Welcome back to the website tutorial, where you can build your own business website under 100 dollars.
If you completed the previous two steps, you have a website online! That is a great start, and on this video, we will set up and update WordPress, install Elementor, change the theme and talk a little about the layout and design of your homepage.
In the last video we installed WordPress from OVH manager, and now it’s time to access our website.
> Click Access the module’s administrator interface.
Now we will either see a Page Not Found page, or access directly the WordPress login page. If don’t see the login page, just scroll down and under the Meta header, select Log in.
If you need to login to WordPress later on, you can always type in this address and you’ll see the login screen:
Yourdomain.com/wp-login.php
If you are working on your home computer, it’s safe to click on the Remember me check box, and log in.
This is the Dashboard of WordPress, and all the adjustments you want to make, are accessible from the menu on the left.
Let’s start by going to Settings. On General settings we can change the language of WordPress, use the correct timezone and Save Changes.
Now, let’s change the name of the site. In this example I’m building a website for my client, and this is for her personal brand, so it makes sense to give the site her name.
If you have a tagline, you can add it here.
This part is very important to make sure that your website is using SSL correctly and making it secure. Add to both the WordPress Address and Site Address a letter S after the http, and save the changes.
This way WordPress will use a secure connection by default for anyone visiting the website.
To make sure that SSL is actually working on your domain, let’s go verify that in OVH manager. Log in to OVH, browse to Web Cloud, open your Hosting from the left-side menu, and from the Multi-site tab, check if the SSL is Green and Enabled.
If it is says disabled, click on the three dots, and select Modify domain. On this window, check the SSL, and you can also enable the firewall.
Click Next and Confirm.
Now the SSL status will turn yellow and say to Generate.
Go over to Actions, and select the Regenerate SSL certificate, and click Confirm.
Once the SSL has regenerated, your SSL status should turn into green and we can continue setting up WordPress. This might take 10 minutes.
Now, it’s good time to update WordPress by clicking on the prompt on the top of the page. WordPress gets updates regularly, and it’s a good idea to keep it updated for security and compatibility with plugins.
On this page, simply click the blue Update Now button.
Update is automatic and brings you to the What’s new page.
We can skip that for now, and head on to Plugins to install Elementor, and on the page that opens, let’s select Add New.
On this page, select the search, and type in Elementor.
And once the search is completed, click Install Now for the Elementor Page Builder.
While it installs, let’s open a new tab and type in proelements.org.
This free addon unlocks all the important elements we need to build the website.
Hit Download, and let’s go back to WordPress.
Once Elementor has been installed, click Activate, and from the Plugins page, select Add New again.
This time, we will upload the plugin, so click on the Upload Plugin button, and select Choose file to browse your downloads folder for the Pro elements addon. Select it, and choose Install Now.
Finally, hit Activate plugin.
Next step is to change the default WordPress theme to a light Elementor theme that makes the website optimized for Elementor and keeps it fast.
Select the Appearance menu, and choose Themes from the list. Here, click the Add New button, and type in Elementor in the search field.
Once you see the Hello Elementor theme in the search results, Install, and Activate.
We can go up to the top bar, and select Visit Site to see how the website currently looks like.
If everything is in order, you should see a Hello World message, which is the example post on WordPress.
Now we have finished building the framework behind the scenes, and we are ready to build the visual home page for our website.
The next part will be the longest video of this tutorial, so now you can spend some time sketching on paper or on Photoshop what elements and pictures you want to have on your website, and in what order.
Once you have something written down, let’s move on to the next video and create a professional home page for your business or personal brand.
