How To Start A WordPress Blog (With Lightning Fast Hosting)

If you’re looking to start a WordPress blog for the first time it can be a bit unnerving.

And the last thing you need in your life is to have to change your hosting because you listened to the wrong people and made a bad decision at the get go.

That’s why I suggest you start a WordPress blog on Siteground.

Besides being lightning fast, you get FREE Cloudflare, a 30 day money back guarantee and you’ll never run into issues with densely packed servers, insufficient resources, no automated daily backups, DDoS attacks and having to wait for 50 minutes for a live chat consultant to attend to your support issue.

I wrote this guide for beginners so it’s real easy to follow.

Let’s jump right in.

Buy A Domain Name

I buy all l my domains from Namecheap. Their platform is easy to navigate and prices are excellent.

Search for a suitable domain name and complete the purchase.

Secure A Hosting Plan

I don’t believe there’s such a thing as the best hosting company.

You’ll get good service, easy to use platforms and nice speed with all of the following, in alphabetic order:

• Bluehost: Widely recommended. Good for beginners. Easy to grow with.
• Cloudways: Brilliant hosting. Brilliant pricing. 5 different cloud infrastructures to choose from. This site is hosted with Cloudways.
• Greengeeks: This was one of my first hosts I ever tried back in the mid ’90s. Environmentally orientated. Easy to use platform.
• InMotion: Great hosting. I used them for many years.
• Kinsta: Brilliant cloud hosting that uses Google Cloud infrastructure. Super fast.
• Liquidweb: Cloud hosting. Never used them. Known to be very good.
• Siteground: Well on top of their game. Brilliant shared hosting. brilliant service, speed and security. I have used them for many years.
• WP Engine: Super fast hosting. They take care of all optimizations so you can concentrate on writing.

I’ve hosted with most of the above over the years and I feel most comfortable recommending Siteground to start off with. Their hosting is really good and pricing for the first year is attractive.

You may well find slightly cheaper hosts but then there’s always some kind of trade off.

For instance, A2 Hosting’s cheapest plan comes in at $2.96 per month vs Siteground’s $3.95 per month but you don’t get automated daily backups and their firewall blocks certain processes that are needed for specific functionality. If you ever need to resort to a backup, which I promise you will, you’re buggered!

Automated backups are included in the next cheapest plan at $3.70 per month.

Clever marketing! But let’s cut through the fluff and look at what really talks.

Review signal turns regular Twitter conversations into reviews so the information above comes from a large cross section of users.

And most of the Facebook polls I’ve seen tend to agree.

So without further ado, let’s head on over to Siteground.

Select WordPress Hosting.

Choose a hosting plan.

Enter your new domain name and complete the process making sure to select a data center closest to your target audience.

Switch to My Accounts tab.

Launch the setup Wizard. Then click on the Start A New Website radio button.

Choose the WordPress option.

Enter details to be used to login to WordPress.

Confirm that you wish to install WordPress.

Complete Setup.

Now proceed to the customer area.

Click on My Accounts > Information and Settings.

Locate and copy the nameserver addresses (highlighted).

Point Domain To Siteground Servers

Return to Namecheap (or other domain registrar).

Click Manage. Then enter the nameservers that you copied.

It can take up to 24 hours for the DNS to fully propagate. You can check the progress at whatsmydns.

Green ticks indicate that propagation is complete. Red X’s indicate incomplete propagation.

Install SSL Certificate

Once the DNS propagation is fully complete, we must install the free Let’s Encrypt SSL certificate.

This ensures that your site will run on the https protocol thereby providing your users with a secure user experience.

Besides users, Google also up-ranks secure sites.

Return to My Accounts tab in your Siteground user area.

Click on cPanel and scroll down to the Security section.

Click Let’s Encrypt.

Make sure that the Let’s Encrypt SSL radio button is checked and that your domain name appears in the Domain field.

Click Install.

Click OK.

You will be returned to the My Accounts tab where the SSL appears as Active.

Accessing The WordPress Dashboard

In your browser, enter the following URL, ensuring that you replace yourdomain.com with your actual domain name:

www.yourdomain.com/wp-admin

Using the details you chose during the installation process, log in to your dashboard.

Although we have installed the SSL certificate, you will notice in the address bar that the dashboard is not secure. The same applies to the frontend site.

We’ll fix this in an instant.

Go to Settings > General.

