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When you’re starting up your own freelancing business, a website is an invaluable tool. This is how you establish an online presence and attract clients. However, as a beginner, you may not be sure how to set up a freelance WordPress website. Also, if you are not a coder, building a freelance WordPress website could be challenging.
There are plenty of tools that make the task simple, and you can get a site up and running in a day or less. Thus, you can quickly get back to what is most important i.e., running your business.
To begin with, go to Astra as it has lots of templates to choose from. You can use the Vlogger site in the video demo for the reason’s listed below, or you can pick a different one-page template.
- It features a transparent header and a modern design. It’s a lot less of a hassle to worry about when you click a header item because it takes you to the location on the page.
- When you get to the point where you want to look at the plug-in, you can also change the font and color scheme to see what changes you’re making before you add them to your website.
Fortunately, creating a one-page freelance business site in WordPress is simple. You’ll just need to follow these simple steps:
In this WordPress tutorial, we’ll walk you through the steps of setting up a basic and effective one-page freelance business site on a WordPress site. Let’s get started!
Step 1: Get Hosting
I use SiteGround for hosting all my WordPress websites.
You can find a few good reasons to use SiteGround below.
- They aren’t over-priced WordPress hosting, and they aren’t the cheapest hosting with no support.
- Furthermore, SiteGround offers free backups stored for a month, so if you get hacked, you can roll back a day or a week.
- The chat support is great.
- In addition, SiteGround is recommended by WordPress.org. When you go to WordPress.org and look at hosting, it recommends three hosts, so being one of the three is quite impressive. Isn’t it?
To begin with, switch over to SiteGround and click on > WordPress.
- If you plan on doing one site you should probably opt for the first one. However, you can always upgrade from the one that you have.
- So, after choosing the plan in the next step you need to enter a domain either the one that you have or a new one and > proceed.
- Moving ahead, now in the third step, you need to fill in your email and your password for SiteGround (basically, this step is where you would get a lot of your SiteGround account stuff taken care of such as billing, site scanner, etc… Basically, for a year it’s about seven bucks a month so once you pay that then we’re going to install WordPress).
- So once you get your domain confirmed go to Start A New Website and then under Choose Application > choose WordPress. Put your email and password in the Installation details for your WordPress site.
- Now once your WordPress is installed on your new site you can click on > GO TO SITE or go to your admin by clicking on > LOG IN ADMIN or go to > SITE TOOLS.
- So, if you go to the site, you will see that it is blank, but to log in, add “/wp-login.php” to the end of your domain.
- Now once you log in, you have a SiteGround starter plugin that you don’t need to use so go ahead and hit the Exit.
- Further, you’ll be logged in to your site and moved to the dashboard. In this SiteGround Dashboard, if you want the WordPress dashboard just go to the bottom and click on > switch to default or switch to the simplified dashboard.
Step 2: Install SSL
If you go to your site, it really helps for this step to be logged in to your site and logged in to your SiteGround account at the same time. That way when you change it to SSL it’s usually pretty smooth.
- Log into your WordPress site and log into SiteGround then go to your > site tools under Websites.
- Now on the side go to > SECURITY click on > SSL Manager then go ahead select your domain and under SELECT SSL click on > let’s encrypt > GET.
- Once your SSL is installed you get a green checkmark and you don’t have to configure anything more.
- The next step is to go directly to your WordPress site and go to Settings > general. Further, in the general settings, you can see “URLs” under URL add an ‘s’ to each of the URLs.
When you add an ‘s’. Scroll all the way to the bottom and save it. You will be kicked out. You’ll need to log back in once you’ve arrived at your site. When you log back in, the lockbox will appear in the address bar.
Step 3: Install Theme And Plugins
- Go to your WordPress dashboard and under appearance click on > themes then click on > add new.
- In the search box type “Astra”, then click on > install > activate. With this, your site theme will look a little different, but once you get into the template it’ll look a lot better.
- Next, go to > Plugins and you’ll see some plugins from SiteGround as in an optimizer and a security plug-in which is great so next click on > add new and in search box type “Astra starter”. Install > Activate.
- Then next > install > Elementor > Activate.
- And then you can go for a nice SEO plug-in “SEOpress” (this one is an optional one) Install > Activate.
All right so if you go back to plugins, you now have all the ones that you actually need.
Step 4: Install & Customize Template
- Go to Appearance > Starter Templates. Then scroll down and click on > Build Your Website Now and go for > Elementor.
- Now just go for the one-page > vlogger. So, you can browse it and you can upload your logo or you can just skip.
- You can experiment a little with the color palette as well. Also, you have fonts to pick from. Then go to > Continue.
- Now in the last step go to > Submit & Build My Site.
It’ll install all of the information on the pages such as all of the photos and all of the blocks. Once you get it installed. You can now go to your site and check it.
Now you’re ready to customize your site!
- Go to > Pages > All pages (where you’ll see all the pages that the template site installed). To edit, click on > Edit With Elementor.
An Elementor page builder will appear, and within your page, you will see different sections, each of which can have a number of columns, and an intersection between those sections. By clicking on Navigator, you can see the general layout and drill down to each section to see how everything’s laid out.
- To adjust the widget. You just click the > Widget (You can change the text, the color, and theme colors here or you can just pick a new one to add a widget and you can change the photo too).
- If you want to use any new widget, go ahead and drag it on.
After replacing template text and photos, you can ensure that the header links jump to the correct sections in the one-page template.
In the video, you will see how to connect a section to the header link. You need to match the section CSS ID with the header link. Click on > Section then under > Advanced > CSS ID, you’ll see the about me box so this is what tells the header link to go to about me.
Moreover, you’ll see it probably installed a contact form widget or a plug-in as well. Here is the video to connect your form with your SiteGround email.
Alright, so after you update everything and exit the dashboard. Go ahead and publish it. Check the site to ensure that it worked.
Kudos, now you know how to create a one-page freelance business site in WordPress!
As you can see, creating a one-page freelance business site in WordPress doesn’t have to be difficult, especially if you take the time to really follow the steps outlined in this article.
Simple networking and emailing are unlikely to suffice in today’s world. You should also establish an online presence so that potential clients can easily find you, learn about what you do, and contact you. So, as long as you have a website, you’re ahead of the majority of freelancers, which can give you an advantage when sending pitches and proposals to potential clients.
Keep your client in mind when designing a website, and do show your brand’s personality! To learn more about starting a website today, read this article.
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