E-Marketing

This video shows you how to build your website with WordPress, a very popular and flexible program used in over 30% of the world's websites. It is free open-source software that can be used with most non-sitebuilder hosting providers. WordPress makes use of themes and plugins to provide the styling and functionality that you desire. There are thousands of free and paid-for themes and plugins to choose from.

Plugins are apps that allow you to add new features and functionality to your WordPress website, similar to adding apps to your cell phone. Find plugins at https://wordpress.org/plugins/

Themes are styles or designs for a website that allow features such as layout, colours and fonts to be added across all the pages of a website. Find themes at https://wordpress.org/themes/

The following video provides an indication of how to build a WordPress website:

Here is the link mentioned: https://websitelearners.com/make-a-website/

Pick a name for your website

If you already have a domain name registered, use this name. Alternatively, check the availability of your chosen domain name and register the domain when signing up for a hosting account.

Get web hosting

This video shows the process of registering a domain and ordering web hosting with Go Daddy, a large international web hosting provider. They are not necessarily the best web hosting provider, but are one of the hosts that you may wish to consider. Other web hosts have a similar process to sign up for domain registration and hosting. Note that this video refers to pricing in Indian Rupees - prices may differ.

Create an account with the chosen web hosting provider.

Choose your payment options. Note that committing to paying for a full year of hosting up front (annual hosting) usually works out cheaper than month-by-month payment, however you are committed for the full year.

Install WordPress

Now that you have a domain and web hosting package, we can start building the actual website. The first step is to install the free WordPress software onto your hosting account.

Note that the username and password for the WordPress admin login is not the same as your hosting provider account login. The WordPress login manages your website, while the hosting provider login manages your hosting account.

The WordPress dashboard is used to control your website and can be accessed by adding /login to your domain name in the address field e.g.https://example.lk/login.

Install a new theme

WordPress installs a sample website using a default theme, which has minimum functionality. There are thousands of themes available to replace this theme. In this case, we are going to install the theme Astra.

Find the Themes menu (either from 'My site' in the top left, or from 'Appearance') then choose and install the new theme.

Install plugins

Choose 'Plugins' from the left menu, search for your plugin (Astra), install and activate.

Select a design, click 'Import plugins' and 'Install this site'.

Click 'View site' to view the site with demo content installed. This creates the content that you an edit to make the site your own.

Edit the content

To edit any page of your site

• Go into that page
• Click 'Edit with Elementor'
• To edit the header or footer of your website, use the 'Customise' option from the top menu.
• Click on an item and edit as desired, then click 'Publish' to save.

To add new pages, click 'New' 'Page' from the top menu. You can create pages section by section or using a ready-made template to edit.

Continue editing and/or adding pages until your site is fully customised. Any demo content that isn't replaced can just be deleted.

If you are stuck at any stage, simply search for help with Google.

Summary

• Pick a name for your website
• Get web hosting
• Install WordPress
• Install a new theme
• Edit the content