Some of the links below might be affiliated links. No extra cost for you, sometimes with discounts and always the correct product. Read more
WPEngine is an award-winning WordPress hosting company with customer satisfaction of 97% [source], they’re well-known for their super fast and reliable hosting services.
Fastest and most reliable hosting platform for businesses of all sizes
Daily backups
Continuous monitoring of your site
Automatic updates
Managed upgrades
Excellent security
WPEngine powers over 1 million websites in 150 countries and have won multiple awards for their customer support and services. This is really one of the best hosting providers out there, who can handle any website project of any size and their plans start at $25/month if you pay annually.
And it gets even better as you can get free WordPress hosting for 3 months! This WordPress coupon code is valid for new customers purchasing any Startup, Growth, or Scale plan. Unfortunately, this hosting coupon not valid for existing customers, upgrades, or any other product purchases. So if you don’t have an account with WPEngine yet, grab it quick before it’s discontinued.
You can give them a call, or use their chat facility if you’re outside of the US, to speak to their really nice and helpful support staff on how to get one of the fastest web hosting plans for your website.
WPEngine is also one of WPBuffs’ recommended hosting providers, so you know they work really well together if you’re looking for someone to take care of your website management – here you can find a full review on WordPress maintenance plans if you’re interested.
This WordPress Discount applies to the first payment of an annual plan but does not apply to future recurring payments. Discount may not be applied to previous purchases, renewals, subscription upgrades, or combined with any other offer.
Get 3 months free eCommerce hosting in 2021!
They also just launched a new eCommerce hosting solution for businesses looking to take the leap into online sales or make more money faster with their existing WooCommerce store.
Setting up your store with WPEngine is really easy even for non-developers as they offer a quick setup wizard with modern, ready-to-use optimised WooCommerce themes. Their site builder works similar to other drag-and-drop page builder, so you don’t need any coding experience to move them around.
In addition to all their usual features, such as super fast hosting, automatic plugin updates for top security, free migration and free SSL, daily backups, one-click staging site and 24/7 support – WPEngine also offers Instant Store Search to build an impressive customer experience. This smart feature will display relevant and more exclusive products to your shoppers, and offers autocomplete like ‘Did you mean…’ to make sure your shoppers find what they’re looking for.
So if you’re keen on getting started with an online store or growing your business in the e-commerce world you can’t do much better than hosting with WPEngine, you will love their powerful hosting platform and superb customer service. Before it’s too late, make sure you bag this great but limited hosting coupon code and get 3 months of free e-commerce hosting, before it expires.
Restrictions: Offer valid for new customers purchasing any eCommerce Startup, Professional, Growth, or Scale plan. Unfortunately not valid for existing customers, upgrades, or any other product purchase. This offer is valid: April 1, 2021 – June 30, 2021
Interested in how to start a blog and what’s niche blogging all about?
Are you interested in learning How to start a blog in 2021 – step-by-step WordPress tutorials? Learn what you can do yourself easily and what’s worth outsourcing. Check out why you want to get into niche blogging and how to find your niche when you’re just at the start of your blogging career. You can find the full index by clicking the button below and start your own blog or small business website with easy to follow written and video WordPress tutorials.
Stay up–to-date on WP tutorials & join our online community
100% Privacy. No Spam. One-click unsubscribe in every message.
Some of the links below might be affiliated links. No extra cost for you, sometimes with discounts and always the correct product. Read more
Episode 5: Why website management is so important and why it’s one of the best jobs to outsource (for non-techies)
If you have a WordPress website you will have seen ‘Update required’, ‘New update available – please upgrade now’ or ‘New version available – update here’ messages lots of times and even without knowing what these updates are all about, you just clicked ‘Update now’.
That’s what my students tell me all the time. When I ask them if they have any idea what might happen if they upgrade without checking compatibility or taking backups, most of them shake their head and say it worked so far. Some of them have encountered issues and gotten a massive fright as they realised that suddenly their site was gone!
A quick search on the WordPress.org forum reveals over 20,000 results for sites that crashed after running updates, with over 3,000 of them being requests on the support forum itself. Not a nice place to be in for any blogger or website owner.
So, let’s have a look at different website maintenance options and whether there are any that are affordable even for new bloggers and small businesses.
A quick search reveals 20,000 results for sites that crashed after running updates – website maintenance plans can avoid these issues
If you’re serious about creating a small business website or making money with blogging, then it’s fundamental that you look after your investment and get the basics right from the beginning.
Getting the foundation right, like reliable website hosting, choosing a domain name and picking a suitable theme (template) for your site, will make it so much easier in the long run – as is often the case with many things in life.
Looking after your website is crucially important and you can do it all yourself if you feel technically minded. But in fairness, it can get a bit tricky when something goes pear-shaped like a code error, malware or hacker attack, or the dreaded white screen of death. There are lots of tutorials about it, like this troubleshoot post by Nick on how to fix common WordPress errors. It was published a few years ago but is still relevant and helpful.
As you can see, WordPress is very user-friendly and you don’t have to be a developer to fix things, so if you feel comfortable dealing with this kind of stuff, great – go for it and you won’t need to read this post any further, because you’ll be just fine looking after your site.
What if I find website maintenance too technical?
If you feel a bit overwhelmed dealing with errors and malware, you’re not alone. Many small business owners or bloggers – like many of my students – find the technical part such as backups, upgrades, theme and plugin updates, errors and dealing with risks like malware and hackers extremely complicated. Which I think is fair enough, considering that website security is a very specialised and fast-paced field and understandably not everybody’s cup of tea.
For most people, the website is only a small part of their business and they have to deal with a hundred other tasks every day. Often it doesn’t make sense to spend hours every week getting to grips with website security if someone else could do the job much more quickly and efficiently – they can focus on running their business instead.
The good news is that it doesn’t have to be your responsibility, you can get a website management plan and let them do the job at quite reasonable rates.
Is a WordPress maintenance plan worth the money?
There are certain things in life we’re happy to outsource. A survey in 2019 by Clutch has shown that businesses most commonly outsource more technical tasks, including their accounting (37%), IT services (37%), and digital marketing (34%) responsibilities. The largest percentage (24%) say they are doing so to increase efficiency, while 18% are seeking assistance from an expert.
Website maintenance is certainly one of them, it’s often money well spent for many small business owners. Website maintenance is much cheaper than website repair and I think it’s definitely one of the best parts to outsource if code is not your thing. It will remove these challenging tasks from your to-do list, give you peace of mind and more time to focus on other parts of your business, like creating content for your website.
Everybody knows that it’s vital to keep their website safe and secure, however, it’s scary how many sites I see without any backups. People don’t realise that they play Russian roulette with their website every time they click ‘Update’. Most times they don’t even know what they update, or if it’s necessary or even recommended. Unfortunately, some people only realise what can happen when it’s too late and the site is down or displays errors.
Besides updates, any website can be hacked at any time and software incompatibility and errors happen – it’s scary stuff if it happens to you and you see years of work disappearing, but as I said it doesn’t have to be your responsibility. That’s what WordPress maintenance services are there for and we’ll have a look at some of the best and most affordable website management options out there.
How much does a website maintenance plan cost?
As with any services, there are lots of companies out there offering WordPress maintenance plans. Most entry plans start at around $50 to $100, but some only include the basics. Plans for custom-built websites will be pricier as they require more manual work to maintain your site, but usually small business sites and bloggers don’t need that kind of service.
