Self-Hosted Wordpress is when you install this amazing free website software to create your own website on your own domain at your web hosting company.
By self-hosting Worpdress you can create a website for free very quickly and easily and this becomes your site, so you can do exactly what you want with it. And when you are done with it you can sell it if you want to.
No technical knowledge is required to install Wordpress on your domain at your web host, but there are just a couple of things you need to learn and after that you will always be able to create a self-hosted Wordpress website in about 5 minutes. What could be easier?
Minimum Requirements for Installing Self-Hosted Wordpress
- A Domain Name
- A Web Hosting Account
- The Wordpress Software
- 5 Minutes
Getting the Right Domain Name
Although this seems like a relatively easy process deciding on and getting the right domain name may take some time. You shouldn’t rush it and here’s the reason why.
Your domain name should be chosen carefully for SEO purposes to help your site get ranked more easily in the search engines. Search engine optimisation is very important for any webiste that needs to get organic traffic for the search engines. A relevant domain name can help with this.
Getting a domain name is easy, but finding a domain name provider you can rely on to give good service and support as well as cheap domain names is difficult. Having been though this loop too many times already I have at last found a company that I have used for some time and recommend.
Use GoDaddy For Cheap Domain Names
I use GoDaddy for almost all my domain names as they consistently have the cheapest prices, especially when compared to some of the other domain name companies and their service and support is excellent. Highly recommended!
Picking A Domain Name
I am assuming that by now you have chosen a niche for your new website and and have selected a keyword that you are going to target that you want to rank for in the search engines. If you have not done this then go do it before you decide on your domain name. Yes it’s that important!
Your Domain Name needs to Include your Keyword for Better SEO!
Some SEO experts will tell you that you can still rank your site for your keyword whatever your domain name and this is true, But what they don’t tell you is that it is a lot more work to get this to happen. So why not take the easy route and get a domain name with your keyword in it. I always do (well almost)!
Keywords you might choose could be “puppy dog training”, “lose weight fast” or “learn surfing”. In which case you could get domain names like bestpuppydogtraining.com, easyloseweightfast.com or learnsurfingnow.com.
You are unlikely to get the exact domain name for your keyword, so just use your imagination to add an extra word at the front or end of your targeted keyword.
Always get a dot com, do not select a domain name with dashes in it and avoid domain names with trademarks in them, like ipod, ebay or wordpress!
Using the Right Web Host
When you are going to use Wordpress to create your self-hosted websites or blogs it is very important that you choose the right web hosting company. Choose the wrong one and you may find they don’t even support Wordpress.
‘One Click’ Wordpress Installation
The major advantage of getting a good Wordpress hosting company is that you will get a ONE-CLICK installation facility for getting Wordpress installed on your site. This will save you so much time and messing about that you will be glad that you made the right choice. The one-click install means that you don’t have to get the Wordpress software as your web hosts will already have it!
HostGator with Cpanel and Fantastico!
I totally recommend HostGator for Wordpress web hosting as they are cheap, they provide cPanel and Fantastico, which you need for the one-click installations, and their support is really great.
I have used Hostgator over the past couple of years for many Wordpress sites and they have always been very responsive and helpful whenever I have had any issues, and there really haven’t been many.
Save yourself the time and bother of checking out all the other web hosts as Hostgator really do have everything you need.
Reseller or Multi-Domain Web Hosting Account?
If you want to build more then one site then you have two options. Get a reseller account if you think you will be setting up a lot of Wordpress sites (this is what I have) or just a normal multi-domain account, which gives you the option of adding more sites, but is cheaper to run.
The benefit of a reseller hosting account is that you can easily sell your individual sites if you want to and you also get better performance and features.
Hostgator Baby Unlimited Domain Account $7.95
So when you have got your DOMAIN and WEB HOSTING sorted you are ready to INSTALL WORDPRESS!
Note: If you want to buy Wordpress hosting from Hostgator then check out my Special Offer of a free Wordpress installation and configuration of my top 10 plugins…
[...] The information in this post relates to Self-Hosted Wordpress only – if you have a free blog at Wordpress.com then you will find that the Plugin option is [...]