How to Install WordPress on Siteground?

Building a website is the first stage of your digital marketing project.

For your small business, let’s build your website with WordPress!

Why would you have chosen WordPress?

WordPress is the most popular website builder with more than one-third of all websites in the Internet world are created on WordPress.

Most web hosting services (such as Hostgator, Godaddy, Siteground, etc) let you install WordPress quickly i.e. After only a few clicks through cpanel with Softaculous, you will have a functional website.

A successful WordPress installation comes with a pre-installed free theme. You can replace by installing other free themes or your own designed theme.

Many free plugins are available to improve the capabilities of your WordPress website in different areas:

• SEO meta tags configuration
• Sitemap generator
• Anti comment spam
• Contact form builder
• WordPress site speed up
• WordPress site security

The stages to create a new WordPress website include:

• How to Install WordPress (on Siteground)?
• How to Create a Web Hosting Account on Siteground?
• Register a New Domain Name
• Siteground Account Setup Wizard
• Install a SSL Certificate (i.e. HTTPS)
• How to Install WordPress?
• How to Install a Second WordPress Website on the Same Siteground Plan?
• How to Install WordPress Themes?
• How to Install WordPress Plugins?
• The Best WordPress Plugins
• Configure WordPress to Your Local Language
• How to Set Up WordPress in Multi-languages?
• How to Choose a Domain Name?
• Next Steps

To install WordPress, the simple and basic steps would include:

• Choose a new domain name.
• Create a new Siteground web hosting account by selecting a plan.
• Register your new domain.
• Set up SSL certificate (i.e. https).
• Install WordPress.
• Make changes to default theme, or install new theme.
• Install plugins.

Let’s go through each of the stages.

Go to Siteground (https://www.siteground.com/web-hosting.htm) and sign up a new account.

You need to select one of the Web Hosting Plans.

Siteground offers three different web hosting plans.

• StartUp: US$3.95 / month; Single website, 10GB web space, Up to 10,000 visits per month.
• GrowBig: US$5.95 / month; Multiple websites, 20GB web space, Up to 25,000 visits per month.
• GoGeek: US$11.95 / month; Multiple websites, 30GB web space, Up to 100,000 visits per month.

Select the StartUp plan. This is the least expensive plan which is more than sufficient for most new small business websites.

Once you’ve selected a web hosting plan, you’ll be taken to the second step.

You are given an option to register a new domain, or use an existing domain (that you already own).

Assume you don’t have a domain name yet, so you should register a new domain.

Search for a domain name that is available. Make sure to choose a domain name that you believe is suitable to be the name of your website. (Refer to How to Choose a Domain Name)

Complete the third step by purchasing the domain name and the web hosting plan.

You will need both the new domain name and the web hosting plan for your new WordPress website.

In this third step, you will have to provide account information (including your email and password), client information (e.g. first name, last name, country, etc), and payment information (i.e. your credit card details), and you will need to confirm your purchase information.

Make sure you provide a valid email address as you will receive an automated email where you will have to confirm your email address.

Confirm your email address and login to your new Siteground account.

When you login for the first time, Siteground will provide this Account Setup Wizard appearing as a pop-up window in the User Area. The main purpose of this wizard is to walk you through the process of setting up your new website.

You may probably be tempted to choose WordPress and click Confirm right away.

But you don’t have to do that.

The best choice at that moment is to skip the setup wizard by clicking the “I do not want to setup now. Remind me next time I login.” link at the bottom.

One of the factors to improve your website’s SEO is to use HTTPS (or a SSL certificate). Refer to Mobile SEO Best Practices.

Siteground offers SSL to websites for free through Let’s Encrypt.

You should always install / set up your WordPress website on the HTTPS protocol.

In the User Area, select the Account tab, and click “Go to cPanel”.

In cPanel home, scroll down to the SECURITY section. Click Let’s Encrypt and you’ll be taken to the next screen.

Install a new Let’s Encrypt certificate for your WordPress site.

The SSL certificate should be set up on:

• https://example.com, or
• https://www.example.com

If you prefer your website to be on www.example.com, install the SSL certificate on https://www.example.com.

To install WordPress, go to cPanel home.

Select WordPress under the AUTOINSTALLERS section, and specify “https://www.” as the protocol.

Installing the WordPress website on the root directory.

Select the domain name from the “Choose Domain” field, and leave the “In Directory” blank.

Enter your information for the WordPress installation including admin account username, password, and email address.

The username/password combination you’ve set up for WordPress website login is not the same as the username/password combination to login to Siteground.

Select the language of your WordPress interface.

The “Language” is the language of the WordPress interface that you prefer. Select English or your own preferred language. Note that this is not the same as the language of your web pages that are seen by your website visitors.

Click the “Install” button and the installation should complete in less than 30 seconds.

When the installation completes, it will display your new WordPress site’s URL:

• https://www.example.com/

And the admin login URL:

• https://www.example.com/wp-admin/

You can always also login to your WordPress website through:

• https://www.example.com/wp-login.php

You can always set up a second WordPress on the same Siteground hosting plan.

But how?

When your main (or first) WordPress site is installed and set up on the root domain i.e. www.example.com, you have two choices.

The 1st method is to create a subdomain:

• second.example.com

To create a new sub-domain, go to cPanel home, and click Subdomains under the DOMAINS section.

Enter your choice of a sub-domain name in the Subdomain field, and click Create.

The 2nd method is to create a folder/directory immediately under your top-level-domain name (TLD), such as:

• example.com/second

You may realize many company website’s blogs are set up on the folder/directory level such as:

• https://www.example.com/blog

To install a second WordPress, go to cPanel home.