There are some really good companies out there that specialise in small business WordPress maintenance services and offer great customer support with plans from about $50/month – that’s less than $2/day – for most small business owners and bloggers; that’s certainly affordable and gives great peace of mind. Some of them even include emergency fixes and malware removal, but we’ll come to the details in a minute.
What is included in website management?
Website maintenance services keep an eye on your website and take care of the following:
Daily backups of your site
Keep your WordPress core software updated
Update WordPress themes and plugins up-to-date
Fix any theme or plugin errors
Help with troubleshooting
Keep your site secure
Keep hackers out
Protect your site before something happens and if something happens they will
Have the right backups and the needed knowledge to get your site up and running again as quickly as possible
Most of them will also issue a weekly or monthly report on your website
Which are the best website maintenance services and what might not be included?
Most website maintenance services include all the tasks mentioned above to keep your site safe and secure. Even though I think that these tasks should always be included in any website management plan, unfortunately, that’s not always the case, so please make sure you read the small print.
If a site gets hacked or goes down for some other reason like malware or errors, some providers charge a previously agreed fee, so as mentioned before it’s important to read the small print before signing up to anything.
There are lots of developers and companies out there who offer maintenance plans, but as many of my clients are just starting out and don’t have an endless budget I have found a few providers who offer great WordPress maintenance services, with very helpful customer support, a fantastic reputation and affordable plans, which can save you a lot of headaches looking after your site.
If your website budget is limited and you will spend money on only a couple of products, then I’d say it should be a good hosting provider and a website maintenance plan, if you don’t feel comfortable looking after all the technical stuff. A good and reliable hosting provider and WordPress maintenance plan give you a secure foundation, remove a lot of stress from business owners and is for many people money well spend.
Anything else in WordPress is optional if you ask me, and lots of things in WordPress can be achieved either with free products or for a small amount, but hosting and keeping your site secure would be my top two priorities.
My 3 favourite website management options, who have never disappointed me or any of my clients
WP Buffs – 24h WordPress website management
One of the companies I can highly recommend for website management is WP Buffs. Their basic plan ‘Maintain’ includes daily cloud backups, weekly core, database, theme and plugin updates, 24/7 monitoring and emergency support.
WP Buffs was built around a 100% remote-work environment, they have staff working from the US and across the globe. Having a team monitoring your site 24/7 means if an issue happens at 2am your time, somebody at WP Buffs will know straight away. They check your site every 60 seconds and can therefore react and fix your site within minutes if there is an issue. They also offer Google Analytics integration, and they send you comprehensive weekly reports on your website.
The basic ‘Maintain’ plan is available at $56/month if you sign up for an annual plan, which is really good value and even includes 24/7 emergency support which is really valuable in case your site goes down due to an error, malware or hackers! They’ll be there to help, explain what happened and make sure your site will be up and running as quickly as possible again.
WP Buffs also offer speed optimisation, unlimited 24/7 website edits, eCommerce and membership priority support, free access to a number of security and speed premium plugins (iThemes Security Pro, WP Smush Pro and WP Rocket) in their two higher plans, which start at $123/month if signing up for an annual contract. Considering all the extra services and premium plugins which are included in those two plans, that’s really good value.
However, if you just got started with blogging or a new website, their ‘Maintain plan‘ offers everything most people need in the beginning – they’ll keep your site secure, safe and up-to-date. And of course, you always have the option to upgrade at any time as your site and demands grow.
To figure out which website management plan would suit your requirements best and to ask them any questions, you can just arrange a call with them.
WP Tech Support – affordable website maintenance with 24/7 support and emergency fixing
Another company for website maintenance I’m very happy to recommend is called WP Tech Support. WP Tech Support is a website management company located in the Isle of Man with offices in the UK, USA and India. They specialise in affordable WordPress maintenance contracts with 24/7 support.
Their Standard Plan starts at $45/months and this plan includes 1 emergency fix per month, WordPress core and plugin updates but for some reason not theme updates, which would be important.
However, WP Tech Support’s Pro Plan is only $60/month and includes WP core, plugin & theme updates, malware removal and unlimited emergency fixes!
WP Tech Support website maintenance plans 2021
The WP Tech Support Pro Plan is really good value, considering that there are WordPress maintenance companies out there who charge about $100 for each emergency fix and WP Tech Support charges $145 for once-off malware removal if you don’t have a plan with them or you need it while being on the Standard Plan.
You shouldn’t need malware removal or emergency fixing often but it’s like an insurance that gives you peace of mind in case your site gets hacked, you experience a code error or become the victim of malware, that you can just raise a support ticket or use the live chat, and get the experts to restore and fix your site without any large bills occurring.
WP Tech Support also offers once-off emergency fixing, malware removal and site optimisation for slow loading website – if you don’t have a website management contract with them or if it’s not included in your plan you can buy any of those services very quickly through their support chat.
WP Tech Support website once-off emergency fixing, malware removal and site optimisation plans
Damien Carbery – personal WordPress care by an Irish developer
And then there is one of my personal recommendations. The WordPress developer Damien Carbery, an Irish WordPress developer, based in Dublin and a truly fantastic developer.
We have worked on different projects together over the years and I can highly recommend him as an incredible WordPress developer, extremely customer orientated, always very helpful and super-reliable.
His WordPress maintenance plans start at €45/month ($55) and include weekly WordPress, plugin and theme updates, monthly database and file backups, monthly malware scan and maintenance report and no long term contract. You can contact him directly to discuss your requirements.
Damien Carbery’s WordPress maintenance plan options
Conclusion on website maintenance
Of course, there are other really good companies out there who offer maintenance plans, but I did not list them here because some are either
quite a bit more expensive
don’t include support in their lower plans or
charge extra for certain tasks such as dealing with a hacked, malware affected site or other troubleshooting
So if you are a small business owner or blogger, and don’t feel comfortable taking care of website maintenance yourself and are looking for a reliable and affordable maintenance plan you can’t go wrong with either WPBuffs, WP Tech Support or Damien’s service.
I love working with all three of them, they offer great value for money with excellent friendly and helpful customer service, and they can save you a lot of headaches. If you know of another great recommendation for a website maintenance plan, please let me know in a comment below.
Just remember, whichever company you choose please make sure to always read the small print and ideally arrange a call or chat with their support team to make sure you get exactly what you’re looking for.
I hope you found this post about website management useful and please let me know in a comment below which website maintenance service you went for.
Some of the links below might be affiliated links. No extra cost for you, sometimes with discounts and always the correct product. Read more
Episode 4: Which are the best WordPress themes on Theme Forest, what’s the fastest WordPress theme out there, where to find themes for Elementor and how to get Genesis framework for free
WordPress.org offers thousands of themes (the look and layout of your site) and plugins (extensions to your site like an app on a phone) to choose from. At the time of writing this post, there are over 8,000 themes and over 50,000 plugins to choose from in the WordPress.org repository and many more are available outside of that.
With such a massive choice it’s not easy to find the right WordPress theme, especially when you’re just getting started. This post will break it down, so let’s have a look at which are the most popular WordPress themes, the best places to find Niche WordPress themes and what multi-purpose WordPress themes are. We’ll look at where you can find the greatest choice of themes, best prices and discounts, and which is the fastest WordPress theme and best framework for WordPress with the least bloat.
