How to use WordPress: a beginner’s guide

WordPress is one of the most popular Content Management Systems (CMS) in the world. In 2024, 62% of the world’s websites used WordPress.  

WordPress is a powerful and flexible CMS that will let you create any website you want, while also being easy to use. In this article, we’ll get you started with the basics of WordPress! 

Why use WordPress?

WordPress is not the only CMS in the world, so why should you choose WordPress? Here’s a few key benefits: 

1. User-friendly

Even if there’s other website builders that are even easier to use, WordPress has a very user-friendly interface. The WordPress editor, which is also called Block Editor and Gutenburg, is an easy way to create and add content to your website. You can drag and drop text, videos, images, and buttons to get the layout you want.

2. Flexible

With WordPress, you can essentially create anything you want. The limit is your imagination! You can design a unique website that suits your business and choose from thousands of themes and plugins for your site.

3. Help and support

As WordPress is so widely used, there are plenty of users and experts that can help you build your website. You can, for example, ask for support via popular forums such as on the WordPress.org website.

4. Cost-effective

WordPress is open source, meaning anyone can download the software for free and customise it to their liking. You don’t need an expensive, custom-made website, but you can manage your site yourself to save costs. 

How to use WordPress

If you’re now wondering about the practical steps of using WordPress, we’ve condensed it down to 13 steps, after which you will have created your very own WordPress website! 

1. Define your goals

What do you want to achieve with your website? You may want to create a basic portfolio, start a blog, or perhaps boost sales by starting an online shop. Keeping a clear goal in mind makes it easier to create a WordPress site that has the design and functions that you need.  

Once you have a goal, it’s also helpful to think about what your target audience is so you can tailor your website to those visitors as much as possible. Marketing personas can also help you do this. 

2. Get WordPress hosting

To get started with WordPress, you’ll need both a website and hosting for it. Hosting is the name for the service that stores and presents your WordPress site online. At one.com, we offer affordable, high-performance hosting with excellent customer service. Here are some of our benefits: 

• 1-click installation 
• Free migration of your website 
• Performance Cache that speeds up your website 
• Daily security update 

We also offer Managed WordPress, which includes advanced security systems, priority expert support, and automatic updates that check your website for functionality. With Managed WordPress, you can let us handle the manual work required to keep a WordPress website updated and secure. 

3. Register a domain name

You will also need a domain name for your new WordPress site. A domain name consists of a name and a top-level domain and is your website’s unique address and it’s what allows visitors to reach your website. If you would like some ideas for domai names, check out our article on finding the right domain name. 
 
At one.com, you can choose from more than 400 top-level domains, so you will always find a domain that suits your business.

4. Install WordPress

Once you’ve bought hosting and a domain name, it’s now time to install WordPress. With one.com, you can use 1-click installation.   

You can also install WordPress manually, although it’s a significantly more complicated process and there’s no major pluses for choosing this method. We therefore recommend the 1-click installation.  

5. Get to know WordPress

Now that you’ve successfully installed WordPress, it’s time to explore WordPress and figure out where you can find all the settings and functions.   

The first time you visit WordPress and your new website, you will be taken to the WordPress Admin Dashboard. This is where you get a quick overview of everything that’s happening on your website. You can, for example, check your website’s status and if you click on Screen Options on the top right, you can add a view of the latest activity on your website.  

Along the left side, there’s a panel with different options. Each option has a descriptive name, but if your screen is on the smaller side you may need to hover over each icon to see the name. These are the options: 

1. Admin panel

Here is the button that always takes you back to your Dashboard. Here you can also find Updates, where you can view and install updates to your WordPress website, plugins, and themes. 

2. Posts

Under Posts, you can see a list of all posts. You can create new posts, view drafts, and edit published posts. Posts are articles with their own pages that share the same design and are generally displayed in reverse chronological order, with the most recently published post first.  

You can also edit your Labels and Categories which you can use to create a structure for posts on your website. 

3. Media

In Media, you manage all the media on your website, such as images and videos. You can upload new files, edit existing files and delete files you no longer need.  