Select WordPress under the AUTOINSTALLERS section, and specify “https://www.” as the protocol.

If you’re installing WordPress onto a sub-domain, select the domain name from the “Choose Domain” field, and leave the “In Directory” blank.

If you’re installing WordPress onto a folder/directory, enter the folder/directory name of your choice in the “In Directory” field.

You have to enter your information for the WordPress installation including admin account username, password, and email address. Select the language of your WordPress interface.

Click the “Install” button and the installation should complete in less than 30 seconds.

When the installation completes, it will display your new WordPress site’s URL:

• https://www.example.com/second

And the admin login URL:

• https://www.example.com/second/wp-admin/

WordPress themes are the appearance (i.e. the look) of your WordPress website. The importance (of a theme) is when people visiting your website, they sometimes may decide if they can trust your website/brand based on how it looks. i.e. Does your website look professional?

You can get and install a WordPress theme with one of the four methods.

• Use a default theme (for free).
• Download a free theme.
• Buy and download a professionally designed theme.
• Find a WordPress theme designer to design a new theme.

Default theme

When you’ve logged in to your WordPress account, go to the left side menu and click:

• Appearance
• Themes

You can always use one of the default themes that already comes with your WordPress installation. Usually the themes are named:

• Twenty Fifteen
• Twenty Sixteen
• Twenty Seventeen
• Twenty Nineteen

Hover a theme and click Activate. Now visit your website, and you will see the new theme has been installed.

In your WordPress account, under the left side menu go to:

• Plugins
• Add New

One method is to enter keywords in the search box to find the plugins that you need. For example, enter “Yoast SEO” and it will return the Yoast SEO plugin, and all other search results that may be related to Yoast SEO.

To install a specific plugin, you can click the “Install Now” button, and then the “Activate” button.

To enhance your Wordpres website, you may consider installing most or all of the plugins below.

Configure SEO meta tags

The plugin lets you implement the basic SEO groundwork for increasing your website’s Google organic search ranking.

• Plugin: Yoast SEO (https://yoast.com/wordpress/plugins/seo/)

Sitemap generator

Have a sitemap automatically created and updated in XML format, and have the sitemap submitted to Google, Bing, and other search engines.

• Plugin: Google XML Sitemap (https://wordpress.org/plugins/google-sitemap-generator/)

Anti comment spam

Your blog article may allow comments from your human readers. But bots would also send spam to your comments. The plugin is for filtering spam comments.

• Plugin: Akismet Anti-spam (https://akismet.com/)

Contact form builder

Build a web form and have it installed quickly on your site. Your visitors can send you messages through the contact (web) form without you revealing your email address in public.

Web forms can be a good tool for list building.

• Plugin: Contact Form 7 (https://wordpress.org/plugins/contact-form-7/)

Speed up your WordPress site

Generates static HTML files from your dynamic WordPress site.

When a visitor’s web browser requests your web page, the web server will serve the static HTML files which loads much faster than the dynamically generated PHP scripts.

• Plugin: WP Super Cache (https://wordpress.org/plugins/wp-super-cache/)

Secure your WordPress site

Protect your site against brute force hacking, scan malware, and more.

• Plugin: Wordfence Security (https://www.wordfence.com/)

For WordPress, many more free and/or paid plugins are available out there. Depends on your website’s business requirements or goals, you can always search for the appropriate plugins and have them installed.

Some of you may want to use WordPress in your own language.

Go to “Settings” under the left side menu.

Change the “Site Language” to your preferred language.

This is language setting for updating the preferred language in your WordPress admin area. Not to be confused with the language that is displayed to your WordPress website visitors.

For some markets, you need to develop a multilingual website for the local audience/consumers.

Take digital marketing in Hong Kong as an example. The audience in Hong Kong requires multiple languages:

• Local Hong Kong Chinese / HongKongers: Traditional Chinese (for written language) and Cantonese Chinese (for spoken/verbal language)
• Expats and foreigners: English
• Mainland Chinese living in HK: Simplified Chinese (for written language) and Mandarin Chinese (for spoken/verbal language)

To quickly enable multi-languages for WordPress website, install one of the multi-language plugins:

• WPML / The WordPress Multilingual Plugin (https://wpml.org/)
• Weglot (https://weglot.com/)
• Polylang (https://polylang.pro/)

When registering a new domain name for your website, go for one of the main options:

Option 1: Use a keyword-rich domain. e.g. MyKeywordDomainName.com.

Option 2: Create a new word for a domain name. When these websites first started, their domain names were new words to the entire world. e.g. Twitter.com, Tumblr.com, etc.

Your first choice domain extension would be .com. e.g. example.com.

You should almost always choose a “.com” domain extension, even all other extensions are available such as .org, .net, .cc, etc.

Only when you are targeting a specific local market/region such as Hong Kong, you should register a domain name with local extension. e.g. example.hk, example.com.hk.

You want a very short domain name, or a domain that is as short as possible. For example: e.com is better than example.com.

If you are facing mostly customers in the western countries, use a domain name that looks like English words.

If you are facing some other specific markets such as China, use Pinyin in the domain. e.g. TaoBao.com; Or use initials of Pinyin. e.g. JD.com.

After successfully developing your website using WordPress, the next immediate step is to get people to visit your new website.

I’ve compiled a list of over 200 free traffic sources where you can get traffic to your website.

Go through the list and pick out a small list of free traffic sources that can be regarded as “the low hanging fruits” i.e. traffic sources that you must place at the top of your priority, simply because you’re able to have them executed quickly.

Regarding the installation of WordPress on Siteground, I have written a Chinese version of this article.

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