It's actually separate from your homepage. So I'll show you how to do that using the WordPress dashboard. We're just going to go down to Pages. And from Pages, we're just going to go to Add New. And here is where you can create new pages. And this is pink because of my Hestia theme. So I can actually change that pink to whatever image that I want to put. And I can do that by changing the Featured Image over here. And then just go to Set Featured Image. And in this case, I'm just going to use the same one that I had on my homepage. But if you wanted, you could just go to Upload Files and upload your own. So I'm just going to click on Select. And now I can add a title to it. So let's just say this is an Our Mission page for my company. And I'm going to state my mission down here. So if I want, I can just go up to Add a Block up here, this little plus icon. And I could add in a heading. So I could say, I don't know, Making Stuff Up. And then all you have to do is hit Enter. And you can start typing here. So I'm just going to paste in some dummy text that I already had. But you can type in whatever you want. And now we've got a page based on our mission here at this fake tutorials company. So to show you what it looks like, I'm just going to save the draft. And then I'm just going to click on Preview. Cool. So there's our new page. And obviously, if you write more, it will be a lot longer. But that's how you can make a new page. So I'm just going to go up to the X and cancel out of this preview. And if you're done with it and there's no other changes that you want to make at the moment, you can just go ahead and click on the Publish button. And then click Publish again. So now I'm going to show you how to add this page to the menu at the top of your home page so that anyone could click on it in the header and take them to this page. So let's just go over to our title and then click on Visit Site. And then just click on the Customize button. Cool. And from here, all you want to do is click on this little blue pencil icon, which is over by the header menu. And all we want to do is add that hour mission right here in our menu. So let's just click on that pencil. And that will bring us to this menu over here. And this is our primary menu, which we have set currently. So let's just click on Edit Menu. And as you can see, we've got our home and our blog, which are what shows up right over here. So let's just add a new item. So go to Add Items. And let's just add that hour mission pages. So it shows up under Pages. So if not, you're probably looking at something like this. So just drop down those pages and click on Hour Mission. And there we go. So now it was just added. So if we hide the controls, you can now see our mission is now in that menu. And if we were to click on it, it would take us to that page. Okay, so that was how to create a page and even add it to your menu. So now we're going to move on to step number eight, which is how to create a blog post. And a blog post is basically just updated pages. So they're how-to guides. They're top ten tips. They're all the things that you read on the internet when you go for advice. So let's go ahead and make one. So let's just go up and save our work by clicking on Publish. And then just click on the X to get out of the Customize menu. And then we're just going to go back to our dashboard. So go to your title and then go over to Dashboard. And to create a post, all you have to do is just go down to Posts and then go to Add New. So here's how to add a blog post. And it's a lot like adding a page from what you can see. But a blog post is a little bit different because you can add blog posts to categories. So you've got this little Categories tab over here. And if you click on that, you can add a new category. And you could say, let's say your blog post is something like the top ten web design mistakes. So maybe you want to add this to a new category like Design. So you could just create it and then just do Add New Category. And now you can check it whether you want it to be a part of that design category or not. And you can add posts to as many categories as you want. So let's just create a blog post. So I'll just add a title. And again, let's change this pink to whatever background we want. So let's just go over to Featured Image and then choose a set featured image. And I'll just select this one at random. And then go to Select. There we go. So now our background has changed. And again, we can go up to Add a Block. And we can add a heading. We can add images. We can do a gallery. All sorts of cool stuff. So I'll just add a heading. And I'll just say my thoughts so far. And I'll just hit Enter. And I'll just add some more of that dummy text. But you can add whatever text that you want. So it works very similar to creating a page. And again, with these headings, you can change the sizes here as well. So right now, this is at a Heading 2, which is the second largest. And we can do a Heading 4. So it's a bit smaller. Or a Heading 3. But I'm just going to stick to a Heading 2. And the reason why you want these different heading sizes is because we can separate content in our blog post. So let me show you what I mean. So let's just go ahead and add a new heading. And we'll just say excitement. So these are my thoughts on excitement. If I can spell that right. And I'll change that to a Heading 4. That way, I've got my thoughts on excitement. And I can also duplicate that again by clicking on Duplicate. And I'll just bring this down. And I'll add my thoughts on, let's say, nervousness. I'm really nervous about writing this new blog. And then again, I can write more content below on that. So that's the reason why you want to have different heading sizes. So just for fun, I'll copy this dummy text again and duplicate it. And then to move it down, all you do is just select the little Move Down or Move Up arrow. There we go. So that's a blog post right there. Obviously, not well written, but it's a blog post. So I'm just going to go up to Publish. And then Publish again. And boom, we've got our first blog post done. Okay, guys. So step number nine is to publish your website. So I know we've hit that Publish button a few times to save our work. But your work will not be live on the Internet for everyone to see until we publish our website. Okay, so from your WordPress dashboard, you're going to see this little notification up here that says, Your site is currently displaying a Coming Soon page. Once you're ready to launch your site, click here. So all you've got to do is simply click here. And boom, now our site is now live for anyone to see. All right, guys. So we've gotten around our WordPress dashboard. We've installed new themes. We've installed new plugins. We've created posts. We've created pages. And you've pretty much learned everything that you need to get your first website set up in WordPress. But if you want more WordPress tutorials for topics like how to create a contact form for your website or how to add your Instagram feed to your homepage or how to back up your hard work so that you never lose your website if it crashes and so many more topics like that, go ahead and smash that Subscribe button on my channel. I'm constantly posting out new WordPress tutorials. And just pretty much design tips and all sorts of helpful stuff for making websites. You won't be sorry if you subscribe. So that's it for this video, guys. I will see you on the next video.