WordPress has come along way since its launch back in 2003. The platform has made an enormous progress in its functionality, accessibility and usability and now bears the title of the most popular content management platform, and proudly powers up a considerable percentage of all the websites existing on the web.
Its versatility and enhancement options are the primary reason why so many bloggers, website owners and big name companies choose WordPress as their CMS. Although WordPress is famous and there are lots of experts and WordPress geeks around, there are still thousands of new users joining the community on a daily basis and they need some guidance and help with it.
With this in mind I decided to make a post on everything that goes behind managing a blog or website on WordPress, that we, as site visitors ,don’t really see. There indeed goes tons of hours of work and commitment to run a website and sometimes people who get into it don’t really realize how much work and efforts it takes.
So let’s go ahead and see what goes behind managing a website on WordPress and what are the most efficient ways to do it.
1] Domain Name and Hosting
You can’t run a website on WordPress unless you have a domain and a provider that will host your site on the web. Your domain is basically your website’s address, something that people type in the search input place to get to your website.
When looking for a domain name try to choose a catchy one, but also one that strongly relates to your company or the services that you provide. Hosting is a kinda computer service that hosts all your website files. You should be really careful and picky when it comes to choosing a hosting provider.
Make sure to choose a reliable provider, that offers quick customer support and all the essential features. While installing and setting up WordPress is free, you’ll need to pay for the domain and hosting. Fortunately the prices for domains are not high, and you can for sure find an affordable hosting plan too.
2] WordPress Setup
Once you’re done with the domain name and hosting, you can get to installing WordPress. Well, most of the hosting providers will also help you to install WordPress or might actually have WordPress installation in the package offered, but there is also a manual way of doing it. There are a lot of step by step tutorials that can help you install WordPress by just following the instructions.
3] Pages
What pages should I have on my website. A very common question that the newbies might ask themselves. Pages are usually set based on the unique requirements of your website or the company you’re running a website for. If that’s a large company providing a range of services make sure to have enough of the pages to fully introduce your company to your visitors.
If that’s a small blog go with as many pages as you feel like enough. However, there are some must-have pages that every website needs. Those are the homepage, About us page, services page, blog,and the contact page. Later on when your company enhances and gets a recognition, there are still a couple of pages you should add, those for testimonials, FAQ, latest news page, etc.
4] Themes and plugins
Plugins are an important part of every website since they basically provide most of the functionality for it. Again, depending on your website niche and needs , you’ll need to install all sorts of plugins that will help your website fully function and also help your visitors use and navigate your website with ease.
Plugins needs to be updated on the regular basis. Most of the companies or developers behind the plugins update the versions and fix some of the bugs quite often, so you need to make sure your plugins are up to date and consistent with your theme and WordPress latest standards. The same applies to themes.
5] Posts
Another very common question is how often should one publish posts. Well, if you’re just blogging make sure you update your blog with fresh content as often as you can. And if you have different post categories on your website it will be perfect to put some fresh content in every category at least twice a week.
The same applies to business websites. Fresh content is important and is a major factor when it comes to user engagement and driving traffic. So give your site visitors fresh content every once in a while and the results will not keep you wait.
6] SEO
Here we go. I am sure new bloggers and even most of the people that don’t have anything to do with WordPress or running websites know what SEO (search engine optimization) is and why it is important. It’s even more important when you just start your website. If done right it can give your website a major boost.
Results don’t come overnight and it takes a lot of time and efforts to see results. There are plugins in the WordPress directory that can help you with optimizing your website for a better visibility and ranking.
7] Backup
Since the web is full of all kinds of malware attacks and accidents and system malfunctions happen quite often, backups are another thing you should take care of. Backup is the process of duplicating the most important files of your site and saving them at another place, which you can later restore it with ease.
There are various plugins and services offering you regular and safe backups , but you can also do it manually too, although it might be a bit complicated for the beginners.
Running a website requires a lot of time and efforts. It’s a never ending commitment that will take you a lot of consideration. And these are just some basic tasks that you’ll have to do to have your blog up and running. For some these tasks might seem complicated and confusing, but there is no need to get discouraged.
There are a lot of solutions and services available to help you manage your site easily and efficiently. One of those options is 10Web, a company that is specialized in all things WordPress and provides an all-in-one solution for WordPress powered websites.It provides all the core services you need to give a boost to your website, from SEO to site backups and image optimization.
The packages also include 60 premium WordPress plugins for a get go and quality customer support to all its users. It also gives you a centralized dashboard where you can manage all your plugins and themes , and save a lot of time along the way. There are various affordable membership plans that you can choose from and a 14-day risk free trial period to give it a try first.
Here is what basically goes behind the scenes of managing a WordPress powered website. Nobody said it’s an easy job, but it’s absolutely worth it if you have a goal and want to achieve it.
