How to Make a Blog Website – WordPress For FREE

Disclosure: Any hostgator link you see on this page is an affiliate link. If you use the link, then hostgator provides a commission to NYC TECH CLUB.

The goal of this tutorial is to help you make a beautiful wordpress blog. I will walk you through everything you need in order to create this blog.

This is the text tutorial. I hope you enjoy this tutorial!

Full disclosure: There is a small fee for hosting that you have to pay for in order to run you website. Included in this fee will be the price of your domain that we will register at the same time. I will be recommending Hostgator for the domain and hosting…the link is an affiliate link.

DISCLOSURE: As an affiliate link, hostgator provides a commission to NYC TECH CLUB if you use our coupon code or the URL we provide. This is of no cost to you but for full disclosure, we would like you to know and greatly appreciate your support.

I recommend hostgator because I like them and they’re reliable but please know that it is an affiliate link so Hostgator does pay me a fee if you use my link.

The reason why I recommend hostgator?

Step 1: Domain and Hosting

If you have a domain and hosting and wordpress already installed, you can skip this step. Otherwise, you need to make sure you install wordpress to follow this video tutorial.

We’ll be getting our domain and hosting from Hostgator. One of my go to spots I recommend to my audience. 

Disclosure: Hostgator and our other affiliates (Godaddy) pays us a commission if you use our link or coupon code. No charge to you, so thanks in advance.

Use the coupon code NYCTECH30 to save ~60% off at Hostgator

We need a domain and we need hosting. This are both mandatory in order to run a website. 

Your domain is your web address. For example https://www.nyctechclub.com is my web domain.

Hosting allows you to store all of your content and run your site. It’s what makes it load. Think of it as the engine to your website.

We’re going to be getting both our domain and our hosting from Hostgator.

Hostgator is a great hosting company for entrepreneurs and businesses. They’re fast and reliable

So click on any of the hostgator links and let’s go and get our domain and hosting.

There are two plans that we’ll focus on: the baby plan and the hatchling plan.

The baby plan is if you just need to make one website and one website only

The hatchling plan is if you plan to have more than one website and host them on this same account

Don’t forget to use one of the highest hostgator coupon codes: NYCTECH30 for about 60% off.

Note that the Hostgator link is an affiliate link. So hostgator does provide me with a commission (no cost to you) if you use my link. Thanks in advance for supporting NYC TECH CLUB! 

Step 2: Install WordPress

Now that we have our hosting and our domain from Hostgator, we need to install WordPress so we can start creating our blog website. 

  1. Log in to your Cpanel
  2. Click on Quik Install – Install WordPress
  3. Fill out the information
  4. Click Install
  5. Save your WP-ADMIN URL and your username and password
  6. Log into your WordPress website

Step 3: Get WordPress Blog Theme

There are a lot of theme’s you can choose from for your WordPress blog but we are going to choose a very specific one today.

The theme that we’re using is called the Cali Theme by Athemes. They create some of the best blog themes for wordpress so I’m excite for you to use this one.

I think this theme has everything you need too build a professional looking blog for any type of blogger.

We’re going to go to WordPress to get this theme since it’s Free!

One you get the theme, I want you to come back to your WordPress Dashboard and install the theme.

  1. Hover over appearance
  2. Click on Themes
  3. Click on Add New
  4. Upload the theme (make sure it is a zip file)
  5. If you need to compress (zip) your theme…right click it and click compress before you upload it
  6. Activate the theme

Now we can go back to the themeforest website and get the license to active the theme to get updates.

Step 4: Install Plugins

There are some recommended plugins that we need to install. To do that, go to your WordPress Dashboard.

The other plugins we will install are the easy facebook like box and really simple ssl plugins

Step 5: WordPress Settings

Hover over your Settings area and we will cover the general settings, reading, discussion and permalink section.

Make sure to save everything.

Step 6: Demo Content

Click on this link to download the demo content for this blog wordpress website tutorial.

Step 7: Customize Theme Settings

This is where we are going to create the entire layout of our blog. You can choose any setting you want.

If you want to have the same settings as the demo website, just follow along and choose exactly what we select in our video tutorial on how to make a wordpress blog.

Colors

Site Identity

Where you can upload your own logo

If you want to hide your site title and tagline you can do so much adding this custom CSS code in the custom css code tab on the customize page

.site-title,

    .site-description {

      display: none;

    }

Typography

Blog

Cali – Woocommerece

Post Slider

Page Settings

Background Image

Menus

Widgets

Custom CSS

If you want to change the link colors

a, a:visited, .main-navigation a:hover, .main-navigation a:focus, .main-navigation a:active, .footer-navigation a:hover, .footer-navigation a:focus, .footer-navigation a:active, .site-search__wrap .site-search_submit:hover, .site-search__wrap .site-search_submit:focus, .site-search__wrap .site-search_submit:hover [class="fa-"], .site-search__wrap .site-search_submit:focus [class="fa-"], .widget_search .site-search .site-search_submit:hover, .widget_search .site-search .site-search_submit:focus, .widget_search .site-search .site-search_submit:hover [class="fa-"], .widget_search .site-search .site-search_submit:focus [class="fa-"], .slide-overlay_category, .entry-title a:hover, .entry-title a:focus, .more-link:hover, .more-link:focus, .entry-share a:hover, .entry-share a:focus, .comments-link:hover, .comments-link:focus {

    color: #000000;

}

Step 8: Create Blog Posts

Now the fun begins. You can create new blog posts by hovering over New and click on Posts or go to the WordPress blog dashboard and hover over Posts and click add new

You can also check out your posts by going back to the posts tab on the blog wordpress dashboard.

Step 9: Edit Featured Slider Posts

If you want to select certain posts to show up on the featured slider you want to title them with a distinct category name like “Featured”

Then go to your customize tab (appearance > customize)

Click on Featured Area Settings

Select the category name you want to show posts from

Step 10: Widgets

Add this to your mail chimp form if you want the newsletter 

<p>
 <label>Email address: </label>
 <input type="email" name="EMAIL" placeholder="Your email address" required />
 </p>

 <p>
 <input type="submit" value="Sign up" />
 </p>

Step 11: Create Pages

We are going to create three pages together

To create a page just hover over pages > Add new

You can create blocks for your pages with different types of content

On the left side you will be able to modify the settings for your blocks

In the page attributes tab on the left side, you can choose the type of template you want for your page

For the contact form, please paste in the following code

<p>Your Name (required)<br />
     [text* your-name] </p>
 
 <p>Your Email (required)<br />
     [email* your-email] </p>
 
 <p>Subject<br />
     [text your-subject] </p>

 <p>Your Message<br />
     [textarea your-message] </p>
 
 <p>[submit "Send"]</p>

Step 12: Create Menus

We will make sure we set the correct settings in our settings in the video to make sure all the menus show up correctly.

Congratulations!

You just completed this video tutorial on how to make a wordpress blog website for free! Make sure you publish your video!