How to Create a Personal Website – a Step-by-Step Guide

Creating a personal website will help you get found online. People who make their own sites have the opportunity to showcase what makes them unique. It is an effective way to express yourself and convey your message to a broader audience.

Here are a few goals you can achieve by building your personal website.

Your website is a great way to build your brand
It’s an easy way to collect leads and engage with clients
promote a product or service
To differentiate yourself from competitors
To create a professional online presence
To build credibility and authority
To tell your story

7 Steps to Making your personal website

Step 1: Find out a clear goal that you want to achieve with the personal website

The first step to creating your own personal website is figuring out what you want it to be. It might seem obvious, but it’s more complex than it sounds. First, you need to know what kind of site you want.

It depends on the experience you want visitors to have when they visit your site and your end goal.

Do you want them to find out more about you?
Will they buy something from your store?
Or your content will help them make better decisions.

These answers will guide the rest of your site’s development process. They will also determine how much time and money you should spend on each part of the project.

For example, suppose your goal is to show your work history and why people should hire you. In that case, an online resume can be all there is on the page.

Step 2: Find your audience

Here are some essential questions when doing your research for creating your website.

Who is your target audience?
Do they have a certain age, gender, or income level?
What do they usually purchase?
How often do they buy online?
What kind of content do they find interesting?

When creating a personal website, it’s important to define your audience. This will help you elaborate a content strategy.

For example, if you’re an artist who wants to show your work, your audience will likely be other artists or people interested in art.

Step 3: Find the suitable medium

Now that you know your target audience, it’s time to decide on the best way to communicate with them.

Do they prefer text or pictures?
Do they use social media regularly?
Are they most likely to respond well to emails or text messages?

These crucial questions will help you determine which medium best suits your needs and theirs.

The next step is ensuring you provide them with what they need or want. It means being genuine, offering value, and being helpful—not just trying to sell something. It also means staying true to yourself and creating content that reflects who you are on a personal level.

Step 4: Figure out the primary category of your personal website

There are three main types of personal websites that you can create: one-page, portfolio, and blog.

One-page websites

A one-page website is the simplest type of website to create. A single-page site is a landing page with text and images explaining who you are and what you do. A one-page website is a good choice for someone who wants to highlight their work and stand out as an individual.

One-page websites are designed to be mini portfolios, with links to your social media accounts and a contact form at the bottom of the page. You can create a one-page website using Squarespace or Wix, which both have excellent templates for one-pagers.

The benefit of this approach is that it’s fast to build, easy to manage, and doesn’t require any coding knowledge. The downside is that it can be difficult to make an impact with such minimal information on display.

However, if you want something quick and simple for your first website or need a place to post information about yourself, a one-page site might be perfect for you!

Portfolio websites

Portfolio websites are designed as online portfolios where visitors can see examples of your work. This site allows professionals to showcase their skills more comprehensively than they can with text or images alone (which may leave some questions unanswered).

By providing links or embedding content from other sites like YouTube or Flickr into your own site’s pages (or even making them accessible through those links), visitors will have all the information they need right at hand when viewing.

Blog

Making a blog is another option for creating a personal website. You can use blogs to share your thoughts, ideas, and experiences with others who visit them regularly by posting regular content updates on their blogs so that visitors get an idea of what they do daily at work or home!

Step 5: Get the Domain Name for your website and Webhosting

Choosing a domain name should be easy. Here are a few tips for choosing your domain name:

Keep it short
You can use part of your name.
Make it easy to remember.
Should not be subject to negative or offensive interpretation.

It can reflect your personality or what you intend to publish. But it is not necessary. Many big brands like Amazon, Google, and Walmart have short domain name that does not tell what they do.

Choosing a web host for the personal website

When building a personal website, you need a reliable web hosting provider ensuring:

Guaranteed uptime (minimizing the time when your site is unavailable for visitors)
fast loading time
great customer service
affordable pricing

I have been creating websites for years; unfortunately, I have used bad web hosts and good ones. Bluehost, SiteGround, and A2 hosting are excellent web hosts for your personal blog. But if you are famous or plan to grow your website quickly, I recommend using BigScoots or Cloudways.

Most bloggers start with a shared hosting plan and upgrade later to a cloud or dedicated hosting solution. Whether you opt for managed WordPress or an unmanaged plan depends on the support you want.

Step 6: Setup WordPress and install a WordPress theme

You’ll need to install WordPress—a free content management system (CMS) that makes it easy to build their website. To install WordPress, visit the official website; you’ll find a “Download” tab at the top of the page.

Once clicked, you will download the latest WordPress version. Go through all the default settings until you reach the end. It should only take about 10 minutes! Now we need to install our theme!

Creating a personal website is super easy.

You can go with a free theme, or you can purchase one. I recommend installing WordPress themes that offer multiple free templates because these are much easier to customize and update than buying a theme with only one free template.

When it comes to choosing a theme, there are many options available. My favorite themes to create a personal website are Astra, Kadence, GeneratePress, and Neve.

Astra has 60 free templates, while Kadence offers 50 free templates. GeneratePress and Neve both offer 30 free templates each. These themes are easy to install and use.

Astra – This is my favorite theme for beginners because it is easy to navigate and offers many great features. It also has several free templates you can use to start over instantly.

2) Kadence – Another great option for beginners, Kadence offers users plenty of ways to customize their sites without being overwhelming or intimidating! The drag-and-drop editor makes it easy to add content without having any prior experience using HTML or CSS coding languages like Bootstrap or Bootstrap 3.

3) GeneratePress – It’s another multipurpose WordPress theme with 89 ready-to-use templates comprising different industries and service-based websites. There are dedicated templates like “Feather” that target business and eCommerce sites.

Step 7: Create pages and customize your theme to get a unique look

For this tutorial, I have selected “Astra theme,” as it has plenty of free starter templates that you can use for your personal website.

To get started, you’ll need two things.

Astra theme
Free starter template plugin

Start customizing your theme to get a unique brand look; you can install Elementor page builder to help you with visual customization to edit your pages…

Once you have installed the starter template plugin, go to Appearance > starter templates > select your preferred starter template and click on continue.

Next, add a logo—and make sure it matches your brand!

Start customizing your homepage, and edit colors and fonts from the left-hand column. Experiment with different color schemes and font styles to get uniqueness.

On the homepage, include information about what kind of content you’ll be posting on this site (i.e., weekly outfit posts) and links to your other social media accounts.

On the “about us” page, including information about who runs this website (i.e., “Me”) and how long it has been in the business (i.e., since June 2017). You can also include contact information if someone would like to get in touch with you directly.

Change your permalink structure to post. It will allow you to better track the traffic coming to your site and use it as an opportunity to improve the content.

Don’t forget recommendations and testimonials from clients or colleagues—they’re one of the most powerful ways for potential clients to understand how others perceive you. Add photos and videos too!

Photos can help illustrate concepts in case someone can’t read through all of the text on your site.

Final step: Publish your website

It’s time to publish your website!

But first, make sure that you are done with all of the content. You don’t want to publish if there are still things that need to be finished.

The next step is ensuring that the links on your website work and are pointing at the right places.

The last step is to ensure that all your images have been uploaded and look the way they should.

Once those are done, it’s time to check out your site in a different browser (just in case something goes wrong). If everything looks good, then you’re ready to move on to publishing!