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How to Make a Website in 2017 – Step by Step Guide (Free)

Are you looking to make a website? Starting a website can be a terrifying thought specially when you’re not techy. Don’t worry, you’re not alone. Having helped over 130,000+ people make a website with WordPress, we have decided to create the most comprehensive step by step guide on how to a make a website without learning how to code.



This guide is useful for users of all ages and skill levels. However, if you need help, then you can contact our expert team to help you setup your website for free.

→ Click Here to Get Your Free WordPress Website Setup! ←

If you want to do it by yourself, then please continue to follow our step by step guide on how to make a website.

Here is an overview from start to finish of all the steps we’ll walk you through in this guide.
  • How to find and register a domain name for free
  • Choosing the best web hosting
  • How to install WordPress
  • Installing a template to change your site’s design
  • Creating pages in WordPress
  • Customizing WordPress with addons and extensions
  • Resources to learn WordPress and get support
  • Taking it further, building websites with more features
Before we start, let’s cover some of the most commonly asked questions that we get.

What do I need to build a website?

You’ll need the following three things to start your WordPress site.
  • A domain name – this is the name of your website such as google.com
  • WordPress hosting – this is where your website files are stored.
  • 45 minutes of your undivided attention.

How much does a WordPress website cost?

The answer to this question really depends on what kind of website you are trying to build. We have written a 2000 word guide explaining how much does it really cost to build a website.

A typical business website can cost as low as $100 per year and can go as high as $30,000 per year.
We recommend all our users to start small and then add more features to your website as your business grows. This way you will save money and minimize potential losses and avoiding overspending.

In this guide, we’ll show you how to build a website for less than $100.

We will also show you how to take it further by adding more features to it in the future.

Which is the best website platform?

There are many website builders available that will help you setup a website. We recommend using self-hosted WordPress as your website platform.

WordPress is the most popular website platform in the world. It powers nearly 28% of all websites on the internet.

WordPress is free and comes with thousands of website designs and extensions. It is extremely flexible and works with almost every third-party tool and service available to website owners.
We use WordPress to build all our websites including this one, WPBeginner.

How to make the most out of this tutorial?

This is a step by step tutorial on how to make a website. We have divided it into different steps, and we’ll walk you through everything from start to finish. Just follow along the instructions, and you’ll have a very professional looking website in the end.

We will also point you in the right direction to take your website to the next level based on your needs.
 
Have fun creating your website.

Remember, if you need help, you can contact us and we will setup your website for free.
Let’s get started.

Step 1. Setup

One of the most common mistakes that beginners make is choosing the wrong website platform. Thankfully, you are here so you will not be making that mistake.

For most users, a self-hosted WordPress.org site is the perfect solution. It comes with thousands of designs and addons which allow you to create any kind of website you can think of. For more on this topic, please see our guide on why you should use WordPress.

WordPress is free for anyone to download and use to build any kind of website without any restrictions.

If WordPress is free, then where is the cost coming from?
 
WordPress is free because you’ll have to arrange your own domain name and hosting, which costs money. For more on this topic, see our article why is WordPress free?.

A domain name is your website’s address on the internet. This is what your users will type in their browsers to reach your site (For example, wpbeginner.com or google.com).

Next, you’ll need website hosting. All websites on the internet need hosting. This will be your website’s home on the internet.

A domain name typically costs $14.99/year and hosting costs start from $7.99/month.
This is A LOT for most people who are just starting out.

Thankfully, Bluehost, has agreed to offer our users a free domain name and over 60% off on web

hosting.
→ Click here to Claim this Exclusive Bluehost offer ←


Bluehost is one of the largest hosting companies in the world. They are also an official WordPress recommended hosting partner.

They are working with WordPress since 2005, and are committed to give back to the community. That’s why they have promised us that if you cannot set up your website by following this tutorial, then our expert team will complete the process for you without any cost. They will compensate us, so you don’t have to. Feel free to contact us for free website setup help.

Note: At WPBeginner, we believe in transparency. If you purchase hosting using our referral link, then we will get a small commission at no additional cost to you. In fact, you will get discount on hosting + a free domain name. We would get this commission for recommending any WordPress hosting company, but we only recommend products that we personally use and believe will add value to our readers.

Let’s go ahead and purchase domain name and hosting.