This provides a helpful overview of all media, but you can also add and manage media directly in posts and on pages. 

4. Comments

Here is a list of comments. They may be published, waiting for your approval, or flagged as spam. You can reply to comments, edit comments or delete them. 

5. Appearance

Under Appearance you can choose your Theme for your website. Your theme determines how your website looks, where different design elements are placed, how your posts and pages look, and much more. You can proceed to customise your theme by clicking on Editor. 

6. Plugins

WordPress Plugins let you add more functionalities to your website. For example, an extension can help you with search engine optimisation, provide enhanced protection against spam, increase the speed of your website, add forms and much more.  

Under Plugins, you will find an overview of the ones you’ve added to your site.  

7. Users

Here you can create new users, view existing users, edit profiles and set roles. Roles allow you to decide which people can make which changes to your website. If you have comments, you can also see all registered users on your website. 

8. Settings

Here are basically all the settings you can make in WordPress. They are divided into submenus: 

• General: Set your website name, address, location, language and time zone. 
• Write: Settings for publishing posts. 
• Read: Home page setting, how posts are displayed, and options to hide the homepage from search engines. 
• Discussion: Options for comments and profile pictures. 
• Media: Dimensions of images and organisation of uploaded files. 
• Permalinks: Format for addresses of posts, categories and labels. 
• Privacy: Create or select a privacy policy page. 

Other menu options 

You might have more options in your sidebar because your hosting provider, your plugins, or your theme can add more menus and pages. We recommend you explore all the options you have available so you know what functionalities you have. 

6. Set your preferences 

Now that you’ve learned where all the settings are, you can take the opportunity to align them to your preferences. Keep the goal of your WordPress website in mind and make the basic changes you think you need. Don’t worry if you don’t need to make that many changes. WordPress comes with default settings that suit most people. 

7. Show that you’re building your website

It can be useful to show curious visitors that you’re working on your website, even before you’re comfortable publishing it. As you work, you can set your site to maintenance mode. With one.com, you can enable Maintenance Mode in the settings of the one.com plugin.  

If you don’t have access to it, you can install another add-on, such as:

• WP Maintenance Mode & Coming Soon
• Maintenance
• Coming Soon Page, Maintenance Mode & Landing Pages by SeedProd
• Minimal Coming Soon – Coming Soon Page

8. Choose a WordPress theme

It’s time to decide what your WordPress website will look like with themes. If you use one.com, you can select from one of many free themes. With Managed WordPress, you even get access to Premium themes, a total of 40 themes with no extra cost.  

There are many other free themes that you can find via Add New Theme under Appearance –> Themes. You can search and browse over 6,000 themes.  

Some require you to pay to get full access while others are completely free. If you want to pay for a premium theme, you can visit ThemeForest, for example. You can tap Preview to get a quick idea of how a theme looks. 

If you need help finding a good themes, here’s some suggestions:  

• Twenty Twenty-Four 
• Astra 
• Zakra 
• GeneratePress 
• OceanWP 
• GeneratePress 

How to install a WordPress theme

Installing a theme in WordPress is simple. Here’s how to do it: 

1. Click Appearance in the side panel 
2. Click Add New Theme at the top left. 
3. Search for your desired theme. 
4. Click Install. 
5. Select Activate. 

Customise your WordPress theme

You can customise your theme by going to the Editor found under Appearance. There you can change colours, fonts and much more. Some themes also have more advanced systems for changing their design. 

If you prefer to design the website entirely, you can look for a drag-and-drop website builder like Elementor Website Builder or Beaver Builder. You add a website builder to your website as a WordPress plugin. 

If you want to make major changes to your theme, you can also do it with a child theme. However, this requires more technical knowledge of how WordPress and website development work. 

There’s several more options that you can explore in our separate article. 

9. Install WordPress plugins

WordPress includes a lot of great features, but you can add even more with plugins. You might want to increase your security, add social media buttons, add forms or speed up your website faster. There are around 60,000 plugins, so you have a lot of great options for your WordPress website. 

You can find plugins by tapping Add New Plugin under Appearance in the left sidebar. As with themes, many are completely free, while some require payment for more advanced features. You can visit CodeCanyon, which is a repository for WordPress plugins. 