A WordPress theme is a template for your website. By choosing a theme you give your site a layout – whether your website will have one, two or no sidebars, what it’s background colour will be, where the navigation bar is located (e.g. above or below the header), whether the navigation will scroll with the user and therefore be accessible easily, and whether your site will display a header, a logo, or a slider.
Any theme today should be responsive so it will look good on any device, from a large screen down to a mobile phone. Will your homepage display specific content, such as most recent posts, in columns or in a carousel? Would you like to use a specific block editor such as Elementor, Divi or Beaver Builder?
Which easily adjustable options will your theme offer, e.g. can you add scripts to the header easily without the need to access files directly in the editor? How well is the theme coded, will your site load quickly and offer great SEO options? These and many more options will be dependent on the theme you choose.
If all this sounds a bit confusing right now, don’t worry. We’ll go through some of the most popular and best reviewed WordPress themes out there and I’ll give you a few pointers for themes I’ve worked with for years – themes I’ve always loved and have never been disappointed by.
All of the themes mentioned in this post have great reputations and excellent WordPress developers working behind the scenes to make sure they stay up-to-date with the ever-changing WordPress development world.
All these themes come with very detailed documentation, so you can have a look at them first before deciding which WordPress theme suits your needs best. Whichever WordPress theme you’re going for, I have worked with all the themes which are mentioned by name in this post, multiple times over the years.
I create WordPress training for clients websites and I can honestly say that all the themes which are mentioned in this post are all first-class ,and most of them are very flexible in regards to the look and purpose of your site.
Where can I find the best WordPress themes?
What does that actually mean – the best WordPress theme? I don’t think there is such a thing as one best WordPress theme. There is strong competition in the WordPress theme industry, developers are constantly trying to offer more features at lower prices.
Therefore, we have lots of modern themes to create elegant and beautiful websites which load fast. WordPress themes which are well coded with lots of flexibility, very user-friendly customisation options and great customer support – I guess that’s what you could call the best WordPress themes out there.
From working with WordPress for over 10 years there are a few themes which spring to mind, these are all themes I have seen over and over again on client’s websites in many different combinations and customisations to create various types of websites.
I have created training for many of them multiple times over the years for different clients. Because these themes have such great reputations with developers and website agencies, developers use them over and over again – with good reason. Many of them have had hundreds of thousands of downloads because they look good, they work well, they’re flexible, elegant, award-winning and fast.
I love working with the themes I list here, you just can’t go wrong with any of them, so let’s have a look at some of my favourites.
ThemeForest – the largest WordPress theme collection
If you’re looking for a place which offers one of the largest WordPress theme collection out there, you can’t go wrong with ThemeForest. Here you can choose from some of the biggest and most successful themes in the WordPress world.
If you’re just getting started with WordPress or looking for a theme for a new site, ThemeForest is a great place to get started. You will get an idea of what’s possible and can compare all different types of WordPress themes when you browse the massive choice of WordPress themes at ThemeForest.
There are two well-known ThemeForest themes I’d like to mention. I have worked with both many times over the years and if you use either of them you can’t go wrong.
The Avada WordPress theme
Their bestselling Avada WordPress theme has a fantastic reputation in the WordPress world, it’s well built and offers a lot of choices. The Avada WordPress theme has been downloaded over 650,000 times and is ThemeForest’s most popular theme since its launch in 2012.
It comes with 100% flexibility and absolute design freedom. Avada comes with unique dynamic content options which give you ultimate design flexibility. But that’s not all, you can even design each element of the header and footer individually.
In the Avada WordPress theme you can design each element of the header and footer individually
The Avada theme comes with over 80 pre-built page designs with one-click import, but also with an uninstall option if you change your mind. The theme offers over 120 layout elements and WooCommerce integration. Avada comes with its own page builder, but I’ve often seen it combined with the Elementor page builder, they seem to work really well together and I’ve never seen any compatibility issues between them.
Avada is of course fully responsive, so websites built with the Avada theme look beautiful on any device.
The Avada WordPress theme comes with over 80 pre-built page designs
The Avada WordPress theme is available for $60 on ThemeForest which is a great price for such a versatile and well-loved WordPress theme. The Avada theme is extremely flexible but also very user-friendly, so any web design layout is possible and your site can be up and running quite quickly even if you’re not really familiar with WordPress yet.
ThemeForest Kalium theme
Another well-known ThemeForest theme is Kalium, not as famous as Avada but definitely one of my favourite themes. Kalium was launched a few years later than Avada in 2015 and is a very elegant, multipurpose WordPress theme. It comes with lots of demo content which you can import with one click, so it makes building your new site super easy in literally a few minutes.
The Kalium theme is an elegant multipurpose WordPress theme and comes with lots of demo content
The Kalium theme on ThemeForest also comes with WooCommerce integration and e-commerce support, WPBakery page builder (worth $60), two top sliders (Slider Revolution and LayerSlider worth over $100 together), lots of different header styles (over 15 different ones) and over 30 portfolio styles.
Kalium is also fully compatible with the Elementor page builder if you prefer Elementor over WPBakery. It goes without saying that the Kalium theme is of course fully responsive – so it looks great on any device, it’s highly customisable with lots of build-in options, shortcodes and extra elements.
It loads super quickly and is SEO optimised. The theme comes with multiple blog and shop layouts, and is also multilingual.
Kalium is a really good looking WordPress theme, it’s really easy to use even for beginners, but with all its extra functionality you will never run out of options, and pretty much any web design is possible to build with that theme.
You can get Kalium for $59 on ThemeForest which is a bargain for a premium theme like that, the premium plugins alone are worth over $200. All the different page layouts which come with the theme will save you uncountable hours of building the actual website. Well, I think it’s easy to see why I like Kalium so much.
Kalium theme is compatible with Elementor page builder and comes with premium plugins worth $200
Before you start browsing, there is one thing to be aware of. ThemeForest is a vast library of themes and templates not just for WordPress and it’s easy to get lost on their site. So be a little careful to stay in the WordPress section on their website, as their market place is huge and they also offer HTML, Joomla, Drupal, Magento and other themes.
How about independent WordPress theme providers?
There are a lot of independent theme providers out there, many of them are really great at what they do and get a lot of respect in the WordPress community. Let’s have a look at some of the most popular WordPress themes and how they compare.
The most popular WordPress theme in the world – Divi Theme
The most popular WordPress theme in the world – Divi Theme used by 11% of WordPress websites (source: https://trends.builtwith.com/framework/wordpress-theme/traffic/Entire-Internet)
The Divi theme is used by over 750,000 people who love the Visual Drag & Drop Builder. There is no coding knowledge needed with Divi, it’s really easy to learn, and is loved by novice and more experienced WordPress users alike. Divi is not just a theme, it’s a complete design framework that allows users to design and customise every part of their website from the ground up. Many developers build all their sites using only one framework – I know a few developers who use the Divi theme for all their client’s websites.
What’s the difference between Divi Theme and Divi Builder?
Some people are confused by Divi Theme and Divi Builder and wonder what’s the difference. The Divi Builder is a plugin which can be used with any theme, so you can download it separately. It’s a page builder like Elementor, Beaver Builder and WPBakery.