First, you’ll need to go to the Bluehost website in a new browser window and click on the green ‘Get Started Now’ button.


This will bring you to a pricing page where you will need to choose a pricing plan for your website. Basic and plus plans are the most popular choices among our users.



You’ll need to click on select to choose the plan that you like and continue to the next step.
On the next screen, you’ll be asked to select a new domain name.

Ideally you should stick to a .com domain name. Make sure that it is related to your business, easy to pronounce and spell, and easy to remember.
Need help choosing a domain name for your website? See these tips and tools on how to choose the best domain name.



After choosing your domain name, click on the next button to continue.
Now you’ll be asked to provide your account information such as name, address, email, etc.
On this screen, you will also see optional extras that you can purchase. We generally don’t recommend purchasing these extras. You can always add them later on, if you decide that you need them.


Next, you will add your payment information to finish the purchase.
After completing your purchase, you’ll receive an email with details on how to login to your web hosting control panel (cPanel).
This is your hosting dashboard where you manage everything like getting support, setting up emails, etc. Most importantly, this is where you’ll install WordPress.

Step 2. Install WordPress

You will find tons of icons to do different things on your hosting account dashboard (cPanel). You’ll never need to use 95% of them, so you can safely ignore them.
Scroll down to the website section in cPanel and then click on the WordPress icon.

You will now see Bluehost Marketplace Quick Install screen for WordPress. Click on the ‘Get Started’ button to continue.


On the next screen, you will be asked to select the domain name where you want to install WordPress. Choose your domain from the dropdown field and then click Next.


Now you’ll need to enter your website name, admin username, and a password for your website. Don’t worry, you can change them later in WordPress settings if you need to.
You’ll also need to check all the checkboxes on the screen and then click on the ‘Install’ button to continue.

Quick Install will now start installing WordPress on your website. Meanwhile, it will show you some website templates that you can install on your site.
You don’t need to do that right now because we’ll show you how to find and install free WordPress template on your website later in this guide.

Once the installation is over, you’ll see a success message in the top header.


Now you need to click on the ‘Installation Complete’ link, and it will take you to the screen with your WordPress login URL and password.

Congratulations! You have created your first WordPress website.
You can now head over to the WordPress login page. Your login URL will look like this:
http://www.yourdomain.com/wp-admin

You can login to your WordPress site using the admin username and password you entered earlier.

Wasn’t that easy?
Now let’s move on to the next step and choose a design for your website.

Step 3. Select Your Theme

The visual appearance of your WordPress site is controlled by a WordPress theme.
WordPress themes are professionally designed templates that you can install on your website to change its appearance.
By default, each WordPress site comes with a basic theme. If you visit your website, then it will look something like this:




This is not very appealing for most users.
But don’t worry, there are thousands of free and paid WordPress themes that you can install on your site.
You can change your theme from the WordPress admin dashboard. Visit Appearance » Themes page and then click on the ‘Add New’ button.


On the next screen, you will able to search from 4,492 free WordPress themes that are available in the official WordPress.org themes directory. You can sort them by popular, latest, featured, as well as other feature filters (i.e industry, layout, etc).

Need help choosing a theme? Check out our list of these awesome free WordPress business themes.
You may also want to take a look at our guide on how to select the perfect WordPress theme for your website.

For the sake of this guide, we’ll be using Bento. It is a popular multi-purpose free WordPress theme with flexible design options for all kind of websites.
If you know the name of the free theme you want to install, then you can look for it by entering its name in the search field.
WordPress will show you the theme in search results. You will need to take your mouse over to the theme and then click on the Install button.


Once you have installed your theme, you can customize it by clicking on the Customize link under the Appearance menu.
This will launch the theme customizer where you will be able to change your theme settings with live preview of your website.

You don’t need to finalize all theme settings right away. You will be able to customize it much better once you have some content on your website.

Let’s see how to add content to your WordPress site.

