How to Create a Website Step by Step with WordPress
Updated last week
To create a website, you need three basic elements: a domain, a hosting service, and a platform to build the site. In this guide, we’ll use WordPress because it lets you create and manage websites without needing to code.
In summary, the steps are: register a domain, purchase hosting, install WordPress, choose a design, create the main pages, and publish the site.
Below, we’ll explain step by step how to create your WordPress website from scratch: you’ll get a domain, purchase hosting, install WordPress, and publish your first content. This guide takes you from zero to an online website and links to the detailed guide for each step so you don’t repeat any procedures.
What you need
A WordPress website relies on three components that work together:
Domain: your site’s address, for example
mysite.com. It’s the face your visitors see.Hosting: the service where your site’s files, images, and databases reside. Without hosting, no one can access your website.
WordPress: the content management system (CMS) you use to create and manage pages, posts, menus, and plugins. It’s free.
If you want to understand each component in depth, read What is a domain? and What is hosting and what is it for?.
Step 1: Choose and register your domain
A domain is the name your visitors enter to access your site. Choose a name that matches your brand or project and an extension that suits your audience: a generic extension such as .com, .net, or .org for international visitors, or a local one such as .com.ar if your business is in Argentina.
Check whether the domain you want is available and register it through Duplika’s domain search tool.
Step 2: Purchase a hosting service
Hosting stores your site’s files on a server connected to the Internet 24 hours a day. All Duplika hosting plans are compatible with WordPress and include cPanel, an SSL certificate, and technical support.
To publish your site, you’ll need to link your domain to your contracted server once. This process is called delegation: you tell your domain registrar which DNS servers belong to your hosting service.
If you purchased your domain from Duplika, you’ll receive the delegation instructions by email. If you purchased it elsewhere, you can ask us for help by writing to [email protected].
Step 3: Install WordPress
Once your hosting is active, install WordPress from your control panel. In Duplika, this is done through cPanel → WordPress Toolkit → Install, where you enter the domain, directory, and login details.
Follow the exact steps in the guide How to easily install WordPress. If you’d rather have us do it, submit a support ticket and we’ll install it wherever you need it.
If you’d rather start with a platform already prepared for WordPress, you can check out our WordPress Hosting plans
Step 4: Connect your domain
For your site to be online, your domain must point to your hosting provider’s DNS servers. This delegation process can take a few hours to propagate across the Internet.
If your domain is .com.ar and you purchased it from NIC.ar, follow the guide How do I delegate my com.ar domain to my hosting provider?. The easiest way to check whether your site is already online is to enter its address in your browser.
Once it’s online, confirm that your site displays the security padlock in the browser’s address bar. Sites with an SSL certificate are displayed using the https:// protocol; since 2021, browsers have marked sites without a certificate as "not secure."
Step 5: Log in to the WordPress admin area
The Dashboard is the panel where you create and manage all your site’s content. You can access it at yoursite.com/wp-admin, using the username and password you created during installation.
If you purchased hosting from Duplika, you received an email with your login details. If you have any questions, write to us at [email protected].
Step 6: Choose a Theme
The Theme is your site’s “clothing”: it defines its appearance, color palette, and structure. WordPress cannot function without a Theme, so it installs one by default at the beginning. It also serves as a fallback Theme if your main Theme fails.
To choose one, go to your Dashboard and open Appearance → Themes, click Add New, and browse the gallery. You can search by name or keyword, sort by Featured, Popular, or Recent, and preview each Theme before making your choice.
There are thousands of free Themes on WordPress.org and many more paid ones. The Theme you choose depends on your needs and how much time you want to dedicate to it; paid Themes usually include more templates and ready-to-use design options.
If you downloaded a Theme from WordPress.org or another site, you need to upload its files to your hosting server. One way to do this is with the free FileZilla program; follow the guide How to upload files to WordPress via FTP.
Step 7: Customize your site
Once the Theme is installed, you can give your site its own identity from the customization menu.
Logo: under Appearance → Customize → Site Identity, use Select Logo to upload your brand from your computer or the Media Library. You can crop the image or expand the selection to frame it in full.
Colors: in the Colors option of the customization menu, you can change the site’s colors, such as the header text color, page background, and accent color.
Fonts and headings: depending on the Theme, you can modify the font family, size, and color of headings. Paid Themes usually offer complete design flexibility.
Remember to click the Publish button to save the changes you make while customizing.
Step 8: Create your content
WordPress has two types of content: Pages and Posts. Posts are blog articles with a publication date, Category, and Tags; Pages are more institutional content, such as “About Us,” “Contact,” or the Home page.
Typical site pages include the Home page, About, Contact, Blog (or News), Services, and, if you sell online, Shop.
To create content without knowing how to code, WordPress includes the Gutenberg editor, a site builder that lets you create pages by dragging and dropping blocks of text, images, buttons, and forms. Another widely used option is the Elementor plugin, which you can download for free from the plugins section.
Step 9: Create a navigation menu
The navigation menu is the series of links that lets your visitors jump between sections of your site. Generally, sites average five or six links in their menu, and they can include dropdown menus.
Go to Appearance → Menus, create a new menu with a name (which only you will see), check the Primary Menu option so it appears next to your logo in the header, and add links to your Pages, Posts, or Categories. You can drag the items to reorder them and move them to the right to turn them into sub-items. Remember to save by clicking Save Menu.
Step 10: Add plugins
Plugins are small programs that add specific features to your site, such as forms, booking calendars, statistics, or spam protection. Most are free, and a typical site doesn’t need more than three or four.
To install them, go to the plugins section of your WordPress site, use the search box to find the one you need, click Install Now, and then click Activate. To improve search engine rankings, the most recommended plugin is Yoast SEO.
Create an online store (optional)
If your goal is to sell online, WordPress’s leading plugin is WooCommerce: it’s free and lets you publish products, accept payments, and manage taxes, billing, and shipping. It can be installed from the plugins section.
Once it’s active, follow the guide Guide to creating products in WooCommerce to set up your store as quickly as possible.