Change both the WordPress Address and Site Address to the following:

https://www.yourdomain.com. Remember to use your own domain name.

When you click Save at the bottom of the page, you will be logged out.

Login again using the following URL:

https://www.yourdomain.com/wp-admin. Again replace yourdomain.com with your own.

The lock icon in the address bar indicates your site is now secure.

Cleaning Up The Dashboard

At this time, your main dashboard page looks something like this.

This is not the default WordPress dashboard, so let’s change that quickly.

At the bottom of the dashboard page click Switch To Default.

Click Screen Options at the top right of the dashboard window.

Uncheck the widgets that you don’t want to show up on the dashboard. You can always add back a widget if you wish.

Remove Unwanted Plugins

Anyone that follows me knows that I don’t like plugins unless they’re absolutely essential.

Plugins inject additional code into your site thereby affecting speed. And more plugins you have, the greater the chance of conflicts.

So let’s get rid of some plugins that are automatically added with the installation.

Start at the dashboard.

Click Plugins.

Deactivate both the SG Optimizer and the WordPress Starter plugins.

There’s no need to delete them just yet. Their programming code is completely inactive once deactivated so they cannot affect speed or functionality.

We do this because:

• WP Rocket is far better than the SG Optimizer plugin. It is a premium plugin so it will set you back $49 but it’s well worth it. You really do get what you pay for. If you decide to go with WP Rocket, you’ll want to follow my step by step setup guide to get it all set up.
• The WordPress Starter plugin is not required. I’ll be showing you how to get everything set up just perfectly.

Essential WordPress Settings

Once again, we start off at the dashboard.

Click Settings.

Click Reading.

Now enable the Search Engine Visibility option in order to discourage search engines from indexing your site until it’s ready to go live.

This option is not foolproof so I strongly suggest you password protect the directory where your website lives (public_html).

This prevents search engines from accessing any of your site’s files and folders, making it impossible to index your site.

Go back to cPanel and scroll down to the Security section.

Click Password Protect Directories.

Click on the public_html directory name.

1. Create a user.
2. Add a name for the directory.
3. Select the check box to password protect the directory.
4. Save

The next time you access the dashboard, you will be asked to authenticate yourself before getting to the dashboard login window. P.S. You may need to enter authentication details twice.

You can now safely return to the Reading Settings and disable the “Discourage search engines …” option. It’s best to do this so you don’t forget when you make your site live.

OK. Now click on Discussion.

Copy the configuration above and save the settings. The marked sections are the ones that require attention.

Let’s move on to Permalinks.

Select the Post Name option.

How To Install Plugins

Before we look at the essential plugins list, I need to show you how to install a plugin.

Please go to your WordPress dashboard.

Hover over Plugins, then select Add New.

Type in the name of the plugin you are looking for.

In the search results, locate the plugin you want to install and click Install Now.

Once installed, Activate the plugin.

You can also activate plugins from the list of installed plugins on the Plugins page.

Essential Plugins

As I said already, I don’t like plugins.

I keep them to a minimum in order to maximize speed and reduce conflicts.

I prefer to use code snippets where I can and subject to availability on the internet. I’m not a coder myself.

The following plugins are, however, essential.

Rank Math SEO

Optimizing your site for SEO is an ongoing process that should become second nature and borne in mind with everything you do on your site.

Writing a post and then going back afterwards to get your SEO right is not only going to waste a lot of valuable time but you’ll also find that it adversely affects the flow of your writing.

The SEO process should start well before you even put pen to paper, so to speak.

A good SEO plugin is imperative, especially for beginners. It will help to point out where you are falling short in your optimization efforts with a view to correcting as much as you possibly can.

In short, it will help you to perfect your on-page SEO.

I used to be a Yoast man. It’s a really good SEO plugin but I switched to Rank Math SEO because it’s bloat free and includes structured data (snippets) functionality absolutely free.

I wrote a setup guide that will not only help you to get the plugin installed and configured with the optimal settings but also covers how to perform keyword research which is an essential part of on-page SEO.

According to the developer, this is the most comprehensive tutorial on the internet with a link to the post being published on the developer’s WordPress plugin page.

As you can see, users are constantly referred to it.

WP Rocket

When it comes to high end managed WordPress hosting such as that offered through WP Engine or Kinsta, they take care of page caching for you.

But with website speed being an increasingly important Google ranking factor, a good caching plugin is imperative on shared hosting plans.

