Welcome fellow Qraters! You are probably wondering what this website is all about. Well at this point, it’s a story of creation. I’m creating a website that aims to curate and review products and services that are best in class. The website makes use of affiliate links where possible. I will try to disclaim non-affiliated links. If you don’t know what affiliate links or affiliate marketing is, don’t worry, the blogs contain all you need to know about it. It is my hope that those of you who choose to join along and build a website also learn about affiliate links and use them in your own build.
The build of the website is getting updated live. Only major changes will go through the staging sites. I’m trying to blog the problems I encounter as they may help you if you choose to join me and build your own WordPress site.
I’m assuming you landed here Qrious about where the Get Started button led. This page is the ‘Quickstart’ guide to launching a website. Unlike what you may have read, there is no quick. It is designed to guide people that have always wanted a website but just didn’t quite know how to start. This is Quickstart guide is advice to set one up for minimal cost. All you need to buy for WordPress are a Domain Name and Web Hosting. You can save money and get both together with a single provider such as DreamHost, but I strongly recommend against that. You effectively get locked in and are at the complete mercy of your provider.
Spectra One, the Theme this website usually uses comes default with a Homepage that says, “Launch Your Website Today”. Well, launching a website is possible but probably won’t happen in a day. Not for a fully functional site. These take time. A basic landing page is definitely possible though. If you can get that up and running today, it would be a very good start. This page contains the essential first 3 steps to getting started. If you action all links on the checklist, you will have all the tools needed to get your website up and running. Possibly today. Depends on how commited you are to the project. However, I strongly recommend you regularly read the Blogs and go to the Learn More page for further information. Again, the build of this site is happening in real time as I get time. It’ll look different and get broken as I experiment and play with things.
- ORGANIZE – Get a password manager and learn how to use it. You’ll thank me later. Without a password manager you will have a hell of a time managing all the logins that you’ll need. Bitwarden is open-source freemium model. This means they have a free tier as well as paid tiers. At this stage the free tier is all you should need. Also, get a new dedicated email for this new pet project. You are going to be signing up for so many things, your current email mess just isn’t going to cut it. Achieve some temporary Zen and Hack Inbox 0. I recommend Gmail. It’s free. You get 15gbs to fill up with the inevitable spam and you can configure it for most of the basic email duties you will need in the future.
- PREPARE – Prepare yourself mentally and emotionally. This will be a challenge. It is a big task creating something out of nothing. There will be many hurdles along the way that you will need to overcome. Be prepared to learn. A lot.
- COMMIT – Usually this is by spending some money. Yes, at many points in time, when building a website, you will need to commit some resources. Luckily for you, I have Qrated some of the best options for you. I use free or freemium options whenever possible. If I’ve paid for something, it better be good (thank you Betterlinks Pro). If you want to build a website, you need some form of web hosting. I built this website with WordPress and hosted it initially at DreamHost due to their great support. However, you do not have to build a site with WordPress. There are many other site builders. They tend to be quite lacking in features on their free plans and a lot more expensive than WordPress on their entry plans. As an experiment, I have built a site on Weebly. It doesn’t perform very well on SEO even after optimising it as best I could. WordPress is the much more flexible and will scale with your growth as you learn how to use it. It’s the world’s most popular content management system (CMS) powering over 40% of all websites in the world. You will also need to get a domain name. This is often available for free through your web host for a year, but I strongly recommend that you purchase it from a separate domain name provider. It gives you greater flexibility to change web host if needed. I bought mine through Namecheap.
Qrated Action Checklist – This list grows as people email me for the next actionable steps.
a) Bitwarden – Free tier works across your devices
b) Gmail – Free tier gives you access to Gmail, Docs, Sheets, Slides and many more
c) Namecheap – Promo codes are often on the website
d) DreamHost – I recommend the US$2.95/month yearly plan as a great starter plan
e) Post some content. It doesn’t matter what. Nothing matters at this stage. Just get familiar with posting and page making. These are core to WordPress. It is essential that you are familiar with these two functions on the dashboard. To build a website, you will need to post a lot of content. If you are not sure you can do this, don’t worry, we live in the age of AI. Learn to harness it. This website uses AI for content, especially when I am in a rush. I can easily ‘humanize’ the AI content, but that’s a job for another time. No point when not many people are reading it at the moment. I’m actually waiting for someone to contact me regarding the blatant use of unedited AI content.
f) Decide if you truly want to learn to design and build the website yourself. You can always outsource the build such as by getting someone from Fiverr to handle the technical side of building a website whilst you focus on the content – hence point e). My advice, if you are in it for the long haul, you should really learn the basics of building and maintaining your website. The costs of outsourcing this adds up very quickly. Consider outsourcing once it has grown to a financially sustainable level.
g) Looka – Try Looka ASAP. No matter if you are choosing to outsource the build with Fiverr or if you decide to build the site yourself, you are going to need some branding, at the very least, a site logo. While you can find some very nice people over at Fiverr to do this for you, I strongly urge you to Have a Looka at Looka. Looka is an AI-powered logo and brand designer. You can get dozens and dozens of designs in minutes. Unless you are very fussy, I’m pretty certain you will quickly create a design you like at Looka. I’ve used them for my site logo and other logos. You can pay once and get unlimited design changes. Very well worth it compared to outsourcing logo designs at Fiverr.
h) Backup – STOP! Before you get too far ahead with your website build, you need to think about backups. Some hosts provide backups. Some don’t. DreamHost kindly provides automated daily backup on its shared hosting plans. However, I do recommend you look into more advanced backup methods such as backups on demand, scheduled backups and incremental backups. This is where products like WPvivid come into play. Head over to my Review of Wpvivid for more information.
i) Legals – This is very important, especially if you are collecting information from your readership. I used Lucrezia Iapichino’s Legal Bundle Value Pack to help set up my legal pages. It took me quite a bit longer than her advertised 10 minutes to set up though. I’m probably just fussy. I almost used Amira Irfan’s VIP Legal Bundle as that one has absolutely everything but Lucrezia’s sales funnel got me first. Lucrezia also has a great website called Blogging for New Bloggers that has a lot of very useful free content on it. Well worth a look. Expect to be sucked into her sales funnel like I did if you do. Amira has a great sales funnel too, but gave me information overload. That’s why I started with Lucrezia. It doesn’t really matter though, as I believe you can’t go wrong with whichever one you pick. You can read more about why you need legals on a website on my yet to be written blog.
Now go crazy and play around with these tools. It will take some time to get the hang of them. Probably more than a day. To set up your website today, just follow the WordPress installation prompts on DreamHost. Have a play around. Just make sure you remember your passwords. That’s what Bitwarden is there for. NEVER lose or compromise your Bitwarden master password! It’s game over if that happens. Good luck!