In this video, I'm going to be going over how to build a website with DreamHost step
by step from start to finish.
I’ll be showing you how to access professional pre-made WordPress website templates to make
creating your site an easy process.
I’ll also be going over how to edit your WordPress website using one of the most popular
drag and drop editors Elementor page builder so you can create a professional looking website
on DreamHost via drag and drop.
I'll also be providing you with a DreamHost web hosting discount that will get you anywhere
from 63% off up to 79% off over Dreamhost’s monthly pricing, depending on the Dreamhost
hosting plan you choose, + you’ll get a free domain name on annual plans.
Let's get started with the DreamHost website tutorial.
The first thing you want to do to build a website with DreamHost is to click the link
in the description below so you can be taken to DreamHost and so you can take advantage
of getting 63% to 79% off the monthly pricing + get a free domain name on annual plans.
A little disclosure.
The link is an affiliate link, meaning I'll receive a commission from DreamHost at no
extra cost to you.
Plus you'll get an awesome DreamHost discount.
Once you click the link in the description below you'll be on the DreamHost web hosting
plans page.
Scroll down or hit the see all plans button to be taken down to the web hosting plans
and pricing section.
You’ll see two different plans you can choose from the Shared Starter and the Shared Unlimited
plan.
Above the plans you’ll see you can choose to pay for a monthly, 1-year, or 3-year term.
Something I want to note about the monthly term is you’ll only pay the introductory
discounted price for the promotional term.
After the promotional term it’ll renew at the full price of $7.99 for the Shared Starter
plan and $13.99 for the Shared Unlimited plan.
For the monthly term you won’t get a free domain name.
You’ll save the most money by going with the 1-year or 3-year term plus you’ll get
a free domain name.
Now let me go over the difference between the two DreamHost plans.
The Shared Starter plan is a great plan if you only need one website as this plan allows
one website.
This plan doesn’t include an email address ending in your domain name but you can add
it for as low as $1.67 a month.
If you need more than one website than the Shared Unlimited plan is perfect as it allows
unlimited websites.
This plan allows unlimited email addresses to be created ending in your domain name.
Once you decide on a plan and term click the sign up now button.
For this tutorial, I’m going to choose the Shared Unlimited plan.
You’ll now be on the choose a domain page.
If you went with an annual plan then you get a free domain name with your DreamHost purchase.
You’ll see you can choose a domain later, register a new domain, or enter a domain if
you already have one.
If you aren’t sure on a domain name now click choose a domain later and DreamHost
will create a temporary domain for you to use and you can choose a domain name in the
DreamHost dashboard after you’ve purchased DreamHost hosting.
To register a new domain click this and you can type in a domain name that you’d like.
Click the search icon.
If it’s available it’ll say congrats your domain is available.
Click the add button.
If you already have a domain name from another domain registrar click the I already have
a domain and enter the domain.
Once you select one of these options you’ll now be on the secure checkout page.
Over on the right hand side you’ll see domain privacy showing free.
DreamHost offers free domain privacy with all domain names registered with them.
This protects your personal information showing in the public whois database so that spammers
and telemarketers don’t get ahold of your information to flood your email or phone with
offers of their services.
DreamHost will show their default contact information instead of yours.
You’ll see a few DreamHost additional options they offer here.
All of these are optional and I’ll go through them at the bottom of this page.
Feel free to un-select anything now if you want too.
Next, enter your card information.
DreamHost also allows payments via PayPal.
Below this section, you’ll enter your billing information and click the add credit card
button if you chose to pay via a credit or debit card.
You’ll now be at the account setup section where you’ll want to enter your account
information to be used for your DreamHost account.
The next section you can select additional options such as DreamShield Protection, DreamHost
SEO Toolkit, and Google Workspace.
All of these additional options are completely optional and up to you whether or not you
want any.
DreamShield Protection will scan your website regularly to monitor its reputation and to
find any malicious code, malware, out-of-date software, broken permissions, and more on
your site.
If anything is found you are notified via email and in your DreamHost panel.
If your site is scanned and your site is clean you’ll also be notified via email and in
the DreamHost panel.
This add-on is optional.
The next additional option is DreamHost SEO Toolkit.
SEO Toolkit will give you guidance on things you can change or do within your site to make
it more visible in search engines.
SEO Toolkit will provide you with do it yourself tools, insights, and a personalized step-by-step
SEO plan.
Completely optional.
The next additional option is Google Workspace which will give you professional gmail at
your domain name plus other Google Workspace tools like Google Drive Cloud, storage, Calendar,
Meet, and more Google Workspace tools.
Completely optional.
Next, click the submit order button to complete your DreamHost purchase.
DreamHost will now email you your receipt.
You’ll be taken to an order complete successfully page.
You want to enter a password you want to be used for logging into the DreamHost dashboard.
Click the continue to your control panel button once you’ve picked out a password.
You’ll now be taken to the DreamHost dashboard.
