Getting started!
*Note: There are affiliate and non-affiliate links in this article. All affiliate links have been marked. And I only get affiliate links for the things I use and love.
Okay, you want to get a website up this weekend. But, you have no idea where to start. Or maybe you’ve looked at a bunch of options and really just need a guide that lays it out for you with the best tools. Either way, I’ve got you. I’m going to go through and help you with the hosting, plugins, and theme to get you going fast! And the best part is it is using WordPress which is still the Queen of scaling. This means you won’t have to learn a whole other platform when you’re ready to upgrade!
Why WordPress, Why Elementor?
Why do I recommend even beginners start with WordPress?
The easiest answer is that WordPress scales smoothly with the most options. You don’t need to worry about having to learn another platform or move platforms to be able to expand your business. You can grow with WordPress rather than completely shift everything. This means it is a strategy that isn’t just a short-term fix but a long-term plan!
I heard WordPress is confusing, though!
WordPress can be confusing for folks at the start, that is true. But, the main reason is themes! In the days of drag and drop everything, and Canva making design accessible, most themes are not intuitive. The are blocked in and limited to how they were designed. Making it a nightmare for anyone that really likes to have things they way they want. In some ways this can be good as it is professionally laid out, but adding additional areas or pages can easily become headache!
The theme I recommend in this post, is NOT that type of theme. Instead, this is a baseline to build whatever you like, but also have some pro kits to get you started! So, rest assured this isn’t the old WordPress.
Why Elementor?
Elementor is great for beginners. If you don’t have a full website kit at the ready or a designer getting you started, Elementor is probably the best builder for you!
For one thing, it is one of the few builders that has a free version. For a second, Elementor has been around the block, so almost everything nowadays in the WordPress world works with Elementor in some type of way. Meaning it is easier to scale and keep using the builder you are used to.
Would I recommend Elementor to professional designers?
Not really, no. The only reason I would recommend Elementor to a pro, is if they are solely doing template kits for beginner business owners or doing full hand offs to clients. That doesn’t mean Elementor can’t be used for very professional sites, it can. It just means that for the pros that want to get into the coding weeds there are now better options. But, I developed using Elementor for YEARS and still have clients on it today! It does hold up and it is still the easiest to get going with!
Is the Elementor Free Good Enough?
This is a really common question. So, I’m covering it upfront. The answer might be it depends. Can you afford the pro? If you can, then it wouldn’t hurt to just hop on the bandwagon out of the gate with pro. The extra features are worth it in almost every way.
That said, if you are strapped let’s focus on getting you clients before focusing on spending more money! Free can get you started, and it fine for beginners. No need to immediately grab the pro, if you can’t easily afford it!
The Set Up! What to get first, and how to setup your WordPress fast!
I’m not going to spend a ton of time on the details of buying hosting, domains, etc. There are a lot of tutorials out there. I can do a video if you’d like. You can email me or use my contact form if you would like a super detailed video going over everything from the jump. Instead, I’m going to give you my recommendations on the what and where.
Where Should I Get Domains?
A lot of folks will get hosting and domains in the same spot. This is fine if you plan to only have one domain and plan to stay with the same hosting forever. With WordPress, I like a scaling mindset. Which means I recommend having you domains separate from your hosting to make upgrading when you are ready easier. So, this is my current flow for domains for myself and clients.
Buy your domains through Porkbun!
They are the best domain marketplace I’ve found. They have personality and their packages are golden! Their prices are competitive and they often have sales on alternative TLDs aka the if you have the .com of your domain you could get a sale on yourdomain.io or yourdomain.shop. Their domains come with SSL (which is a little lock by your URL and is a security feature that is 100% required for any business in 2025, very few will go past that no SSL warning page), they have easy search and checkouts with 2-FA auth.
Most domains are around $13/yr and come with that Free SSL (a lot of places charge extra for that). But if you aren’t sure on what domain you want or just are really strapped for start-up money. You could use a free subdomain with the free hosting option in the Hosting section.
Then lock that sh*t down with Cloudfare!
You can get a free Cloudfare account and add your domain to it. This is the next step. Cloudfare free helps prevent attacks and helps keep bots off your site. It’s free and adds a nice extra layer of protection for you. It is also deeply integrated with a LOT of systems that require DNS records like setting a google workspace account, for instance, and let me tell you that makes your life WAY easier, especially if you aren’t super techy!
Once you sign-up for the free account, add a domain, it will direct you to change the name servers and will show you what those are. Hop back over to Porkbun and go to domain management, if you hover over your domain you will see two links: DNS or NS. Click the NS which stands for name servers to change those over. It may take up to 2 days for these to take effect, but usually it actually takes like 10 minutes.
It will be in Cloudfare where you setup an A record that will point to your hosting that you buy next. So, let’s talk hosting.
What Hosting should you get?
The hosting I recommend for beginners is HostGator**. (Affiliate Link)
It is a nice and easy setup for WordPress, their support is easy to access and fast responding. And they have some amazing deals for getting up and running. This is also perfectly fine for the majority of beginner business websites. It is what I started on, and plenty of my clients are still using it today. If you want to build a community, an e-commerce shop, or other high traffic website chances are you will want to upgrade to something stronger when you have money coming in, but for now let’s just get you going.
At the time of writing this their base package is about $60/yr or you can get 3 years for around $130. Past that point you may want to consider something heartier if you have traffic and size going up.
