How to Build a Website with GoDaddy
on 07 July 2022, by Bogdan, in Blog, WordPress, FREE, Guides
by Bogdan
Having a website is a great way to have a reputable online presence for both personal and professional reasons. It is more important for a business because it depicts legitimacy and enables them to compete with others in the same industry actively. If you’re looking to set up your website, you have probably come across GoDaddy. This is because GoDaddy is one of the best domain registrars and web hosting providers globally.
GoDaddy's hosting offerings include one for WordPress, arguably the best content management system in the world. Combining GoDaddy and WordPress allows you to harvest the best of both worlds to effortlessly build a reliable and appealing website for you and your visitors. In this post, we’ll walk you through a step-by-step process of how you can create a WordPress website with GoDaddy, with no steps skipped.
In this post, we'll show you how to build a website with GoDaddy. Jump to each section by clicking the links below:
What do you need to create a website with GoDaddy?
Numerous sources will tell you that you only need an email address and a password, but it’s not as simple as that, is it? So let’s break it down. If you’re looking to create a website, code-free, you will need the following:
- A domain name - the address for your website, for example, amazon.com
- A hosting service - where your files (images, code, etc.) will be stored
- A content management system (CMS) to help you create and manage content on your website.
- A website builder to enable you to create your pages
GoDaddy offers domain registration, web hosting, and a website builder. They also have an integration with WordPress CMS, called GoDaddy Managed WordPress Hosting for content management. Now that you know what you need to create your website, let’s dive into the process.
How to Build a WordPress website with GoDaddy (step by step)
With WordPress and GoDaddy, you can build any type of website. This includes business websites, e-commerce shops, personal blogs, podcasts, dropshipping websites, etc. The best part is that you get to do all this without writing even a single line of code. So if you’ve never built a website before, this is the easiest and most convenient way to do it.
Step 1: Get a domain name and WordPress hosting
The domain name is simply the name of your website. It is how visitors will find your website through their browsers. Many domain registrars will charge you for a domain name but with GoDaddy, you can get it for free. Before you get started, you should know that GoDaddy utilizes numerous affiliates to provide discounted hosting plans for WordPress hosting.
An example is: Create WP website. From this link, you can get a coupon for your purchases on GoDaddy.
- Start by clicking the coupon link and click the Get Started button on GoDaddy.
- Next, enter your domain name and search to see if it is available. If it is unavailable, GoDaddy will suggest a list of related domain names which you can get all for free. Click Select and Continue once you find an available domain name.
3. On the next page, you’ll need to sign up for a GoDaddy account if you don’t already have one. You can use your email, Facebook, or Amazon account.
4. After this, you’ll be taken to the billing page where you can enter your billing details to purchase the WordPress hosting package. Click on I’m ready to pay and you will be taken to the checkout where you can provide your billing information. You can also choose to pay with PayPal and here you’ll need to log in to your PayPal account. After logging in, click Agree and Continue.
5. You’ll be taken to the final payment page and if everything is accurate here you can click on complete purchase.
6. Before you can use your domain, you'll need to verify your email address.
7. Here all you need to do is log into the email you signed up with for your GoDaddy account, open GoDaddy's message, and click on Verify Email Now.
Step 2: Install WordPress
Once the purchase is complete, you can now install WordPress.
1. Go to the bottom left and click on Manual WordPress setup.
2. On the next page, create your WordPress username and password and note it because this is what you will use to log in to WordPress. Click on Continue.
3. Next, you will need to set your location on the map. If it’s accurate, you can click on the 'Yes, that's correct' button at the bottom. After confirming your location, it will load a few pages and then present you with a Visit My Site button.
4. Click on this button, and it will log you into the front end of your website.
Step 3: Set up a custom domain
A custom domain is a unique label connected to your website’s IP address which will be displayed in the URL. To set it up:
1. Go back to the GoDaddy homepage and click on your account name(top-left) and select My Products.
2. Scroll down to the Managed WordPress section and click on the Manage button.
3. To set up a custom domain on the next page, click on set up.
4. Next, check the box that says 'Make this the primary domain for your account and click on the Attach button.
5. After this is done, you will get a message informing you that your website is live now.
6. Scroll up to the top right section and click on Edit Site.
7. This will take you to the WordPress login page where you can provide your email/username and password to log in.
Now that your custom domain has been set up, you can start editing your site.
Step 4: Build your WordPress website
By default, your WordPress website looks very bland, with the ‘Hello World!’ text printed on a single page.
At this point, it has just this one page, no content, and no significant styling, contrary to what a conventional website looks like. Fortunately, there’s a lot you can do to build your website and add the above. Some of these actions can be done in the default WordPress install, but for others, you will need to install some plugins.