Related Reading: Over 40 optimizations to add incredible speed to your WordPress blog.

WP Rocket is constantly rated the best caching plugin in Facebook polls.

This guide will walk you through the optimal WP Rocket settings and configuration.

Antispam Bee

The native WordPress comments form is very susceptible to bot spam.

And so are most contact forms.

I’ve done a lot of testing and I can vouch that Akismet is really good. Unfortunately it’s not free for commercial use. This includes any website that is monetized in any way whatsoever.

Other than Akismet, I have found Antispam Bee to be the best of the free ones.

Ensure Access To All Versions Of Your Site

Before we go on to theme selection, it’s best practice to to ensure that users are redirected to a secure version of your site, irrespective of whether they use a www or non www URL to access it.

At this time, your site can be accessed through 4 different URL’s:

• https://www.yourdomain.com
• https://yourdomain.com
• http://www.yourdomain.com
• http://yourdomain.com

Now remember that we changed our URL protocol to the https://www.yourdomain.com format.

If you now enter https://www.yourdomain.com, you will be taken to a secure connection for that URL.

But if you enter http://wpforme.com, you are taken to a non secure version of your site, which you don’t want users to land on.

To remedy this, we will add a redirect rule to the .htaccess file which is currently hidden.

Access cPanel from your client area and select File Manager.

Check the Show Hidden Files option and click Go.

Make sure you are in the public_html directory.

Click on the .htaccess file to select it. Then click Edit.

You will get a popup asking you to confirm the edit.

Click Edit.

In the black box below is the code that you need to add to the top of your .htaccess file, as shown above.

Remember to replace example.com in the last line of the rule with your own domain name.

The .htaccess file is a very powerful file so make sure you copy and paste the code exactly as you see it and that your entered domain name is correct or you may find yourself locked out of your site.

RewriteEngine On 
RewriteCond %{HTTPS} off 
RewriteRule (.*) https://example.com/$1 [R=301,L] 

Users will now (always) be redirected to a secure version of your site.

Canonicalization

Now that I’ve given you some background as to the different versions of your site, it’s important to let search engines know which version to index in search engine results pages (SERP).

Essentially, https://www.yourdomain.com is a completely different URL to https://yourdomain.com. The content living on each URL is, however, identical.

While Google is (now) smart enough to know that the site should not be penalized for duplicate content, the issue of which version (www or non-www) to index remains.

Your preferred version will become the canonical version of your site.

In order to ensure that search engines index the correct version, we need the correct rewrite rule in the .htaccess file.

Because I set up this sample site using the https://www protocol, I want the canonical to include the www.

If you have done the same, you can remove the first rewrite rule (above) and replace it with this one.

PS. No domain name to be entered as the rule fetches it automatically.

RewriteEngine on 
RewriteCond %{HTTPS} off 
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} !^www. 
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ https://www.%{HTTP_HOST}/$1 [R=301,L] 

If you installed WordPress using the non www version (https://yourdomain.com), you need to change the 2nd, 3rd and 4th lines of the rewrite rule as follows.

RewriteEngine on 
RewriteCond %{HTTPS} off 
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^www. 
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ https://%{HTTP_HOST}/$1 [R=301,L] 

Choosing A Theme

When you start a WordPress blog on Siteground, the WordPress installation adds the most recent default WordPress theme (Twenty Nineteen).

While there are thousands of free themes available in the WordPress repository, the biggest challenge for beginners is that these free themes don’t come with demo content.

This is what the default Twenty Nineteen theme looks like when activated!

For a beginner wanting to start a WordPress blog, it can be daunting to customize the theme to the way it’s supposed to look, without demo data.

With a ready customized theme, all you need to do is replace demo images and content with your own which will make your life a whole lot easier when you’re just getting started.

The biggest mistake I see from bloggers who start WordPress blogs is choosing a free theme in the hope of saving costs.

When I started out with WordPress, the time and frustration to get to a point where I could start publishing content was incredible. It was wasted opportunity and at the end of the day, I had to change themes anyway which was a major mission. I could have saved months if I’d just bought a proper theme at the outset!

I wouldn’t like you to go down the same road but if you’re intent on a free theme, you can explore all of them directly from your dashboard.

Click Add New and find a theme that you feel happy with.

Click install.

Activate it.

Then start customizing.

This is what you’ll be faced with if you “buy” a free theme.

Even now that I know my way around WordPress, I’d hate to find myself having to customize a theme without demo content!