Step 4. Add Content to Your Site

WordPress comes with two default content types called posts and pages. Posts are part of a blog and appear in reverse-chronological order (newer items displayed first).
On the other hand, pages are meant to be static “one-off” type content such as your about page, contact page, privacy policy, etc.
By default, WordPress shows your blog posts on the front page of your website. You can change that, and make WordPress show any page as the front-page of your website (we’ll show you how to do that later in this guide).
You can create a separate page for your blog or news section. In fact, you can create a website without any blog section at all.
Having said that, let’s add some content to your website.
You’ll start by adding a few pages to your WordPress site. Don’t worry if you don’t have enough content for these pages at the moment. You can always edit and update them.
Head over to Pages » Add New page in WordPress admin area. This will bring you to the page editor screen, which looks like this:



First you need to provide a title for your page, let’s call this page ‘Home’.
After that you can add content in the text editor below. You can add text, links, images, embed videos, audio, etc.
After adding content to your page, you can click on the publish button to make it live on your website.
You can repeat the process by adding more pages for different sections of your website. For example, an about page, contact us, and a blog page to display blog posts.
Now let’s add a few blog posts as well.
Head over to Posts » Add New in your WordPress admin area.



You will see a screen much like you saw earlier when adding pages.
You can add a post title and then add content in the visual post editor. You’ll also notice some extra options like post formats, categories and tags.
You can click on the save button to store your post as a draft or click on the publish button to make it visible on your site.
For more detailed instructions on how to utilize all these options on post and page edit screens, please see our guide on how to add a new post in WordPress.

Step 5. Customizing and Tweaking Your Website

Now that you have created some content on your website, you will be able to customize and put it all in a nice presentable shape on your website.
Let’s start by setting up a static front Page.
Setting up a Static Front Page
You need to visit the Settings » Reading page in your WordPress admin area. Under the ‘Front page displays’ option click on the static front page and then select ‘Pages’ you created earlier for your home and blog pages.



Don’t forget to click on the ‘Save Changes’ button at the bottom of the page to store your changes.
WordPress will now use the page titled ‘Home’ as your site’s front page and ‘Blog’ page to display your blog posts.
Change Site Title and Tagline
During the installation you get to choose your site’s title. WordPress automatically adds a tag line to your site title that says ‘Just another WordPress site’

.
You can change both your site’s title and tagline at any time by visiting Settings » General page.

Your site title will be the name of your website like WPBeginner. The tag line is usually a single line that describes your website. You can also leave the tag line field blank if you want.
Don’t forget to click on the save changes button to store your settings.
Set up Comments Settings
WordPress comes with a built-in comment system allowing your users to leave comments on your posts. This is great for user engagement, but it is targeted by spammers as well.
To deal with this, you’ll need to enable comment moderation on your website.
Visit Settings » Discussions page and scroll down to ‘Before a comment appears’ section. Check the box next to ‘Comment must be manually approved’ option.



Don’t forget to click on the save changes button to store your settings.
Create Navigation Menus
Navigation menus allow your users to browse different pages or sections on your website. WordPress comes with a powerful navigation menu system, and your WordPress theme utilizes this system to display menus.


Let’s add a navigation menu to your website.
First, you need to visit Appearance » Menus page. Enter a name for your navigation menu and click on the create menu button.


WordPress will now create your navigation menu. But it will be empty at the moment.
Next, you need to select the pages you want to display in your menu and then click on add to menu button.


You will notice your selected pages filling the empty area of your navigation menu. You can move them up and down to rearrange their position in the menu.


Now you need to select a display location. These locations are defined by your WordPress theme. Usually, most WordPress themes have a primary menu that appears on top.
Finally, click on the save menu button to store your navigation menu.
You can now visit your website to see the menu in action.
For more detailed instructions see our beginner’s guide on how to add navigation menu in WordPress.

Step 6. Installing Plugins

WordPress Plugins are like apps for your WordPress site. They allow you to add features to your WordPress site. Think contact form, photo galleries, etc.
There are currently more than 49,000 free plugins available for WordPress. There are also paid plugins sold by third-party websites and developers.
With this many plugins, how do you find which plugins to install? We got you covered there as well, see our guide on how to choose the best WordPress plugin.
Here is our list of essential plugins that you should install on your site right away. All of them are free.
Features
Website Optimization
Security
  • Updraft Plus – Create automatic scheduled backups of your website
  • Sucuri – Website security audit and malware scanner
Need help installing plugins? See our step by step guide on how to install a WordPress plugin.
For more plugin recommendations check out our list of 24 must have WordPress plugins for business websites.

