WordPress is a powerful tool not only for blogs but for managing small business websites too.
In Why Use WordPress To Power Your Small Business Website we talked about some of these – it is a full fledged content management system that has built-in search engine optimization (SEO) benefits, makes it easy to publish and update content, and countless design themes and feature extensions are available for it.
Where Do You Get WordPress?
There are two primary ways to get WordPress – sign up for an account on WordPress.com, or go to WordPress.org to download it and install it yourself. The latter option gives you the most control and flexibility (see Wordpress.org vs Wordpress.com) but what holds many people back is the installation process. Indeed it is complex, unless you get the right hosting provider and tools.
What You Need to Install WordPress
You will need a web hosting provider that supports PHP and MySQL. And I highly recommend you get one that supports CPanel – an administration interface for your hosting account, and Fantastico – a script library for installing web applications like WordPress.
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Look for the friendly Fantastico Icon! |
With a hosting provider that supports CPanel and Fantastico, you can get WordPress installed in no time. The video above walks through how to do this in less than five minutes. It’s a very straightforward and easy way to get the power of WordPress behind your web site.
After Installing – Next Steps
After installing WordPress, you’ll want to do a few things to make the site your own:
- Choose a theme – You can choose from thousands of free WordPress themes to give your site a professional feel. With these themes you can literally put a site up in less than an hour that looks as good as something you would have paid $2,000 for a web design consultant to do.
- Add features – Want to add a poll or contact form to your website? Want to add user reviews, ratings, or a map? WordPress plug-ins extend the features of WordPress, and there is a thriving community of developers creating these for free.
- Add content – Great content published regularly is essential to getting good rankings in the search engines for your business. WordPress makes it very easy to add content to your site, without having to call your webmaster every time.
In this series we will be adding video screen casts on each of these topics, tailored to small business websites.
So what are you waiting for? Pony up that $6.95/month to get a decent hosting account from BlueHost, and spend five minutes getting your very own WordPress website up and running. Once you’ve got it installed, you’ll wonder why you waited so long!
Update:BlueHost is now recommending you use SimpleScripts instead of Fantastico for WordPress Installs. I’ve recorded a new video here – The Fastest Way to Install WordPress – Use SimpleScripts
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Hey Don,
Great Video. I am interested in knowing whether you have created the video for making the front page into a static page (more of a web page than a blog page in my opinion.
Also, I am interested in knowing what software do you use to create your videos. Very professional. From what I can tell, you are using a Mac, correct?
Thanks
Frank
http://www.thestartupsource.com
Hi Frank,
Thanks! I will be creating the video for making the front page into a static page within the next week. I agree, that’s one of the keys to making WordPress look more like a website than a blog.
I used ScreenFlow to create the screen cast. It’s a great tool, but Mac only. I’ve used Camtasia for screen casts on Windows and it’s an excellent tool as well.
I just published the first of two articles on making the front page of your WordPress site in to a static page here: How To Make WordPress Look Like a Website.
Nice video fellow screencaster. I’m not a mac user but from what I’ve seen from your vid, Screenflow’s got some neat animations.
Regards
Shane
Hello. And Bye.
Hi Don. Thanks for the all of the informative articles. I just went through your BlueHost link to get a host for my new website. I had a question about whether to use Fantastico or not to install Wordpress. I am extremely limited on computer skills but I read an article that talked about how it might limit you in the future. Thanks, JasonDorminy
Hi Jason – thank you for using my link, and for your comment.
I use Fantastico all the time to set up WordPress installations and have not experienced any problems. BlueHost is now recommending that you use Simple Scripts for WordPress installs. You’ll see the icon for it in the same section as the Fantastico icon. I’m using that now and it is even faster.
BlueHost is good about publishing new WordPress upgrades – they will show up as an option in your Simple Scripts area, making version upgrades easy.
Let me know if this doesn’t answer your question.
Hello Don,
Great info! I have a question for you.
Back Story: I’ve worked on company websites in the past in a corporate team environment, where multiple engineers and developers were updating the site simultaneously and checking in their work into our CVS system (thus entering our code into a staging area). However, checking in code changes didn’t result in the changes appearing on the live site until the changes were reviewed by our testing team.
Q: What does WordPress provide that allows: 1) Changes to be made, 2) Reviewing the changes as a whole, then 3) Publishing the changes to the LIVE site for the public to see all at once?
thanks,
Michael
@Michael – Thank you!
Well, WordPress may not be as full featured as the corporate CMS that you are used to, but here are two multiple-user models that I’ve seen work well:
1) For content, WordPress has user roles. You can set up people in the “contributor” role which allows them to create new posts that can be previewed, but they need to be approved by an “editor” before the go live on the site for public view.
2) For development, set up two WordPress instances, one may be local, or on a different server or directory. Make the development changes in one and test before moving into the production environment.
I hope I’ve answered your question!
Thanks Don.
I appreciate your quick reply. I have a follow up question.
Q: For the second option that you suggested, about creating two WordPress instances. What is the best way to move development changes over to the live environment? Can this be done without navigating through the WordPress GUI?
thanks,
Michael
Michael – yes, you would just copy the modified theme files over from the dev instance to the production instance.
The exception to this is if you are activating new WordPress plugins, in that case I don’t know of a way to activate them programmatically (there may be a way) so you would need to use the Admin UI to activate them.
But all the CSS, PHP, HTML and other theme changes you could copy over directly. Always backup your files and database on the production instance before making these changes of course. WP-Backup is a nice plugin to make the database backups super easy.
Hi Don
Great article and video.
I notice in the video you use Fantastico but in the PDF document you use Simple Scripts – which should we use.
Sorry – you’ve answered my question in one of your replies above (Simple Scripts) but I’ll send this just to congratulate you on a great series of articles.
Keep up the good work
Keith D
I’m up and running Don!
Only the basic default theme… but you have to start somewhere.
cPanel and Fantastico really are as simple as you say.
Thanks for making it possible for me to make a start with Wordpress.
great tutorial indeed..but i am trying to add sms facility…how can i do tht