Premium Themes

The two major considerations for anyone wanting to start a WordPress blog are, in order of importance:

1. Hosting provider.
2. Theme choice.

Your theme will have a huge impact on the performance of your site. A fast, lightweight theme will perform much more efficiently than a heavy graphic-laden inefficient one.

WordPress optimization guide

Here are some places where you can find premium themes.

Envato Market – Themeforest

I’d stay away if I were you!

I’ve had some terrible experiences here. Many of the themes are put together by developers who slap these together on a part time basis to make extra cash.

Personally I find the marketing a little deceptive.

Most themes come with 6 months support. You can opt to extend this but most people wait to see whether they’ll need it.

As far as future updates are concerned, Themeforest have no qualms about mentioning future updates but what they don’t tell you is that you have to pay a yearly subscription in order to get them.

The problem is that if you neglect to update your theme and it becomes incompatible with a future version of WordPress (which updates regularly), you’re going to have problems.

Another issue that could crop up is the response time for support.

I’ve had instances where I practically had to beg for support and in one case I had to wait for over a month for the developer to fix a major bug in the theme which required no more than fixing the syntax in a single line of code that couldn’t have taken longer than 20 seconds to sort out.

I added Envato Market to this list as a gentle warning.

Read on ….

Mythemeshop

These themes are built by the same guys who developed the Rank Math SEO plugin, so you can be sure they’re well built and optimized.

As a matter of fact, theme building is their core business.

As you can see, the pricing is very fair and completely transparent and those that use these themes will vouch that they’re blazing fast.

Given their inherent quality, I’m happy to recommend mythemeshop themes, without reservation, to anyone who wants to start a WordPress blog.

StudioPress (Genesis Framework)

Powered by the Genesis Framework, StudioPress themes are probably the ultimate choice for serious bloggers.

They’re not only recommended by Yoast, Syed Balki of WPBeginner and endorsed by Matt Mullenweg, the founder of WordPress, but anyone who knows Matt Cutts, the ex head of search quality (spam) at Google, knows that he uses StudioPress themes himself.

I recommend you take a look at the many testimonials in my StudioPress review which will give you an idea of the respect they command from the blogging community.

If you start a WordPress blog with a StudioPress theme, I’m certain you’ll never look back.

You get a lifetime everything deal which is super sweet considering that you’re investing in the best theme money can buy.

Your first theme purchase includes the Genesis Framework, where after you’ll never have to buy it again. Future theme purchases are then substantially discounted.

But best of all, for a once-off purchase, you can use the the theme unlimited times on as many domains as you wish. And you get lifetime support and framework updates.

No yearly subscriptions. No further costs!

I use StudioPress themes for all my sites and I’ll never consider switching to anything else.

They’re super lightweight (and therefore blazing fast) and the founder Brian Gardener is a master of minimalistic design.

Where else are you going to find a deal like this?

Add A Logo To The Site Header

To add your own logo go to the dashboard.

Select Appearance > Header.

Click Add New Image.

Upload a logo in PNG or JPG format. SVG is not supported in the image gallery.

On the right hand side of the window, Select And Crop your logo.

Take careful note of the size that your logo should be. It’s no problem if the width or height is a bit less than the maximum specified (highlighted in the image) but if it exceeds the dimensions it will be cut off.

Add Menu Items to Navigation

Adding or changing menu items in WordPress is achieved by accessing the dashboard.

Go to Appearance > Menus.

Using the left sidebar, you can select pages or posts that you want to add to the menu.

You can also create custom links as well as create menu items based on categories.

The items you choose will be added to the right hand side. Simply drag the relevant menu item to the desired location.

You can create a sub menu that will drop down from a parent item by dragging and moving a menu item so that it is offset beneath a parent item, as follows.

Add A Contact Form

I recommend that all websites include the following:

• About Page – This shows Google that there is a real person behind the website and helps to create trust.
• Contact Form – Shows Google that the business is contactable.

A contact form can be added using:

• Form Builder.
• Page Builder.

The WP Forms plugin makes it really simple to add a contact form to your site.

Ninja Forms is also free and does an equally good job.

If you’re going to use a page builder like Beaver Builder or Elementor, both include contact forms.

Writing Your First Post

Now that you’re all set up with a hosting account and a theme, it’s time to write your first post.

Access your dashboard.

For this first time, click Posts (there’s a reason for this).