Step 7. Mastering WordPress

WordPress is easy to use yet extremely powerful. From time to time, you may find yourself looking for some quick answers.
The good news is that there is plenty of free WordPress help available. See our guide on how to properly ask for WordPress support and get it.
WPBeginner itself is the largest WordPress resource site on the internet. You will find the following resources on WPBeginner (all of them are completely free).
  • WPBeginner Blog – This is where we publish our WordPress tutorials, how tos, and step by step guides.
  • WPBeginner Videos – These step by step videos will help you learn WordPress FAST.
  • WPBeginner on YouTube – Need more video instructions? Subscribe to our YouTube channel with more than 52,000 subscribers and 7 Million+ views.
  • WPBeginner Dictionary – The best place for beginners to start and familiarize themselves with the WordPress lingo.
  • WPBeginner Blueprint – Check out plugins, tools, and services we use on WPBeginner.
  • WPBeginner Deals – Exclusive discounts on WordPress products and services for WPBeginner users.
Here are few of our guides that you should bookmark right away. It will save you lots of time and money in the future.
Many of our users use Google to find answers on WPBeginner. Simply type keywords for what you are looking for and add wpbeginner.com at the end.
Can’t find an answer? Send your question directly using our contact form and we will try our best to answer.

Step 7. Taking it Further

So far we have shown you how to make a website, add a theme, and install essential plugins.
Want to take it even further?
Using WordPress you can create powerful niche websites capable of doing a lot more.
For more examples, check out our list of 19 types of websites you can create with WordPress
That’s all for now.
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This theme also provides support for WPML for language translation, Photo Gallery grid, Contact Form 7, Meta Slider, SiteOrigin Page Builder and Jetpack. It’s also SEO friendly and responsive. Shop Isle is also easy to tweak using the Theme Customizer in WordPress, so you can update fonts, colors, logos, social links and the theme layout. Interested in Shop Isle? DETAILSDEMODOWNLOAD Olsen Light Olsen is a straight up blogging theme for WordPress and features a traditional blog posts on the left and sidebar on the right design. It features all the usual trimmings you’ll find in contemporary themes: custom widgets, social networking icons, and translation support and SEO support. It’s also completely customizable from the Theme Customizer in WordPress, so you can update the header, menus, layout, footer, and colors. Interested in Olsen Light? DETAILSDEMODOWNLOAD Teletype Teletype is a minimalist blogging theme built on BootStrap. It comes with a lovely masonry post layout and you can drag and drop to re-order sections on the homepage, which is pretty cool. Features includes the ability to completely customize the homepage, including fonts (Google Fonts), colors, the header image, background colors, logo, social media icons and more. You can also turn the sidebar on and off, depending on your design preference. This theme is also translation ready. Interested in Teletype? DETAILSDEMODOWNLOAD Sensible WP Sensible WP is yet another responsive multipurpose theme. It’s pretty basic as far as multipurpose themes go and doesn’t offer WooCommerce support, so this theme is better suited to agencies and small businesses that don’t have plans to sell online. As far as customizations go, you can control all the usual tweaks in the Theme Customizer, including colors, fonts, logo, and more. This theme also comes with XML demo content, which is handy for those who don’t like setting up a skeleton website. It’s also SEO and translation-friendly. Interested in Sensible WP? DETAILSDEMODOWNLOAD Eleganto Despite its name, Eleganto is neither graceful or stylish, but it does have a slick design suited for businesses. The homepage is easily customizable and features cool animations and a assymetrical parallax effects, which you don’t see very often. This theme is built on BootStrap and is responsive, SEO-friendly and translation-ready. Customizations include: unlimited color options, social links, parallax background effects, five portfolio animations, more than 100 theme options, custom background, sticky menu, left or/and right sidebars with five size options, slider, section carousel, testimonials carousel, blog section, and contact section with Contact Form 7 support. Eleganto is also WooCommerce compatible. Interested in Eleganto? DETAILSDEMODOWNLOAD Luke + Sara Whether you’re a wedding photographer, an artist or just love getting creative, share your work and sell your services with Luke + Sara’s modern design, full-width videos (including video header), and stunning image galleries. This theme’s huge images steal the focus, thanks to Luke + Sara’s boxy image layouts, masonry portfolio, and mega sliders – all designed to show off your best work. If you’re a business owner and looking to sell your wares, don’t miss this theme’s pre-built pricing page and table that will give visitors your site a quick overview of your services and prices. Luke + Sara is also responsive and translation-ready. Interested in Luke + Sara? DETAILSDEMODOWNLOAD Astrid This elegant WordPress theme is a delight to use thanks to its easy customization on the backend and stylish design on the front-end. Astrid features all the standard trimmings you would expect from any theme: customizable header, theme options via the Theme Customizer, and support for translations. The theme is also responsive, which is fairly standards for all new themes these days. Astrid features a lovely hard header and clear CTA on the homepage, which is ideal for business websites. It’s also WooCommerce compatible if you’re