Is WordPress Good For Professional Websites? Is a question I hear all the time. For some reason some people seem to be unsure about WordPress (WP) and what it’s for, what it can do etc…
The bottom line is WordPress isn’t good, it’s Great for a professional website. WordPress is a Content Management System (CMS) that helps people publish their content on the web.
- WordPress is Open Source – meaning it’s Free!
- The functionality of a WordPress website can be extended with plugins.
- Installing a simple WordPress website is easy, most web hosts provide an installer that gets the job done with just a few keystrokes
- WordPress is supported by a huge community of developers (like me!) worldwide.
That said, with any website, there are some things that you’ll need to do. First, you’ll need a domain name. A domain name is the address of your website (google com, Amazon .com and Facebook .com are all domain names). You purchase your domain at a “registrar”. Godaddy is the biggest domain name registrar on the web right now. You can go to the Godaddy homepage and play with their domain search tool to see if the name you want is available. Typically, if you have a unique company name like say “Fred’s Pizza and Pasta Emporium” that name or a very close variation of it will be available. You may need to add a dash between each word (ie freds-pizza-and-pasta-emporium.com) but a name like that should be available. More common names like say “Ginos Pizza” (seeing a theme here?) will probably be taken already. In that case you should consider an additional (logical) word to the name, maybe add your city name to it, so try: GinosPizza-Austin.com. Once you find an available domain name, you’ll have to purchase it. Godaddy charges around $12/year for a standard dot-com website. There are other extensions available (like dot.us, dot net etc) but dot com is really the standard for business in the US.
Once you have your domain purchased you’ll need to obtain web hosting. Your web hosting is the server space that your website will reside on. Typical hosting packages are under $10/month. You can do a google search for WordPress web hosting and you’ll find tons of options. Since you’re just starting out, you can probably get away with the lowest cost option. Once your site gets going you can upgrade if necessary.
So, now you have your domain name purchased and you have a web host. The next step is to point your domain name to the host. This is handled through your DNS settings. When you purchase your hosting, you should get an email from the host with the settings you’ll need. You will have to log into your Godaddy account and update the DNS to your new server. Once you’ve made that change there will be a delay of usually less then an hour while those settings “propagate”. After that initial hour or so, you should be able to key in your domain name and it should bring you to your servers “under construction” page. Now the fun begins…
Your new WordPress Website is ready to be installed!
Virtually all modern hosts come with an App installer (contact your host for support if necessary), the WP installation process is pretty simple with the App, you simple enter a few details about your site (site name, tagline, email address, things like that). Once the data is in, hit submit and the site will be installed. The whole process usually takes less then five minutes.
With your new site installed you can start adding your content.