A sample post should no longer be included with Siteground’s WordPress installation but if perchance you see a sample Hello World sample post, simply trash it.

Then click Add New.

I remember the first time I landed in the new Gutenberg editor.

It was scary!

I didn’t know where to start or what I should do.

Don’t stress. It’s actually very easy to use. I’ll show you how to get going and you’ll be building pages like a pro in no time at all.

The first thing you need to do is to cancel the welcome message at the top left of the screen.

Now you can see straight away what to do!

Place your cursor in the title field and add your post title and then proceed to add your first paragraph.

Pressing enter at the end of your paragraph text takes you to the next block where you can add a heading, image  or gallery.

Click the + button to see a list of elements you can add.

From the sidebar on the right, you can apply extra formatting options while editing your post.

While your cursor is not active on the page you can now alter the allocated URL, add categories, tags and a featured image, revert to a prior revision, make your post sticky and change the publish date and time when you’re ready.

OK. I’ve shown you how to get started but I can’t write the post for you. The rest is up to you.

Next Steps

Now that you’ve created a blog, I want to show you:

• How to setup Cloudflare.
• How to track metrics with Google Analytics.
• How to promote your blog posts on full autopilot.
• How to make money with your blog.

Let’s jump right in.

Set Up Cloudflare

Siteground has a partner agreement with Cloudflare allowing you to setup Cloudflare from within the Siteground user area.

I highly recommend using Cloudflare for the following reasons:

• Cloudflare is a CDN so your content will be distributed across multiple edge servers around the world and served from a location closest to your user. This makes a marked difference to site speed.
• Your site will be proxied through Cloudflare. This effectively hides your IP address thereby enhancing security (eliminates DDoS attacks).
• It’s FREE.

Head on back to your Siteground User Area > My Accounts > Information And Settings.

Click Access.

Click Activate Free.

Once in Cloudflare, select the SSL/TLS tab and enable Full (strict).

Tracking Your Metrics With Google Analytics

You don’t have to add Google Analytics to your site right away but I’d recommend that you do so at least before you make your site live.

That way you can monitor your site’s progress from the get go.

The easiest way to set up Google Analytics is install the Monster Insights plugin which displays your analytics within the WordPress dashboard – no need to leave your site.

Promoting Your Blog Posts On Autopilot

Promoting your blog posts on Social media is a great way to increase traffic to your site.

But it time consuming and tiresome.

There are a number of plugins that can help you to automate the process but each one comes with its own limitations.

In days gone by I used Jetpack to do this but it absolutely destroyed my website speed because it’s so resource intensive.

Now the great thing with the method I’m going to show you is that it doesn’t involve using a plugin. It’s all done with an online tool.

I’ll show you exactly how to publish your posts to Twitter (automatically), the moment you publish them in WordPress.

But remember, you’re not limited to Twitter. You can do the same with Facebook, Pinterest and the like. The procedure is roughly the same.

Once I show you how to use the tool, you’ll want to kick yourself that you didn’t know about it before.

This post shows you exactly how to set it up.

How To Make Money With Your Blog

Unless you’re doing this for enjoyment or a charitable cause, which is great, I’m assuming that you decided to start a WordPress blog to make money.

Well I’ll tell you this much. In the same way as there are many ways to skin a cat, so too are there a number of ways to make money blogging.

The problem is that most of the monetization methods you read about don’t work.

Heck, nobody wants to spend a good deal of their time doing something in exchange for a few measly cents, right?

Well that’s where Pareto’s 80/20 principle comes in.

It’s worked for me in all of my businesses: 80% of your income will be generated from 20% of your sales.

If you want to maximize your productivity and make some real money, I suggest you concentrate on the 20% of the income generating activities that will produce the bulk of your income!

Make sense?

Read about these monetization methods that really work.

Final Thoughts

Many posts have been written about how to make a website.

But I wrote this guide with the clear intention of helping you to not only start a WordPress blog but also to get you to a point where you feel confident about making your own customizations and getting around the WordPress dashboard.

Naturally, there are going to be things that you come across along your journey that you haven’t seen before.

Trust me, I come across things that surprise me on a daily basis. I can’t believe how little I actually know!

In order to leave you with a more rounded feel for blogging, I have also touched on aspects of metrics tracking, promotion and making money through blogging.

After all, that’s probably why you decided to start a WordPress blog.

Or is it?

Leave me a comment.