looking for a simple, minimalist store theme. Other nice touches: smooth scrolling and subtle animations. Interested in Astrid? DETAILSDEMODOWNLOAD Hemingway I’m a big fan of Anders Norén’s themes minimalist WordPress themes and Hemingway is no exception. This simple theme is perfect for bloggers with its fullwidth header and standard blog posts on the left and sidebar on the right design. What I like about this theme is that, like Ernest Hemingway it’s namesake, it’s not trying to be flashy or over the top – the design shines through its economical design. Features include: responsive design, parallax scrolling, custom accent colors, custom logo, and widgets for Video, Flickr and Dribbble. there are also some nice page templates, and the code is translation-ready. Interested in Hemingway? DETAILSDEMODOWNLOAD Hoffman Another Anders Norén design, Hoffman is a beautifully minimal one page WordPress theme for bloggers. It has a thoughtful responsive design and the use of icon fonts makes sure that Hoffman looks great on devices of all sizes – big and small. This theme supports the gallery, quote and video post formats, all presented in unique and impactful ways. Standard run-of-the-mill posts look great as well. It comes with built-in support for the Jetpack plugin’s infinite scroll function and tiled gallery. Hoffman includes five custom widgets for recent posts with thumbnails, recent comments with avatars, Flickr, Dribbble and video. You can also customize it further by changing the accent color, switching the background color or adding a background image. It also includes two page templates, support for post editor styles and support for theme translation. Included translations: Swedish/svenska. Interested in Hoffman? DETAILSDEMODOWNLOAD Lovecraft And another Anders Norén-designed WordPress theme! Lovecraft is a beautiful two-column WordPress theme for bloggers. It features a two-column design with considered typography choices – it really is a joy to read. The big header image makes a striking first impression and is replaced with the post thumbnail on single posts and pages. Lovecraft has built-in support for Jetpacks Infinite Scroll function, which means that new posts will be loaded as soon as you reach the bottom of the page. You can also use the Jetpack Tiled Galleries function to display posts in a beautiful masonry grid. This theme is built to scale gracefully to any and all screen sizes – from a 27″ desktop display to a 3.5″ smartphone. The navigation and search form is hidden behind easy-to-access toggles on mobile. It also features editor styles, a full-width page template, three custom widgets and translation-ready code. Interested in Lovecraft? DETAILSDEMODOWNLOAD Fukasawa Okay, one last Anders Norén-designed WordPress theme. Fukasawa is a minimal masonry blog theme for photographers and collectors. Fukasawa features a beautifully minimal layout that displays your posts, images and videos in a Pinterest-style grid. It’s perfect for sharing your content and, in particular, your images. There’s support for the image, video and gallery formats, and presents your galleries in a beautiful slideshow above your posts. Regular old posts look great as well. Like other Anders Norén themes, Fukasawa enables you to load new posts without reloading the page using Jetpack’s Infinite Scroll feature, and display your images in a beautiful grid with Jetpack Tiles Galleries. You can also change the accent color, upload your own logo and use the sidebar widget area (including five custom widgets) to give Fukasawa a personal touch. Interested in Fukasawa? DETAILSDEMODOWNLOAD Gillie Gillie is an elegant business theme designed for YouTuber who want to grow their following. It includes all the key elements you need to share tutorials, course materials and make your passion a fully-fledged business. Build your user base with slider CTA overlays, testimonials, eye-catching imagery, free downloads and easy access to your channel. Scattered image placement, testimonials, and promotional text make your home page feel more like an invitation than a sales pitch. Expand your reach and create a new stream of income with a dedicated site for building your user base. There are pre-styled MarketPress and WooCommerce page layouts that enabled you to get a shop up and running without any customization, so you can start selling everything from downloadable sheet music to physical copies of your latest album. Interested in Gillie? DETAILSDEMODOWNLOAD Issue This magazine-style design is ideal for taking your print publication to a digital audience. Issue will make it easy for your subscribers to find articles that match their interests thanks to its strong use of typography, image buttons and simple search, giving readers quick access to blog posts and articles. Issue includes space for advertisement strategically placed throughout the site. Run a special, promote a local business and generate additional income. The included contact page provides a simple way for users to get in touch. The big interactive Google map, built-in contact form and stylish social icons are both visually appealing and functional. Interested in Issue? DETAILSDEMODOWNLOAD Make Make is a free open source builder theme that – according to its developers – has been refined over 5,198 times. Okay, that’s a lot of development time, but what makes it special? Its biggest feature is its intuitive Make Layout Engine, which is basically a page builder for WordPress. It’s designed to work like a native component of the WordPress page editor, so if you feel comfortable writing a post, it won’t be much of a learning curve getting used to building pages. You can take care of all customizations using the Theme Customizer in WordPress. Every detail, big or small, is yours to customize, including fonts, line height, spacing, even word spacing. Make is