To clarify, you don’t need to install plugins for WordPress to work. In fact, it’s often best not to install unnecessary plugins as they can cause problems. Installing plugins is not directly dangerous, but it’s generally better to avoid installing too many add-ons as this increases the risk of problems. 

While it’s smart to minimise the number of plugins on your WordPress website, there are some plugins that are good to have. Here are some suggestions: 

• Rank Math to improve your SEO 
• WP Rocket to speed up your website 
• Imagify to compress images  
• WooCommerce to create an online shop 
• Redirection to create 301 redirects 
• Contact Form 7 to add contact forms 
• Akismet Spam Protection to protect your website from spam responses 
• Wordfence Security to protect your website from malicious people. 

How to install a WordPress plugin

Here’s a basic guide for how to install a plugin:

1. In the Dashboard menu on the left, go to Plugins. 
2. Click on Add new. 
3. Choose a plugin of your choice.  
4. Click Install. 
5. Click Activate. 

10. Create pages

Now that the basics are in place, it’s time to create pages for your users to visit. You can start out with some basic pages, such as a: 

• Home page 
• Contact page 
• About us page 
• Privacy policy 
• General terms and conditions page. 

WordPress Patterns

To make it easier for you to create pages, you can use Patterns. Patterns are ready-made blocks you copy and paste into the desired place, so you don’t have to design them yourself. 

11. Add widgets and navigation

Many themes allow you to add widgets that can display information, ads, social media posts, and the like in your sidebar. To add and edit widgets: 

1. In the Dashboard menu on the left, go to Appearance. 
2. Select Editor.  
3. Click on Widgets. 

If the Widgets option isn’t on your WordPress homepage, it’s because your theme doesn’t support widgets.  

Adding navigation  

A menu allows visitors to navigate to the most essential pages of your website quickly. If you have or want a navigation menu, you can edit it easily:  

1. In the Dashboard menu on the left, go to Appearance. 

2. Select Editor. 

3. Select Navigation. 

12. Create posts

Starting a blog with WordPress is easy. Once you have done that, it is of course important to have good content on the blog. You can use good content on your blog to attract visitors to your website. That way, you can attract visitors to other pages, to your online shop or wherever you want them to end up. 

Follow the steps below to create a post: 

1. In the Dashboard menu on the left, go to Posts. 
2. Click on Add new post at the top left. 
3. Write title and add the content you want in the post. 
4. Choose a Category and Label. 
5. Select a Featured Image. 

Click Publish (or choose Save draft to publish the post later). 

Categories and tags

Categories are a way to sort posts on a WordPress website. You can sort posts of the same type so that WordPress can recommend similar articles, so that visitors can actively find posts on the same topic, and so that search engines can understand what your posts are about. 

Tags can also be used to sort posts. Tags are often used for multiple topics and can be a way to sort posts within or between categories. 

For example, say you have a website where you review movies. Then you can write posts with different categories which could be: 

• Horror 
• Drama 
• Comedy 
• Action 

Then you could have labels for actors and directors. That way, visitors can find reviews in different genres and movies with certain actors, regardless of category. 

13. Publication and maintenance of your WordPress website

When you’re ready with all the changes and improvements you’ve made, you can publish your WordPress website. Remove your Maintenance Mode, if you have it enabled, and launch your website to the world. 

When your website is on the web, it is important to update it with good content. It’s also important to update your theme, plugins, and WordPress as a whole. However, before you do an update, it is good if you know that your website is backed up. That way, you can restore the website if something goes wrong.  

If you would rather have someone else take care of the maintenance of your website, you can use Managed WordPress. Then we install your updates automatically and ensure that the updates do not change the appearance of your website. Should anything go wrong, we’ll restore it and let you know right away. 

Getting started with WordPress

We hope that you have learned a lot about WordPress and that you feel ready to start your website! That said, there is much more to learn. We have a whole section of articles where you can learn, for example, how to password protect your WordPress website, how to add YouTube videos to your website and much more. Keep learning!