Page builders make it easy to create beautiful layouts using a drag and drop editor. The Divi theme includes the Divi Builder plugin already, and has everything wrapped into one theme. So when you download the Divi Theme, you are good to go to build your website without the need to purchase anything else for it.
They also offer a cool Divi Demo Page where you can try the WordPress theme for free and get a feel for how the Divi page builder works. On the demo page you can simply click into any of the elements to edit or move them. No account or sign up is needed, just go to the Divi Theme page and click the purple button ‘Try it for free’ on the left hand side of the header.
The Divi Demo Page lets you edit and move any element of the Divi Theme without signing up to an account
The Divi Theme (including the Divi Builder plugin) is available for $89 for an annual plan or for $249 to get lifetime access and updates. I have lifetime access with Divi which I think provides great value, however their annual plan is the more popular one. They also offer a 30-day money back guarantee. So you can use the theme for a full month and if you don’t like it they will give you full a refund.
Best framework for WordPress – Genesis: flexible, providing a secure and search engine optimised foundation
Another well known and respected theme provider is StudioPress. They are powered by WPEngine and they offer the most popular mobile-responsive themes and design framework for WordPress. StudioPress is the creator of the Genesis Framework — probably the most well-known theme framework for WordPress.
To be honest, some novice WordPress users might find Genesis a bit more complicated than other themes as it doesn’t offer lots of options out of the box, it’s actually quite a simple theme and that’s why so many developers love Genesis, as there is no bloat. But it also means that a bit of CSS knowledge and general technical understanding will make it easier to work with Genesis.
Before WordPress 5.0 there was another big difference, and that was how to edit the home page. In most WordPress themes, you go to ‘Pages – Home’ and then edit the home page, in Genesis you had to go to ‘Appearance – Widgets’ and there you would find widget areas which were called ‘Home Top’, ‘Home Middle’ and ‘Home Bottom’ or similar.
When you added widgets to those widget areas you could populate your front page, then you had to click into the individual widgets directly to add your content. That’s very different to other themes and can be a bit confusing for people when they just get started with Genesis. You will still find that kind of setup in WordPress sites which use an older version of WordPress. However, if you start now you will download the newest WordPress version anyway, and can use the block editor on the homepage.
Here is a nice video on how to get started with Genesis Pro and WordPress 5.0+.
How to make Genesis more user-friendly for WordPress beginners
Page Builder Beaver Builder
There is some more good news if you’re not really into CSS and coding, or for some reason don’t want to use any of the pre-built Genesis child themes. You also have the option to get all the benefits of Genesis and make it more user friendly by opting for the premium page builder Beaver Builder. I’ve seen it used in many Genesis-built websites, it’s also well known and has been discussed on the StudioPress community forum for years, so Beaver Builder and Genesis work really well together.
Beaver Builder page builder and Genesis work really well together
Beaver Builder is a premium page builder, you can sign up to it here for $99 for the first year and then get a 40% discount when you auto-renew the year after – that’s $40 discount per year! If you opt out of auto-renewal they usually still offer you the 40% discount for another 2 weeks after your subscription has expired. Just after that, the discount will be gone and you’ll have to pay full price again, so ideally keep auto-renewal on to get the discount, all upcoming updates and really great customer support. They also offer a 30-day money back guarantee if you change your mind.
Genesis plugin Design Palette Pro
There are also a whole bunch of plugins for Genesis and one of them is called Design Palette Pro, which will give you the ability to customise pretty much any area on your Genesis site without touching any code. It includes the header, navigation, content area, sidebars, footers, colours, fonts, backgrounds, margins and padding – pretty much anything, with just the click of a button. The plugin is available for €49 per year for one site, and is a great addition for anybody who doesn’t like to code, but would like to customise their Genesis theme easily.
The Design Palette Pro plugin makes customising the Genesis theme very easy without the need to code anything
How to get Genesis framework and themes for free?
If you sign up for a WPEngine hosting account you can get the Open Source Genesis Framework & 35+ StudioPress Theme Packages with it for FREE! So if you don’t have a hosting account yet, and are interested in building a really fast-loading, good looking website, while using one of the top WordPress hosting providers out there, you can sign up to a hosting account with WPEngine and get the Open Source Genesis Framework & 35+ StudioPress Theme Packages for free – that’s over $2,000 in value! With those savings you can then easily afford to purchase the Beaver Builder or the Design Palette Pro plugin, if you want to make your site easier to customise.
As a bonus, you can also get 3 months free hosting with WPEngine on top of getting the Open Source Genesis Framework and 35+ StudioPress Theme Packages for FREE
Best free WordPress themes and cheap premium themes by independent theme providers
And then of course there is MyThemeShop – they are premium developers who create themes and plugins. At the time of writing they have developed over 160 themes and plugins with clean and efficient code, fast website loading times, and search engine optimisation, and they have over 690,000 customers using their products.
One of their best known themes is Schema which is a very fast-loading, ultra-SEO friendly WordPress theme. It has all the best MyThemeShop features, including their custom options panel, all their shortcodes and widgets, and a pixel perfect design. Schema also includes rich snippets in order to help search engines understand your site and rank you higher.
Another very popular MyThemeShop theme is AdSense, – it does exactly what it says on the box. It’s a really fast-loading Google AdSense theme to increase revenue, it comes with the great feature of an inbuilt Adblock detector, and can easily be used for affiliated sites too.
MyThemeShop has a great range of products including free WordPress themes, single themes for very reasonable once-of purchase prices starting from $19, various licenses to use themes on 1, 3 or unlimited numbers of sites, and an extended membership which gives you access to over 160 premium WordPress themes and plugins, all their new products and loads more for $99/year.
Best place to find niche WordPress themes
MyThemeShop also has some really great niche themes (i.e. Science, Drop shipping, Crypto, Coupon, Newspaper, Real Estate, Pets, Writer and Affiliate Marketing themes and many more) and often have some great special offers on too, so it’s worth checking them out.
MyThemeShop customer support
What can I say about MyThemeShop customer support? It’s brilliant and very fast. They have lots of people in their customer support team but I frequently see the same moderators in their support chat helping people out in a very efficient manner. They usually reply within a few hours and they are happy to help with a bit of coding etc. too – even though I’m not even sure if that’s officially included in their customer support 😉
So, yes it’s always worth reading each providers’ FAQs on what’s supported of course, but from my experience over the years, MyThemeShop has never refused to help me with anything.
The fastest WordPress theme by ThemeIsle
And then there is one more independent theme provider I really have to mention and that’s ThemeIsle. They are around since 2012 and are well known for their WordPress premium themes Neve and Hestia Pro.
Hestia Pro is a very popular and beautiful one-page business theme with lots of 5-star reviews, which is worth checking out if you’re looking for a great one-page theme.
Hestia Pro a beautiful and very popular one-page business WordPress theme with lots of 5-star reviews
Neve WordPress theme
Neve is one of ThemeIsle’s super-fast, most user-friendly and customisable WordPress themes – over 200,000 sites run with Neve. It loads in less than 1 second on a default install, 0.6 seconds to be precise – that’s impressive!
But Neve is not just one of the fastest WordPress theme out there, it also comes with a starter site library, so you have the choice of well-designed templates for any of your pages, straight out of the box. And it is AMP compatible – which is really important to Google and will be one of the most important features in the near future for all themes!