WooCommerce compatible, so if your plan is to build an online shop you won’t have any trouble selling physical products. If you want to sell digital goods, Make is compatible with Easy Digital Downloads. And if you want to add forms to your site, simply drop in Gravity Forms. This theme is also responsive, SEO-friendly and retina-ready. Interested in Make? DETAILSDEMODOWNLOAD Seriously, when did the standard of free themes in the WordPress Theme Directory suddenly get so good? This list is a collection of our favorites. If you have a favorite that we missed, share the link below in the comments! Raelene Morey: View a list of posts by this author. Rae is the managing editor at WPMU DEV. When she’s not picking apart other people’s words or working on websites, she enjoys brunch, biking and bushwalking. Fancy some more reading? READ ARTICLE WORDPRESS DEVELOPMENT FOR INTERMEDIATE USERS: THEME DEVELOPMENT IN DETAIL READ ARTICLE WORDPRESS DEVELOPMENT FOR BEGINNERS: BUILDING THEMES READ ARTICLE 10 HOTTEST WEB DESIGN TRENDS YOU GOTTA KNOW FOR 2017 Or how about trying out our plugins and themes for free? Try (and keep) all WPMU DEV plugins, themes, services and full 24/7 support, free for an entire month - no catch! SPIRIT A professionally crafted, high-end portfolio theme with a fresh, natur LEARN MORE FIXER A flat and vibrant business theme for selling your services and standi LEARN MORE PANINO A friendly one-pager theme inspired by the delicious coffee, tasty foo LEARN MORE LUKE + SARA Let your images speak for themselves with Luke + Sara, a contemporary LEARN MORE 4 Responses Youri Regular Joe: Earn your WPMU DEV membership 51 pts: Hero points 7 pts: Rep. points LEVEL 0 Very useful post but I think you miss one of the best free themes with a pro version; GeneratePress. It’s super fast, clean code and for just $ 39,95 you can use it on unlimited sites with almost customizing every pixel. I use it on 45+ websites now :-) May 15, 2017, 5:19 pmMay 15, 2017, 5:19 pm: Link to comment Log in to Reply Click to visit Google Plus profile Click to visit Twitter profile Raelene Morey Author: Earn your WPMU DEV membership 9 pts: Hero points 644 pts: Rep. points LEVEL 6 Cool, I’ll check it out :) May 16, 2017, 2:36 amMay 16, 2017, 2:36 am: Link to comment Log in to Reply Tony Site Builder, Child of Zeus: Earn your WPMU DEV membership 242 pts: Hero points 233 pts: Rep. points LEVEL 4 I’ve recently had to look through themes for three completely different types of businesses. One site is for a café, another for custom jewelry, another for software. There are themes slightly targeted to these “vertical” applications. (Note the awesome evolution of WP here where blogging is now just a feature, not the primary application.) The more time I spend looking at themes the more I’m able to differentiate them based on immediate suitability for the application, ease of use, customizability without getting into code, and basic functionality. Some free themes are really just a tease for an up-sell. Others are so good that I feel like paying the developer, even for their free theme, just so they don’t lose interest in their work. My approach is to install a theme, spend about 30 minutes in the Customizer, and see what it takes to modify the home page, a single post page, and the various widgets and menus. If it’s not feeling good in 30 minutes then it gets uninstalled. And for me that’s really at the heart of all of this. I no longer look for great themes. I look for themes that serve the immediate purpose adequately. Theme developers get bored. They move on to the next fun project. They don’t want to look back and maintain what they’ve already created. WP changes frequently and developers are looking to create new themes, not to retrofit existing ones. So, as much fun as it is to look for great themes, the reality is that “good enough” is acceptable. We shouldn’t spend too much time looking for “great”, because we’re going to have to do this at least once per year if we’re going to keep a site fresh and functional. There is a never-ending stream of “high quality themes for 2014/15/16/17/+..”. It does help to look for consistent developers who produce a new good theme with each new WP update. In business terms, getting a completely new theme from a new developer is going to cost time=money. Developers come and go so (unfortunately) if you’re doing this for a living it probably makes good sense to align yourself with a single theme publisher where there is more than one developer. This helps to get the consistency of the vendor, not the individual. I’m really sorry WPMU DEV, but I recently spent a lot of time with Upfront/Parrot and was not impressed. This is at least the third time that I’ve given this parent theme an opportunity for a new site. It failed in many ways when editing individual pages, and was frustrating and inadequate to create a common multi-page site. I absolutely will not install Upfront or related child themes for at least another year. Perhaps by then you’ll have worked out the multitude of usability issues and overall inadequacies. Please don’t ask what the problems were. I started to document the issues in my 30 minute re-review but after spending 2+ hours with more note taking about problems than progress on a web page I decided my time needed to be redirected to current efforts rather than doing QA for someone else’s theme. And that’s precisely my point about theme selection and these frequent reviews of current themes. If you spend too much time fighting with a theme, chuck it and go for something else. Our task is to create websites, not to debug other people’s software. There are plenty of themes to choose from. Don’t waste time=money on themes that might look great and have a lot of nice features, but they’re a pain to use. Add that to your criteria for choosing a theme for your next project.

