A-Z Guide: How to build a WordPress website in Nigeria

Knowing how to build a website could be regarded as an essential skill to have. As a Nigerian having the knowledge and understanding of how to build a website is advantageous. Here are a few benefits:

• Save a lot of money on hiring web designers/ developers.
• Creating a website to have an advantage and reach a wider range than your business competitors.
• Being able to keep your website up to date and follow the latest trends without needing a programmer.
• Adds an advantage to your CV when looking for a job.
• Creates a much-needed job opportunity by working as a freelancer.

The opportunities are limitless but the first step to take is to learn how to make a WordPress website either for business or project.

According to Venturebeat, WordPress powers 30% of the websites on the internet. WordPress is always updated with lots of developers working on improving and enhancing the user’s experience.

One of the reasons WordPress is widely used is because of the no coding required it offers. You could build and host a website for just ₦19,000.

The plan to ace a Website

Step by step guide on the necessary process required to build a WordPress website at the cheapest price possible.

By the end, you’ll end up with a functional and elegant website and also acquire the knowledge to build a website either for a client or for a business of yours.

Step 1: Choosing a domain name and hosting

This is the first step in making a website and it is the fun part. You have total freedom to choose any name for the website out of millions of other names.

Still, there are some important factors to note while choosing a domain name in order to achieve a successful website.

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Stay original

It’s the most important when choosing the website domain name. The domain name should be constructed around the meaning, name or phrase associated with the business.

Make the domain name brandable but not too long, easy to remember to avoid users typing in a typo while trying to access the website.

Summary of choosing a domain

• Short domain name.
• Easy to remember domain.
• Unique and symbolizes the business.

If you are confused about what domain name to choose, there are a few domain name generators to try to give an idea.

I. Buying a domain and web hosting

Web hosting isn’t as complicated as often people think it is. Imagine a computer(webserver) in which you store your website information and files whenever a visitor calls upon a particular file via domain name (URL access) the webserver presents the file to the visitor that’s web hosting a nutshell.

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There are a lot of companies offering web hosting services, with extremely competitive offers. I would strongly recommend Hostinger as one of the best web hosting services.

I’m not affiliated with the company but as a customer of theirs, I would recommend their services and here is why:

• 24/7 customer service: Anything you running into a problem building or managing your website, their customer services are always online ready to assign to resolve the issue.
• Very cheap for as low as ( ₦ 360/month).
• Free domain name.
• User friendly.
• Light speed server.
• Free backup for the lowest budget.
• Free business email.

Okay, let’s get down to business:

• Go the Hostlinger, set a plan for the website and add to cart.
• Select a free domain in the payment section.
• Installation and configuration of the Hostlinger and WordPress.
• Finalizing.

Go the Hostinger and click on shared hosting, once the page opens up.

The single shared hosting plan is for small businesses, personal blogs and more. It’s the best plan to use to learn how to make a WordPress website.

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For a basic website or small business website, this plan would be enough.

Premium shared hosting is for freelancer web designers, online stores and big companies.

Business shared hosting is for big cooperate companies.

Below is the payment section you would see form below, type in the domain name of your choice.

The next step is to sign in or create an account. Once you have created an account, sign in and proceed with payment. All Nigerian bank cards are accepted.

After payment, you would be required to filling some personal information that will be bound to the domain and hosting IP address.

II. Installation of WordPress on the web hosting server

Head over to the dashboard of your account and click on the manage button on the web hosting.

Don’t be intimated by the lots of icons scroll down to the auto installer and click on it.

Then click on WordPress.

Fill in the necessary information required for the WordPress installation.

Within two minutes the installation would be completed. Yes! you have officially built a WordPress website but there is still work to be done.

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Step 2: Understanding WordPress and its functionalities

Visit http://yourdomain.com/wp-admin to access the backend of your website. Login in with credentials used in setting up the WordPress installation.

I. Basic setups

Setting the permalinks

Permalink is basically how your website URL would be structured. The most common practice according to SEO experts for better optimization and ranking on Google is Post name.

Click on settings then permalinks (Settings-> Permalinks) and change it to Post name, then save.

Setting the visibility

To be able to be indexed by Google and appear in search queries on Google, you would need to make your website visible.

Go the Settings-> Reading and uncheck discourage search engines.

Note: When building a website it’s better to leave the box checked until the build has been built completely for google to index the website properly.

Setting the website title and tagline

The website title would be displayed in pages, posts and SEO descriptions. It’s would be used for bookmarks and more. Think carefully about what the website represents and select a title.