Neve is a super-fast WordPress themes with starter site library and AMP compatibility
Themes for Elementor page builder with Elementor booster
The Neve theme comes with drag-and-drop components, so it’s easy to customise even for a novice WordPress user. Its seamless integration with Gutenberg and all well-known page builders such as Elementor, Beaver Builder, Visual Composer, SiteOrigin and Divi Builder makes it easy to create beautiful post and pages without any coding.
Website speed is one of the highest priorities for many website owners, as neither readers nor Google like slow loading websites – so it’s well worth checking out ThemeIsle’s fastest WordPress theme Neve for any project.
ThemeIsle offers different plans and has over 450,000 happy users, or pirates as they like to call their fans. All their plans include header and blog booster, Elementor booster (to add extra features to the popular page builder Elementor), different custom layouts and unlimited support and updates for any number of sites.
ThemeIsle offers free WordPress themes, premium themes and plugins, all developed by ThemeIsle’s own developers. They have a very informative blog, lots of tutorials and a well-documented FAQ section on their website.
Best WordPress theme conclusion
Now, this list of best WordPress theme providers got a bit longer than I thought – much longer actually – but there is just so much out there that it’s difficult to make it shorter. Well, let’s try to briefly summarise our best WordPress themes for different projects.
If you’re looking for one of the most popular multipurpose WordPress theme with lots of prebuilt layouts and customisation options you can’t go wrong with either the Avada, Kalium or Divi. All three are very versatile themes with lots of options but are really easy to get started with and your site can be built within minutes.
If you’re interested in a more simple theme, which is extremely flexible and provides a secure and search engine optimised foundation, you should consider the Genesis framework. Genesis is a firm favourite of many developers as it’s so powerful without any bloat. As mentioned before, here is a really good special offer with WPEngine where you can get the Open Source Genesis Framework & 35+ StudioPress Theme Packages for FREE & 3 months free hosting with WPEngine on top of that. That’s a saving of over $2,000!
If you’re not really sure of the layout for your website yet and you would like some inspiration, your best bet would be to go to ThemeForest and browse their massive WordPress theme and template library. They offer the widest choice with thousands of premium WordPress themes for corporate or entertainment websites, non-profit sector, e-commerce web stores, creative sites, blog and magazine themes – and many more. It’s a great place to get inspired and find the perfect theme for any sector with lots of discounts and prices starting at $14 for premium WordPress themes.
If you’re looking for some of the best Niche WordPress themes, you should check out MyThemeShop. They have some really great niche themes (i.e. Science, Drop shipping, Crypto, Coupon, Newspaper, Real Estate, Pets, Writer and Affiliate Marketing themes and many more) and often have some great special offers too, so it’s definitely worth checking them out. Their themes start at $19 and they offer some great membership options too.
Last but not least, if performance and speed are what you’re looking for, then make sure to visit ThemeIsle and their super fast theme Neve.
So, I hope you’ve found this post about WordPress themes to be useful, and please let me know in a comment below which theme you went for.
What’s next?
Now that we have covered the exciting part of choosing a WordPress theme, you can get stuck into customising your site. But amidst all this excitement, we should also remember that all these great options to do it all yourself also come with responsibilities: you are in charge of your site, and that includes maintaining a hosting account, taking care of backups, looking after software and security updates, and fixing things – which might need some coding – if something goes pear-shaped.
Of course, it’s not impossible to do or learn, and there are loads of tutorials out there. However, many people who don’t work with websites on a regular basis might find all this to be quite technical and very time consuming. This is actually often one of the biggest headaches I hear about from my students, but don’t worry there are ways to make all this much easier and to remove the stress of keeping your site running securely.
I’m sure you’ve heard of Rich Pins on Pinterest, you probably have come across some pins which display much more information about their connected website than others – that’s the look of Rich Pins.
And I’m sure you searched for how to create Pinterest Rich Pins with Rank Math – that’s probably how you got here. You probably found lots of different and some confusing instructions but I’ve got some good news for you: it’s super easy and it’ll take less than 5 minutes!
Rich Pins let your content stand out, as mentioned above and you have probably noticed them already. It displays a bold title in the feed and gives readers extra information about the attached website above and below the image on closeup.
Most (yes not all, more to that below) Rich Pins update automatically! How cool is that? They are an organic pin, which means when you make a change to the post on your website it will update automatically the pin associated to that page.
Rich Pins are branded. They display your logo and website, which gives your account more brand awareness. Readers who see the same brand multiple times will start to recognise and trust you more.
There are three different types of pins, you can choose which one suits your website best.
What’s a Product Rich Pin?
Product Rich Pins – great for any e-commerce website as they display product information and have the ability to show up-to-date pricing and availability. If you are in the US or the UK you have to be on the list of approved merchants with Pinterest, you can apply here for it and read about all its other benefits.
Once you have been accepted your rich pins are synchronised with your website and any changes you make to your post will update automatically with your rich pins. I think that is a fabulous feature for anybody who sells products on their website as it keeps your followers up-to-date – really cool! And it’s free too!
What’s a Recipe Rich Pin?
Recipe Rich Pins – obviously for anybody who shares recipes. I find the greatest feature of a Recipe Rich Pin is that it displays a list of ingredients below the title and description. You can also show reviews, cooking time, diet preference and serving size.
Most recipe blogs use Rich Pins already as I think they realised quickly how much easier it makes their reader’s life. As followers can quickly see whether they have the ingredients or if they are easily available, they can quickly make a decision to save the recipe or not. If you make a change to your recipe the pin will update automatically too.
A Classic or Non-Rich Pin
A Recipe Rich Pin
What’s an Article Rich Pin?
Article Rich Pins – for any other blogger who does not have a shop or shares recipes, the good old blogger who writes posts to inform, educate and entertain their readers – like me.
This Rich Pin is not as fancy but it will display your title bold in the feed and then displays the title, description and author’s name next to the pin on closeup. Not as cool as a product or recipe pin, but it still gives your follower a better idea what your post is all about and whether it’s worth clicking through.
As this pin is synchronised with your blog too it’ll also display any changes you make to the post’s title or description.
Difference between SEO plugin Yoast and Rank Math
There are loads of instructions on the web how to enable Rich Pins with Yoast, which is a very popular WordPress SEO plugin. However, it’s not the only one, another really cool SEO plugin is Rank Math.
I have used and taught a lot of WordPress course using the SEO plugin Yoast, I have met a few Yoast engineers over the years at WordCamps too and I certainly think it’s one of the best SEO plugins out there. I like their product, I like their team and the support they offer their clients, and it’s a great and very useful addition to any WordPress blog.
However, there is another world-class SEO plugin which is called Rank Math. Both plugins are quite similar to each other and I like them both, however personally I prefer Rank Math currently over Yoast. I have a PRO membership with them and use Rank Math on a couple of websites, I find it a really interesting ‘toy’ and it’s good fun.
Sorry, of course, it’s not a toy and SEO is really important in the online world, but still, it can be fun too.
I like how intuitive their plugin is, especially their sidebar for each post your write. It analyses your post and gives you a ranking, then it gives you different suggestions on how to make your post better.
It gives you all the little reminders such as whether your keyword is included in your header, how often it shows up in your content, what kind of links you use, but also information about content readability etc. It’s just easy to use, good fun and teaches you subconsciously how to improve your SEO while writing great posts for your readers.
Add any of your website page URLs to the validator on the bottom of the page and click ‘Validate’.
