
In the digital world, online preferences are increasing day by day. Moreover, there are various benefits of creating the website using the WordPress platform. However, the most important thing that we would like to tell you is that you can create a free website on WordPress.com, but not on WordPress.org. So, today here in this blog we will explain step by step procedure for how to build your free website on WordPress using WordPress.com as well as common WordPress website post-launch issues.
Here, we will demonstrate to you how to create and host your website on WordPress.com without paying any money.
So, let’s begin with the procedure to develop the free WordPress website first.
1. Create an account into WordPress.com
First of all, you have to create your WordPress account on WordPress.com so go to https://wordpress.com/ you would find a screen like the given below. After that, you need to click on Get Started. You would be redirected to create a website page.
After that, you have to fill the given form. The fields that you need to enter like E-mail Address, Username, Password. Over there you have other two options that are also available such as continue with Google as well as Apple. Then click on the “Create your account” button.
After clicking on the button, you will redirect on the new page, and over there you need to enter your domain name. Just like the below-given image. As well as you have to Select the particular domain name according to your website.
Now in this step, there are few things that you have to know about. Whatever domain name you select would be suffixed with WordPress.com because you are using the WordPress platform for developing a free website.
Let me give you an example, I write a domain name as xyzdomain1 and it has automatically been suffixed with wordpress.com so my complete domain name or website address would be is xyzdomain1.wordpress.com.
After selecting an appropriate domain name, you are redirected to the next web page. There are plenty of options to choose from. You just need to click on “start with a free site” as shown in the image below.
2. Confirm your Email Address
After completing the first step, you will get the email on your mailbox, and over there you just need to click on the confirm button just like given in the below image.
And after that, you get the Welcome mail from WordPress.com.
3. Set up your WordPress Website
Once you are done with the above steps, you can set a few details of your new website like site title, site icon, site tagline, site address, Language, and many more. Click on “save setting” after filling up all the details for making changes to your WordPress website.
4. Select and Customize WordPress theme
Now here in this step, you just require to choose a theme for your awesome website. For theme, you can find both free and premium. Choose an appropriate free theme. For instance, we select the “Twenty Sixteen” free theme.
After clicking on the theme, you will get details of the theme and if you like then you just activate the theme into your website. And you can customize your theme according to your requirements.
5. Edit your WordPress Website
After selecting a theme you can add or remove web pages into your website. You can also edit posts as well as media into your website.
6. Select Appropriate Free Plugin
After editing or selecting a particular theme, you can also add some free plugins into your website to add more functionalities according to your requirement.
7. Launch your WordPress Website on the Internet
After setting an awesome website you just launch your website by clicking on “Launch site”.
8. Visit your newly created Website
After completing all the above steps then go to the browser and write your complete domain name. You would be able to view your website on the World Wide Web.
All and all, we make sure that you can develop an amazing WordPress website for free by following the given above steps.
Now it’s time to demonstrate the common WordPress post-launch issues.
WordPress post-launch issues
Launching a new website is a great and amazing thing because you can expand your business all over the globe. Moreover, you can start using it for your further aim, and yet enhance your blog or business or portfolio or whatever other your ambition is might be difficult after launching your website.
So there are still a few things that you might do right after launching a WordPress website to set yourself for a favorable outcome. In this blog, we also give you some tips related to it.
Let’s start,
1. Slow Performance because of Hosting Configuration
Each and every WordPress website performance has been a critical focus since mobile page speed became a Google ranking factor. In addition to this, feeble web page load time can make a significant negative impact on a new build website.
However, there are various steps you can follow to reduce any kind of possible harm.
Beginning by running exploratory speed as well as performance tests when redesigning your website on a server. These primary website tests can take the edge off several types of forthcoming problems, still, post-launch tests will produce the most precise results, particularly when your website approaches excessive traffic.
Whenever you observe slow web page load time, then first figure out the hosting configuration. Then ask questions to yourself and that is, First of all, Can your website on a shared hosting server with minimal resources? Second of all, does the server handle the amount of traffic?
Generally, almost all web designers and web developers pursue great practices for optimizing images or photos, but you commonly won’t see image optimization as a top performance offender on a new website.
Most of the performance tests will decline the server response time, as well as this metric will help to point out, either you need to alter the hosting setup or service.
2. Spam Submissions on Forms
It is a little bit difficult to predict at what level of spam protection is required before a website goes online. Spam is widespread on the World Wide Web these days which can be difficult to avoid perfectly. Moreover, it is really common for a website owner to be overwhelmed with spam form submissions right away after launch.