After paying and setting up the account, you will look for an IP address that you can add to your DNS settings in Cloudfare. You want to use the A record rather than changing the name servers. The name servers you want to be on Cloudfare because that is how they protect you.
Here is an article on where to find that IP address to add to the Cloudfare DNS
Free WordPress hosting option, InfinityFree
There is also a free WordPress hosting option. Yup, free. And they offer a free subdomain. You can though use a paid domain from porkbun or where ever. And just like with Hostgator you would add an A record in Cloudfare to have it show. The IP address in infinity free is under the account page on the right sidebar. And you use that in the Cloudfare A record.
I don’t have this as my first recommendation because you do get what you pay for with Infinity Free. It can have times where it loads fairly slowly, and their support is very limited for non-paying customers. But if you have around a 3-5 page website you could easily get away with this as you get going. But as soon as you have the money to move to a paid option, I would.
You could instead start with Wix for free options. BUT, with this you are learning the WordPress backend that would serve you well as you expand. So, this is a personal preference situation. But, I still think this is a good call, so you get used to WordPress right away. In theory, you could also take your site with you. The normal backup plugins I’ve heard struggle with free shared hosting. BUT with Elementor you could still export a site kit which would be the bulk of the important bits even without a backup plugin!
Pro Scalable Hosting (Affiliate because it is LunaCco Hosting)
When you are making money with your site, either through services, community, or products, now is the time to move to pro hosting. By this I mean hosting that can scale the server you are on, to slowly and gradually grow with you. They would also be able to jump to a much larger server if you scale fast. This can be extremely expensive on other hosting options, like CloudWays or Kinsta.
LunaCco offers hosting using very similar and in some cases exactly the same servers at a fraction of the cost. We go direct to the server providers so we can offer you the best rate on highly efficient servers that scale with you!
And as usual, if you can start with the pro option, do that because you will have less moving around to worry about! You can scale with us and not even worry about HostGator and migrating a site that may already be ranking on SEO (SEO migrations can be a bit of nightmare). So, if you can afford the $130/yr with our base hosting package, I would recommend just starting there in the first place.
The other nice thing with LunaCco hosting is that we install WordPress for you and you never have to the server side things, we take care of those bits for you.
Install WordPress
If you are going to be using our hosting and want to be able to build the site on the weekend it is a good idea to at the latest get your domain, your cloudfare, and purchase your hosting by Wednesday. So, that your site is all ready to be edited! (P.S. we’ll even install the theme and plugins we recommend in this post for you!)
But, if you are using Host Gator or Infinity Free you need to access your CPanel or Control Panel (infinity free has a button on the account page that says Control Panel). For Host Gator here is a beginner article about CPanel and how to login etc.
Then you go to the Softaculous Installer, it’s usually at the top. Or sometimes it will even have a fast link to the WordPress Installer. Click that and go to the WordPress option on the side panel if it isn’t already up. And fill out the form to get it installed, make sure to save the admin username and password. Also, DO NOT use admin as the admin username! I would also avoid your name first, last, or both. Use a username generator for good security and have a nice long abstract password! It will then show a success page with your login url. If you DNS changes have already populated, then you should now be able to login via your domain. It will look like this for the URL yourdomain.com/wp-admin
Congrats you have WordPress Installed.
Next up, remove the default themes and install Hello Biz Theme
Go to the Appearance tab on the side menu in the WordPress admin area, and then click Themes, then add new theme, and search for “Hello Biz”, you could also use “Hello Elementor” but this is the beginner business website quick start so we want the Biz one!
Now, you want to activate that theme. You also want to remove the default themes that are named by the year. Click on the other themes and find the delete link, till you only have Hello Biz there.
The Plugins!
Navigate to the Plugins in the side menu, then add new plugin. And we are going to install and activate the following plugins.
Elementor Website Builder (this is the free one)
WP Fastest Cache (only if there is no pre-installed caching plugin, sometimes there will be so look at the plugin list. Though this is my favorite so you may just want to remove the pre-installed and go with this instead! Free version is fine)
Elementskit (Optional, this has a header/footer builder and some nice additional widgets also free)
Fluent Forms (Affiliate for Pro version here, but the free version is fine here)
UpdraftPlus for Backups make sure to save backups when you make big changes at the least.
That’s it. There are a few others that I would install but they require more setup so we aren’t going to go into that here.
The Build
Go back to the Appearance>Themes and you will see the Hello Biz welcome and click the Begin Setup. It will take you to select from one of 8 free kits that you can preview by clicking on them. When you have the one you like, click Apply kit. It will then prompt you to create a free account on Elementor. When the kit is applied after you login, you click Apply All, then you will have the same pages that the kit had which probably will be enough to get started. After it is finished applying the kit, click the customize button. It will then take you to the Hello Biz home page, where it shows you the pages you have to edit and all the setting you need.
Here I recommend working from the Quick Links to the bottom, doing so will make sure that everything is filled out. I also like to open the edit pages in a new tab so you can keep this little hub up on another tab for easy reference. (Note: that the Quick Links before you get into editing the headers and pages, it is opening tab in the left panel, so it looks like it’s all the sample page but that left panel changes)
Watch the video here for how to quickly edit these pages, their colors, and more. It really is very simple! Have fun creating!
(embed video here)
And if you would like a more detailed walkthrough let me know!