Taglines are usually phrases associated with the supposed website(brand or business).

Go to Settings-> General and write the website title and tagline of the website.

Setting the time zone

Go to Settings -> General and scroll down to zone. Set the time zone to Lagos which is Nigeria and set the time format that is best suitable for you and your audience.

Step 3: Designing the website

Remember when we said choosing the domain is the fun part, well lied. Choosing a theme for your WordPress website is the fun part.

There are multiple themes to choose from and with the click of a button change the entire look of the website.

WordPress offers a lot of free themes with superb features. There are other websites (themeisle, themeforest, freepsdworld, and digitaltemplatemarket) that offer premium themes for a certain fee.

If you can’t afford premium themes visit allwpworld or downloadthemes and download the premium themes for trial, not for commercial use.

I. Checklist for selecting a theme

• Make sure the theme is lightweight (Nobody likes a show website).
• Make sure it’s unique (You don’t your website looking like a replicate of another website).
• Suited for the job (Choose a theme that best fit the business/ organization)

II. Installation

There are two ways to install themes in WordPress. If you download a theme from outside, the file would be in a zip file. Go to Appearance -> Themes and click on Add new.

Click on the Upload theme button and choose the zip file of the downloaded theme and install it.

Can install themes directly from the official WordPress directory. Go to Appearance -> Themes and click on Add new. Search for the name of the theme and preview it to get an insight into how the website looks before proceeding with the installation.

Step4: Customization of the website

Different themes affect the options that would be available in the customization tab. There are a few mandatory options that are always available for customization.

I. Site identity

Customization of the favicon of the website is important. It’s usually the icons that appear on the browsers tab and mobile search SERP. The favicon size is 144px by 144px Google recommended image size.

II. Homepage setting

Selecting a static page nor a post page could make or break your website. If it’s a blogged based website then the Post page is a better option.

If the website is to be designed for a business purpose the homepage setting should be Static page to be able to engage the audience quickly.

III. Color and Typography

In here lies the settings for the customization of the general colors that would be displayed throughout the website. Customizing the font, text size, and headers are also available. Free few the explore and get a feel for how the website could look like.

Step5: Adding essential plugins to power your website

Plugins simply help added more features to power and make websites easier to manage without having any knowledge of coding. Due to WordPress’s popularity, one could argue there is a plugin for every feature you plan on adding on to a website.

However, here are the essential plugins to add to your WordPress website:

• Robin image optimize: optimize images on your website with loss of quality. It’s essential the images on a website are optimized to enhance user experience. It equally helps load web pages faster.
• WebP Converter for Media: converting images to Webp helps load a website much faster for browsers that allows Webp images.
• Contact 7 form: adding forms to your website is one of the best ways to allow the visitors of your website to reach out. With contact 7 form it makes the process seamless.
• Wordfence security: Afraid of hackers? With this plugin, rest assured that your website security is secured and would be informed via email for any unauthorized activity on your website in real-time.
• Yoast: an essential plugin for search engine optimization.

No need for any backup plugin when hosting with Hostlinger you are automatic backup up every three days with the single shared hosting.

Step 6: Basic pages to create

There are pages that all websites should have. These pages are:

Contact us – Where visitors can submit a form and get information that could help them contact you.

About us – Self-explanatory page that displays information about the aim, the purpose of the website.

Home – Usually called the landing page. It’s the first page a visitor would see when the website domain is accessed from a browser.

Privacy Policy – Usually generated automatically by WordPress. It’s a must-have in today’s world.

I. Creating a page

Click on Pages and Add New

Get familiarized with the interface.

• Title.
• Body.
• Featured image.
• Publish button.

II. Add Blog functionalities

If you are an influencer, content products or an inspiring blogger in Nigeria, it crucial that your website has a blog.

Blogs can be used to promote content, products, and brands. Managing a blog is straightforward, publish articles related to the content, products, and brand that you are trying to promote.

Creating a blog is similar like create a page.

Start by clicking on Pages and click on Add New.

Create a new page, name it BLOG.

Head over to Settings -> Reading and select the BLOG page as the Post page.

The success of every blog is based on consistent writing and publishing relative articles.

Conclusion

Yes! You have successfully learnt how to build a WordPress website.

You can now build a website from the ground up without needing to hire anyone.

With just ₦ 19,000 you can build a website, which takes 4 years before the next renewal which is quite cheap. Develop the skills you have acquired and you could be on a path to being a freelance web designer in Nigeria.