Furthermore, there are 2 typical ways to battle spot bots. The first way is using honeypots and the second way is using captchas. In addition to this, Honeypots point out the procedure of inserting a field into a form that is hidden to visitors but that bots will fill out. For WordPress websites, there are a plethora of well-known form plugins such as Contact Form 7 and Gravity Forms which will offer simple steps to set up honeypots.
The other option is to include a captcha into the form that needs visitors to accomplish a small puzzle to confirm they are not a robot. Moreover, captcha options have enhanced over the years and Google reCAPTCHA now allows an invisible captcha with various settings. In addition to this, various websites can need both honeypots and a captcha to decrease a high volume of submissions.
Hopefully, in the World Wide Web, there are a number of anti-spam plugins available.
3. Needs to Improve the security of your website
In today’s digital era, there are a number of bad things that can happen to a WordPress website such as black hacker attacks, malware, viruses, and many others. So most importantly, protecting your website from all the things with a firewall to a large extent is always a great option.
Moreover, Sucuri is one of the great WordPress security services. It brings malware detection and cleanup, mitigates DDoS attacks, monitors your site for hacks, and various others. But, you have to pay some amount for it according to the plan you select.
However, for a free security solution, check out Wordfence Security and iThemes Security.
Also Read: Top 10 Tricks To Make Your WordPress Website Secure
4. Tracking Faulty and Missing Codes
Nowadays, most of the analytics platforms as well as advertising campaigns depending on tracking codes to gather information on your website. If you redesign an existing website, then you may not realize that these tracking codes might have been set up in the past and may also forget to move into the latest website.
Moreover, you can be employing various marketing campaigns to go along with the launch of the latest website. Containing the faulty tracking codes or forgetting to add them can cause various trouble, such as a considerable lapse in the correct data collection whenever you require it. If you are using Google Tag Manager to manage all your tracking, as well as generally you will have the Google Tag code on the website and all of the extra tracking codes using the tag manager.
However, if you are missing the basic Google Tag Manager code on the latest website, this could lead to a loss of data on numerous tracking platforms.
In the way of a post-launch checklist item, have a look at any type of tracking and analytics software, like Google Analytics, correct after launching your website and then again 30 days after.
Examining visually for inconsistency and drops in data. In addition to this, most of the tracking codes are added to the header of the website, so you can also do a review of the header codes for any existing or missing codes.
Useful Read: Top 10 Tools To Track User Activities On WordPress Website
5. Indexing Errors with Google Search Console
Normally, indexing trouble occurs with the new websites, particularly for websites with a plethora of changes to the URL structure and number of redirects. In addition to this, to find indexing errors Google Search Console is a great tool.
Moreover, within Google Search Console, check the Index Coverage Report and look at the troubleshooting section for any type of errors. Here we define some common error messages that may appear after launching a new WordPress website like Web Page marked no index, Pages Are Blocked by robots.txt, Submitted URL is 404, and many more.
If you find any error related to a no index setting and robots.txt, then always double-check on the general reading setting in the WordPress website for “discourage search engines from indexing this website” has been unchecked after you launch.
If any 404 errors have been detected, it is important to address these as much as possible. Obtaining the number of 404 errors can harm existing website rankings.
Furthermore, by these common error messages, Google Search Console may acknowledge the additional information like mobility errors and performance reviews which can be beneficial to calculate post-launch.
6. Incorrect Featured Image for Social Sharing
In general, most of the analytical platforms and advertising campaigns depend on tracking codes to gather information on your website. Whenever you are redesigning the current website, you may not realize and remember that these particular tracking codes were set up in the past and may not remember to transfer them over to the newly built website.
Moreover, if you are using Google Tag Manager to control all your tracking, you will have the Google Tag code on the website as well as all of the additional tracking codes within the tag manager. In contrast, if you are missing the important Google Tag Manager code on the new website, then this could lead to data loss on various tracking platforms.
Final Thought!
In this blog, we explained step by step procedure of how to build a WordPress website without any cost. And, we explain some WordPress post-launch issues with some solutions related to it.
In addition to this, now we are pretty sure that by following these above steps you can create a wonderful free WordPress website according to your needs. Moreover, the post-launch points related to the WordPress platform will help you to avoid as much trouble as possible after launching your website on the Internet.
If you have any queries related to this topic then feel free to contact us or let us know. We will be happy to help you!