Add any of your page URLs then click ‘Validate’
You might have to wait up to an hour, but I usually get a validation within 10 minutes.
That’s it, it really is super easy and no technical abilities needed.
I hope you found this post helpful to learn how to create Pinterest Rich Pins with Rank Math.
Please let me know in a comment below what you think, we love comments! I’m sure you’ll leave a lovely or constructive comment, but please feel free to read this about nasty comments, if you’re interested why some people leave hate comments and what you can do if that happens to you.
Do you want to learn more about blogging? The basics to making money blogging
If you liked this article, then please subscribe to our YouTube Channel for lots more WordPress video tutorials and of course connect on Pinterest. You can also find us on Twitter and Facebook.
If you’re interested in auto-posting to social media you can check out this plugin – it’s one of the best!
This video will show you where to find your FTP login details using a Siteground hosting account and how to connect your website with the FTP client FileZilla and access your WordPress files.
Stay up–to-date on WP tutorials & join our online community
100% Privacy. No Spam. One-click unsubscribe in every message.
After installing FileZilla I would highly recommend checking out the video ‘How to add an ads.txt file to your website‘ which will show you how to use FTP to upload files. The tutorial is about uploading a Google text file but it will also work for any other text file you would like to add to your root folder.
It will show you how to upload the ads.txt file (or any other text file) to the root folder of your website in less than 2 minutes and is a great exercise for anybody who’s just getting started on how to use an FTP programme.
It will also give you a detailed overview of your local and remote site in your FTP client and how to find your root folder.
It will show you 3 different ways on how to upload files to your website and how you can check that you have uploaded the file successfully.
How to use FTP to access your WordPress files – video tutorial
That’s it, I hope you found this post helpful to learn how to use FTP to access your WordPress files.
Please let me know in a comment below what you think, we love comments! I’m sure you’ll leave a lovely or constructive comment, but please feel free to read this about nasty comments, if you’re interested why some people leave hate comments.
If you’re interested in learning more about WordPress and how to get into niche blogging or build your own small business website with lots of helpful step-by-step WordPress tutorials on keyword research and how to deal with website maintenance please check out our Index on ‘How to start a blog 2021‘ for a full list of tutorials.
If you liked this article, then please subscribe to our YouTube Channel for lots more WordPress video tutorials. You can also find us on Pinterest, Twitter and Facebook.
Some of the links below might be affiliated links. No extra cost for you, sometimes with discounts and always the correct product. Read more
Is it really that difficult to upload a small text file to your root folder that you need a plugin? Or is using plugins just what website owners do when they don’t want to pay a developer?
Most often when we try to find a solution for a website problem such as ‘how to add ads.txt files to WordPress’, the advice coming up will be to use a plugin.
But do we really need a plugin for every little task on our site? Can we maybe try to avoid security or compatibility issues by doing certain website tasks manually instead?
My answers to the questions above would be: ‘No we don’t, of course, we can add txt files without plugins’ and ‘Yes, by using fewer plugins we can improve website security and have less compatibility issues as there are fewer plugins to keep up to date’.
As with most things in life, it’s not difficult to add a txt file without a plugin, even for non-techies, if someone shows you how to do it step-by-step like in the video below it’s actually really easy and quick to do. Often we just assume it’s too difficult and we go for the next available plugin without checking if it’s easy to do old school.
But, let’s have a look at why that’s not always the best idea, and how easy and quick it actually is to add ads.txt files manually with an FTP programme.
How to fix the Google AdSense ‘Earnings at risk’ message
When you log in to your Google AdSense account, you might see an ‘Earnings at risk’ message.
To remove this risk, it’s recommended to upload a small file to your website to make your seller’s information transparent.
You can of course use a plugin to add the text file. There are plugins for everything today, however, there are a few reasons why you should keep the number of plugins to a reasonable minimum.
Why should I not use plugins for everything?
First of all, every plugin you add to your site will slow it down, often just a little bit, but it all adds up. Is that really so important? Yes, very important, because readers and search engines don’t like slow sites. That said, not every plugin will slow down your site to the same extent, but more about that a little later.
Another point to remember is that the more plugins you add to your site, the higher the risk will be that you might encounter incompatibility issues on your site. That can lead to a real headache after a software update.
And then there is your site’s security. Plugins might have some vulnerability that can make it easier for hackers to get access to your site.
Therefore, I’d recommend that whenever you can add something to your website without the use of a plugin, you should. Especially if it’s something small like a text file which you will have to add once and then will most likely not touch again for a very long time.
Don’t misunderstand me, plugins are a wonderful addition to any WordPress website, they make it possible for developers and non-developers to create beautiful and well-functioning websites without any coding. I use plugins too of course, but I will always check first if there is an option to do it manually, especially when making small, one-off changes such as adding an ads.txt file.
Stay up–to-date on WP tutorials & join our online community
100% Privacy. No Spam. One-click unsubscribe in every message.
I hear you asking ‘How many plugins are too many?’ or ‘How many plugins should I have on my site?’ – students ask that all the time. There is no recommended number, it depends on your website and what you’re trying to achieve. Something else I’ve seen over the years and I think is really important: it’s not the quantity of the plugins, but the quality! A poorly coded plugin can slow down your site, whereas all the other plugins on your site can run smoothly.
Some plugins are so complex, it would be very difficult – and probably impossible for any non-coders – to recreate those incredible options on your site. Plugins like Rank Math SEO or this absolute fantastic grid plugin, I’m so thankful for and they really take WordPress websites to a different level.
However, what I’m trying to say is that you should always think twice before adding another plugin, and spend a little time to figure out whether there is an option to add the desired function easily without the use of a plugin. Especially if it’s something simple, such as adding a bit of one-off code, then the more desirable option would be to integrate that without the use of a plugin.
If there is no easy way of doing it without a plugin, please make sure you read the reviews on the plugin (the negative ones too, not just the top three), check when it was last updated, whether it’s compatible with your current WordPress version and who the author of the plugin is.
Do I need to create a child theme?
If you want to make a change to your theme’s files, you will need to create a child theme first (you can watch my full video tutorial on how to create a child theme) and once that’s done (you just need to do it once) you can make changes to your theme files such as function.php too. Using a child theme is the easiest and safest way to modify an existing theme because the changes are added to the child theme, they will stay there forever and won’t be overwritten with the next theme update.
Add a text file to your root folder with FileZilla
Anyway, back to Google AdSense. Adding an ads.txt file to your root folder does not need a child theme, it’s really simple using any FTP programme and only takes 2 minutes. I like to use FileZilla as it’s easy to use, it’s open-source and even recommended by WordPress, but any File Transfer Protocol (FTP) programme will do the job. So, if you have one already, use that one, the instructions are pretty much the same for most of them. If you don’t have one yet, google for Filezilla or click the link above, check the requirements and download it – it’s free.
If you are enjoying this post so far, would you mind to share it with your network? Yes, it’ll mean a lot to me. However, sharing helpful content on social media will benefit you too. People will realise you are someone to go to for great information. Just one click:
How to add ads.txt file to WordPress without plugins – step-by-step video
I will show you how to upload the ads.txt file (or any other text file) to the root folder of your website in less than 2 minutes.