Theme shops have changed the game, lifting the standard of themes you’ll find in the free repository with free versions of their products. And these free versions come complete with features you would have previously only found in premium themes like WooCommerce support and responsive design. Gone are the days when downloading a free theme meant settling for a subpar theme. Now you can – and should – expect a well-coded theme that’s completely customizable using the Theme Customizer. Here’s our list of the some of the best free WordPress themes you’ll find in the WordPress Theme Directory that have been developed by premium theme shops, plus a few released by independent theme developers. Flash Flash is a good-looking multipurpose theme with a minimalist aesthetic – ideal for business and corporate sites. It features multiple pre-built demos, which you can import in seconds using the ThemeGrill Demo Importer plugin. The theme also integrates with the Flash Toolkit ...
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10 Quickie Tips and Tricks To Massively Increase Your Blog Traffic

Blogging is not hard, keeping up is. You can write anything, it’s your blog but when it comes to traffic, the ball moves to your audience’s court. If you want your blog to be flooded with traffic, you need to get into action now. Here are some of the best actionable tips and tricks to drive huge traffic to your blog. If you think writing awesome content alone is important to get readers glued, let me tell you, your content will be called “ awesome ” only when people read it and that is why this post on how to get those people to read your blog is crucial. So read mindfully. When it comes to increasing blog traffic there are millions of creative ways to increase blog traffic . And I am here to show you some sure shot methods to get the ball rolling. At the end of each point, I will point out some awesome actionable tips which will help you double or triple your traffic. 1) Let Alexa bring you traffic: We all bloggers are well aware of Alexa. Alexa ranking is measured...
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30 Best Blogging Tips

30 Best Blogging Tips – Take Your Blog from Zero to Hero Incredible Blogging Tips – Take Your Blog from Zero to Hero You are new to Blogging. Or you already have a blog, but not sure how to make money out of it. Or maybe you are making decent money online but want to take your blog to the next level. I could help you! If you want to take your blog from Zero to Hero, I have some incredible blogging tips for you. All the blogging tips mentioned here come from 7 years of my blogging experience so make sure to read carefully and implement them for best results. I have divided this guide into 3 sections: Beginners, Intermediate and Advanced bloggers. You can read this guide according to your needs. Shall we begin? Beginners Intermediate Advanced Before starting out, think about how to monetize your blog Stand out from the crowd Write in-depth articles Write lots of posts… for others Build some authority It’...
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