Starting to build your pages from scratch can be time-consuming and overly tiresome. With WordPress, you don’t have to start from scratch, you can install a theme to dictate the overall appearance of your website. Here’s how to install a theme
Installing a WordPress theme
To install a theme on your WordPress website:
1. From your WordPress dashboard go to Appearance>Themes. Click on Add New. You will see a list of themes for you to choose from.
The Astra theme is arguably the most popular WordPress theme because it is innovative and works exceptionally well with page builders.
2. Hover on the theme you want to install and click Install. Once installation is done, click activate and that’s it.
3. If you’re looking for a theme with specific features, click on the Filter Feature button and get access to themes built for specific types of websites.
4. Check the box of the themes you want to filter and select apply filters.
Edit website header and tagline
1. From your WordPress dashboard, go to Settings>General. On this page, you will see the site title and tagline fields on top and next to each other.
2. You can edit to what you like and then scroll down to the bottom and click on Update.
Edit your Links
The default WordPress links display the date within the URL. This congests the address bar making it congested. You can change this by cleaning up the links. To do this:
- Go to Settings>Permalinks.
- Switch the URL structure from Day and Name to Post Name.
That’s it. Now that your URLs are all clean, you can get to building your pages.
Build your WordPress pages
WordPress themes are very useful in helping you to quickly design your website uniformly. However, they bear a lot of limitations.
- You can’t personalize your site - because thousands of users might be using the same theme as you, your website will look generic.
- Limited design - you can use the WordPress customizer to edit your theme, but the positioning of elements of your page is rigid. You can only change a few things with the customizer and it’s not user-friendly.
Fortunately, you can use page builders such as Brizy, to give you more control over how you design your pages while making this process faster and yielding more efficient results.
Build your WordPress pages with Brizy website builder
Brizy for WordPress is a powerful website builder that collects the best features and wraps them in an easy-to-use interface. With Brizy, you can create attractive and high-converting pages for your website without writing a single line of code. You can build versatile pages, adding over 36 elements effortlessly with a drag-and-drop editor. The best part? You get to watch these changes unfold live.
Whether you want to build your pages from scratch or use the 100+ available templates, Brizy enables you to do both. The templates have been mobile-optimized so your mobile device visitors experience a uniform design. You can leverage Brizy’s capabilities to build any type of website on WordPress including business, food and restaurant, sport and travel, education, and many more. It is fully compatible with WordPress and its themes and plugins, so you won’t have to worry about accommodating it.
One of Brizy’s out-of-the-box features is that you can brand this builder as your own with Brizy’s White Label feature.
Now that you know how Brizy can take your website’s design to another level, let’s see how you can set it up on your WordPress website.
How to set up Brizy on GoDaddy WordPress hosting
You can get started with Brizy for free to get a feel of the service and then upgrade to the pro version for much more capabilities.
1. Go to Brizy’s official website by clicking here and press the Get Started button.
2. This will take you to the download section at the bottom, where you can choose to download the free version or step up to the pro version.
3. When you click on the free version, you can provide an email address in order directly to Download for FREE. A download link will be sent to the email you’ve provided in the previous step.
4. Go back to your WordPress dashboard and navigate to Plugins>Add New. Click on Upload Plugin and select the zip file of the Brizy extension you previously downloaded and click on install now.
5. Activate it after installation is complete and that’s it, you’re ready to use Brizy to build your pages.
How to build your WordPress pages with Brizy
1. From your WordPress dashboard go to Pages>Add New
2. Name the page and click on Edit with Brizy. This will take you to the Brizy editor page.
3. Click on the Start Building your Page button at the center. On the next page, you will see a lot of options.
- If you want to build your pages from scratch, click Create your own box.
- Otherwise, there are numerous pre-built blocks that you can add to pages
- You can also choose between Light / Dark themes from different categories.
4. To add a block just click on it and it will be updated on your page.
5. From there you can change the alignment, images, typography, etc., of these blocks effortlessly.
6. You can also delete sections of these blocks to add new ones.
7. When you need to add a new block, just click on the add a new block button.
8. You can also switch the view between mobile, desktop, and tablet views.
This is just a small subset of what you can do with Brizy to build your pages. It is capable of helping you to realize a competent, robust, high-converting, and visually appealing website.
So that's about it on building your website with GoDaddy and WordPress.
Conclusion
Building a website with GoDaddy entails getting a domain name and purchasing a hosting service for WordPress from GoDaddy. WordPress provides you with the platform on which you can build your website and manage its content. To realize optimally designed pages you will need the help of a theme and a page builder such as Brizy. Brizy has been built to make building your pages a lot easier, faster, and more efficient; and with it, you can accomplish this.
Start building better websites today!
Article by Bogdan
Co-founder & Head of Design, Bogdan has a passion for everything that works great and looks awesome. Guilty for most of the UI and UX around this place, you can say "Hi" to him at bogdan at brizy dot io
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