I will also give you a detailed overview of your local and remote site in your FTP client
How to find your root folder
Show you 3 different ways how to upload files to your website
How can you check that you uploaded the file successfully
How to add additional information to your ads.txt file if you run ads for other sellers
You can also find written instructions below the video, but the video will give you more detailed information.
How to use FTP to upload files to WordPress for Beginners
If you want to add an ads.txt file with FTP, you will first have to log in to your Google AdSense Account or click the link in the email they sent you after applying for it.
If you see there an alert on top of the page, click ‘Fix now’.
If not, you can just go to ’Sites’. Click the Down arrow, to open the ‘Create an ads.txt file for…’ message.
Download your Google ads.txt file
Click ‘Download’ and your ads.txt file will be downloaded automatically.
If you run ads for other sellers, contact them and ask for their ads.txt information, then just paste it into the text file you just downloaded from your google AdSense account. Please watch the video for detailed instructions on how to do it.
Connect an FTP programme with your hosting account
Once you have Filezilla downloaded, log in to your FTP programme, open your root folder which is called ‘public_html’ and upload the ads.txt file you just downloaded to that folder, with a double click, or via drag and drop.
How to transfer a file to root folder in Filezilla
Check if .txt file is uploaded to root folder correctly
Open a new browser window and enter your domain name followed by /ads.txt. If you uploaded the file correctly you will see the information of the text file in your browser window. It’s very short and doesn’t look like much, but that’s all you need to keep your seller’s information transparent.
How to check if .txt file is uploaded to root folder correctly using your browser
If you ever change your ad seller, just open the file in your FTP programme, and add or overwrite the information. That’s it! Very easy to do even for non-techie website owners and there is no need for a plugin.
That’s it, I hope you found this post helpful, to learn how to add an ads.txt file to your WordPress website without plugins by using the Filezilla FTP client.
If you want to know more about plugins and how they work and affect your site you can read this very detailed article.
Please let me know in a comment below what you think, we love comments. And feel free to read this about nasty comments, if you’re interested in why some people leave hate comments.
If you liked this article, then please subscribe to our YouTube Channel for lots more WordPress video tutorials. You can also find us on Pinterest, Twitter and Facebook.
If you’re interested in more WordPress tutorials on how to start a blog with lots of clever WordPress hints and tips. You can check out our full index How to start a blog in 2021 Index- step-by-step WordPress tutorials so far and I’ll keep updating this index as the WordPress tutorial guide develops.
Some of the links below might be affiliated links. No extra cost for you, sometimes with discounts and always the correct product. Read more
Creating your own website, which will do well in Google, is not that difficult with the right guidance. I’ve been teaching people how to set up their own WordPress website since 2010 and they are amazed at how much they can learn and create in a few hours time. An easy way to get started is by blue hosting.
Here I will show you in detail how to create a hosting account with Bluehost, install WordPress (most ‘tutorials’ on Pinterest ignore this small little detail, they just cover how to sign up for your hosting account (the part which you get paid commission for) but ignore the most important part which is your content management system, without it you won’t have a website) and of course you can bag up to 60% discount on your account.
There are over 330,000 web hosting providers out there [source] and many of them are very good, but unfortunately not all of them.
My experience with hosting providers since 2010
In the last 10 years, I have worked with a different hosting company almost every week. I’m a freelancer and have my own WordPress training business. Many different types of company approach me to create staff training based on their website. Every week a different website, most of them built by a different web developer.
If I worked for one specific web agency, I would most likely see the same web host, the same themes and the same customisations in websites. Instead, my clients are a very broad range from charities and self-employed individuals to financial services providers, county councils, schools and colleges, hospitals and clinics, property developers and large organisations such as KPMG, Fineos and the Houses of the Oireachtas (the Irish Parliament). They are all different and they all use different hosting providers.
Stay up–to-date on WP tutorials & join our online community
100% Privacy. No Spam. One-click unsubscribe in every message.
So, my work has been interesting over the years, I’ve seen a lot of great sites and some not so great ones. Most smaller sites are hosted on shared hosting accounts. Shared hosting accounts are single, physical servers which host multiple sites and are therefore quite affordable.
They are brilliant to get started with, they’re affordable (usually less than $200/year after renewal + discounted rates for the first few years) and offer plenty of space to grow. Most hosting providers are also very flexible. As your site grows and you need more space you usually can upgrade easily.
What makes a good hosting provider?
However, there is one thing that can make all the difference to you and your business – and that’s the support!
They all promise a lot of tools and benefits, but every host is a little different and sometimes things don’t work the way they should. We follow instructions and guides, we try over and over again, but for whatever reason, it’s not working. We’ve all been there, haven’t we?
That’s when we need support and ideally, that’s the hosting provider, because they know their product best, right?
I’ve had my frustrations with a couple of hosting providers in the past where the client had an issue with the SSL cert or something similar. I offered to look into it. After reading all the FAQs, following their guides and instructions, googling up and down, and still unable to fix it, I opened a support ticket.
I explained everything I’d done but said that the issue still persists and asked if they could please look into it to resolve the issue.
The email I got back 24 hours later was along the lines of ‘Thanks for contacting us. You can find more information in regards to setting up a SSL certificate at our FAQs (link to FAQs). Kind Regards…’
How frustrating is that!? I read all FAQs, I did my research, I explained it all in the email, but they couldn’t even be bothered to read my email. They just couldn’t be bothered to check the account and see if they can find the issue. Now, that’s poor and frustrating customer service and that’s certainly a company I would never recommend to anybody. And I’m not the only one, I’ve heard similar stories about them from different clients over the years. Anyway, we’re not going to mention their name here; it’s just an example where there can be a (great) difference between otherwise similar-looking, and similarly priced, small starter website hosting services.
If you are enjoying this post so far, would you mind to share it with your network? Yes, it’ll mean a lot to me. However, sharing helpful content on social media will benefit you too. People will realise you are someone to go to for great information. Just one click:
So let’s have a look at Bluehost or Blue hosting as some people like to call it. They are one of the 20 largest website hosting service providers, hosting over 20 million domains in a US facility. They are one of the website hosting services recommended by WordPress.org themselves and I have always found their support team to be very friendly and helpful.
Why do I need a hosting provider?
Setting up your own website is the first step to your online business, where you can blog about your passion, offer your services to the world or set up an online store. It’s the first step to creating passive income and it takes less than an hour to do. So let’s get started.
What do we need to build a website?
To get started with WordPress you will need a domain – that’s the name of your website, so search engines such as Google can display it to visitors, you can add your domain to your business card and connect social media accounts to it. My domain name for this website is wpuncovered.com. But wait, don’t set one up yet – read on and you could get one for free for the first year.
You also need a hosting account, that’s the space where your site content (text and images) will be saved and displayed from.
What’s included in your WordPress hosting account?
Hosting account set up in 5 simple steps, get up to 60% discount, a free domain, free SSL cert, WordPress install in 1-click and great support. Get all this for less than $4/month for the first 3 years!
Great news, Bluehost currently includes the domain for new signups for the first year – so there is no extra cost for you! See here domain renewal cost. If you have a domain already, that’s fine too, you can transfer it. Bluehost offers .com, .org, .co, .us, .net, .info, .co.uk and others. However, if it’s a country-specific extension you are after such as .ie, you might have to register it first with a domain provider in your country depending on local regulations.
Blue hosting also offers hosting discounts and includes a free SSL cert – that’s an encryption certificate for your website to keep your website visitor information safe. It usually costs $79.99/yr, but here you get a free SSL cert!
1-click WordPress install. As you will see, this makes it extremely easy to install WordPress to your site with just one click. You don’t have to worry about creating a MySQL Database or to configure any PHP files, it’ll all be done automatically.
And their great customer supportis there for you too 24/7, just in case. If you need to contact them. I’d recommend using their webchat, it’s super quick and efficient. However, if you follow the instructions below, you should be just fine and set up in no time.
Step by step video instructions on how to set up a hosting account with Bluehost
Watch the Blue Hosting step-by-step video instructions – created in November 2020 with all the new Blue hosting features – and please let me know in a comment below, the name of your new site, which theme you went for and why you chose that one!
Get your account with Bluehost and bag some great Bluehost discounts!
That’s it, I hope you found this post helpful to learn how to create your own Blue hosting account. Soon I’ll create a video on how to get started with your WordPress dashboard. Please subscribe to my newsletter and I’ll be in touch soon.
Please let me know in a comment below what you think, we love comments! I’m sure you’ll leave a lovely or constructive comment, but please feel free to read this about nasty comments, if you’re interested in why some people leave hate comments and what you can do if that happens to you.
If you’re interested in more WordPress tutorials on how to start a blog with lots of clever WordPress hints and tips. You can check out our full index How to start a blog in 2021 Index- step-by-step WordPress tutorials so far and I’ll keep updating this index as the WordPress tutorial guide develops.
If you want to make any changes to your WordPress theme you will need to create a child theme first, otherwise, you will lose your changes with the next theme update, so all your hard work will be lost.
If you just want to make changes to your CSS, there is an easier way and you won’t need a child theme for that, just go to Appearance – Customise – Additional CSS (Video: 9min 15sec).
However, any other file changes will need to be done in a child theme.
As always it’s really important that you take a full back up of your site (your files and databank) before making any changes on your site, just in case something goes wrong then you can restore the last version of your website with ease.
This is the code for the function.php, please copy and paste this into the function.php in your child theme.
The code might not be displayed on a mobile device, please open the page on a laptop or desktop computer to copy the code over, or go to
I hope you found this post helpful to learn how to create a child theme in WordPress.
Please let me know in a comment below what you think, we love comments! I’m sure you’ll leave a lovely or constructive comment, but please feel free to read this about nasty comments, if you’re interested why some people leave hate comments and what you can do if that happens to you.
If you’re interested in learning more about WordPress and how to start with niche blogging or build your own small business website with lots of helpful step-by-step WordPress tutorials on keyword research and how to deal with website maintenance please check out our Index on ‘How to start a blog 2021‘ for a full list of tutorials.
If you liked this article, then please subscribe to our YouTube Channel for lots more WordPress video tutorials and of course connect on Pinterest. You can also find us on Twitter and Facebook.
As WPuncovered.com mostly focuses on new website owners, I think it would be great to feature some stories of former course participants or others who have taken the leap to start something new. It’s a place to showcase your website, tell us how you got there, what hurdles have been in your way and what you’ve learnt on the way.
It’ll be a great opportunity for you to get more traffic to your site and will offer great benefits to others who are just getting started.
Are you interested?
Change is inevitable. Growth is optional.
JOHN MAXWELL
If you would like to have your site and story featured in our showcase, please let me know! Get in touch with any questions you might have, but to give you an idea of what kind of information I’d be looking for:
How did you get started? What was your inspiration and why did you want to do it?
What was your budget?
Is your site built in WordPress.com or WordPress.org?
Did you create the site yourself or did you take over after a developer built the site?
How long has it been live now?
Did you reach your initial goal, or did your goal change?
What kind of marketing tools do you use (any social media in particular, newsletter, etc) and what works best for you?
What have you learnt from the time managing your website (biggest mistakes, greatest challenges or best changes)?
Any advice for somebody who is just starting out?
If you would like to share anything else about the growth of your website, including any kind of successes – small or big – you have landed with your site, that would be great. (I.e. growth of your email list, particular clients you landed, size of deals, specific products/services which are most in demand on your site, affiliate marketing income, connections you made or anything similar like that).
Even if you are still at the very beginning of your journey, you can be part of this. Just tell us your story and let us know what your goals are with your site – we might be able to help!
I will of course publish the name of your company and your own if you like, and add a link to your website into the post for readers to visit your site. Also please remember, inbound links are loved by Google, so they’re fantastic for your website’s SEO. I’m planning to put a lot of effort into this site and believe this category will be quite popular with readers, so your story might be read for many years to come over and over again.
In any given moment we have two options: to step forward into growth or step back into safety.
ABRAHAM MASLOW
Please feel free to tell your story in your own words and includes anything you think could be of interest or value to other people who are thinking of setting up their own website and small business owners. If you could please answer as many of the questions above that would be great, but not required. As a guideline, it would be great if your story could be between 400 and 1,200 words please (this post is just under 650 words, so it’s not difficult to do).
The first few featured websites will be included in our next newsletter when we launch the site and unveil the domain to all our subscribers and followers.
Please let me know if you’re interested or have any questions at all by email or just leave a comment below.
I can’t wait to hear from you!
We use cookies on our website to give you the most relevant experience by remembering your preferences and repeat visits. By clicking “Accept”, you consent to the use of ALL the cookies. Read More
This website uses cookies to improve your experience while you navigate through the website. Out of these, the cookies that are categorized as necessary are stored on your browser as they are essential for the working of basic functionalities of the website. We also use third-party cookies that help us analyze and understand how you use this website. These cookies will be stored in your browser only with your consent. You also have the option to opt-out of these cookies. But opting out of some of these cookies may affect your browsing experience.
Necessary cookies are absolutely essential for the website to function properly. These cookies ensure basic functionalities and security features of the website, anonymously.
Cookie
Duration
Description
cookielawinfo-checbox-analytics
11 months
This cookie is set by GDPR Cookie Consent plugin. The cookie is used to store the user consent for the cookies in the category "Analytics".
cookielawinfo-checbox-functional
11 months
The cookie is set by GDPR cookie consent to record the user consent for the cookies in the category "Functional".
cookielawinfo-checbox-others
11 months
This cookie is set by GDPR Cookie Consent plugin. The cookie is used to store the user consent for the cookies in the category "Other.
cookielawinfo-checkbox-necessary
11 months
This cookie is set by GDPR Cookie Consent plugin. The cookies is used to store the user consent for the cookies in the category "Necessary".
cookielawinfo-checkbox-performance
11 months
This cookie is set by GDPR Cookie Consent plugin. The cookie is used to store the user consent for the cookies in the category "Performance".
viewed_cookie_policy
11 months
The cookie is set by the GDPR Cookie Consent plugin and is used to store whether or not user has consented to the use of cookies. It does not store any personal data.
Functional cookies help to perform certain functionalities like sharing the content of the website on social media platforms, collect feedbacks, and other third-party features.
Performance cookies are used to understand and analyze the key performance indexes of the website which helps in delivering a better user experience for the visitors.
Analytical cookies are used to understand how visitors interact with the website. These cookies help provide information on metrics the number of visitors, bounce rate, traffic source, etc.
Advertisement cookies are used to provide visitors with relevant ads and marketing campaigns. These cookies track visitors across websites and collect information to provide customized ads.