You’ll see we are setting up your hosting service for you.
This just takes a few minutes.
Once it is done it’ll say setup has completed successfully.
You can now manage your new website.
We now want to install WordPress.
Scroll down to where you see install WordPress.
Click the install WordPress now button.
It’ll now begin installing WordPress on DreamHost.
Once it is done installing, click the open WordPress editor.
You’ll now be taken to the WordPress dashboard.
You can now begin in creating and building your WordPress site.
Now we want to pick out a theme to begin creating a site.
To pick out a theme for your site.
On the far left, you will see tabs.
Find the Appearance tab and hover over it.
Click themes as this is where you can pick out a theme for your site.
Next, Click add new theme.
You'll now see WordPress themes you can choose from.
There’s thousands of free themes to choose from.
Now I want to show you how to access free professionally designed WordPress themes and
how to edit them easily with a drag and drop editor.
Type in Astra in the search field.
DreamHost can come with Astra already installed so if you see just the activate button click
activate.
If Astra isn’t already installed click the install button.
Then click the activate button.
Once it is done activating the theme you want to find the plugins tab in the side menu.
Click add new.
In the search field type in starter templates.
You want to click install on it.
Then click activate.
Hover over the appearance tab in the side menu.
Click on starter templates.
You now want to click the build your website button.
Choose Elementor for the page builder.
It’ll now showcase a bunch of WordPress themes you can create your site with using
drag and drop.
You can type in the type of website you want to create to pull up templates based on that.
You’ll see a bunch of categories you can hover over and select to build your site.
If you click a theme it’ll show you what it will look like so you can preview it.
Click the x button to go back to the themes page.
Now let me walk you through the steps on how to choose your theme and build your site with
the drag and drop editor Elementor page builder.
Select a theme you want.
I’ll choose this one.
You can upload a logo if you’d like.
You can do this at a later time so if you don’t have one now no worries.
Click the skip and continue button.
You now want to choose the colors and font for your site.
You can update these at a later time or change them whenever you’d like.
Click the continue button.
You’ll now be on the tell us a little about yourself.
You don’t have to fill this out if you don’t want too.
Just make sure under advanced options you have each one selected.
Click the submit and build my website button.
It’ll begin building your website.
Once it is done you’ll be on the congratulations page.
Click the view your website button.
It’ll now take you to your website and what it looks like.
Now let’s go over how to make edits to the WordPress theme and how to use the drag and
drop editor to create your site.
To make edits to your site click the edit with elementor tab on the top of the page.
It’ll now bring you to the drag and drop editor where you can create your site quick
and easy.
To make edits to a part of the page just click where you want to make edits and start making
edits.
I can change Create Your Website to My Demo Website.
If you want to make edits to the background image right click on the section.
Click edit selection.
Click style.
Hover over the image and click the trash can icon if you want to remove the image.
Click over the image and you can upload a photo to place here or click media library
to upload images already uploaded in WordPress.
I’ll click the 9 dots at the top to get back to where you can drag stuff in to the
page.
I’ll scroll down a bit on the page.
You can select what you want over on the left and drag it in wherever you’d like it.
If you right click on an area you can delete it if you don’t want it.
By right clicking you can duplicate something if you need to duplicate it.
You can drag something over to somewhere else on the page by selecting it and dragging it
over to where you want it.
Over on the left you’ll see where you can link out the text to a page, change the sizing
of the text.
Change the alignment of the text.
If you click style you can change things like the text color and under typography the font
you want to use, and more.
If you scroll down to the drag widget here section.
Click the plus icon.
You can select the structure of the section of the page you want.
I’ll select this one.
You can then drag in whatever you’d like in the sections.
If you click the folder icon.
Then click blocks in the menu.
You can scroll through lots of pre-made blocks that you can add to a page of your site and
then start replacing with your content.
This makes designing your site quick and easy because you can find almost any kind of design
you want for a part of the page and start building it easily.
I’ll select one.
Click the insert button to insert it to the page.
When you click the insert button on the block you like at first you’ll need to create
a free Elementor account.
Once it is created you’ll be able to add the blocks in quick and easy.
I’ll click the insert button.
What I selected is now inserted on the page where I can begin editing.
I’ll scroll back down to the drag widget here section.
If you click the Starter templates icon.
You can click blocks in the menu and then it’ll give you lots more page design ideas
you can choose from.
For these, you can just click one you like.
I’ll click this one and then I’ll click the import button to import it to the page
to then start adding your own content and editing it how you want it.
Now I want to cover the contact us form to show you how this works.
I’m just going to drag over the WP Forms.
You can select a form.
If you want to make edits to the form click edit the selected form.
You can click the create a new form if you want to create a new form.
I’m going to click edit the selected form.
It’s now going to bring up the builder for the contact us form.
You can hover over an area to delete it or duplicate it.
You can click an area and drag it to wherever you’d like it.
If you want to add something you can drag it over from the side.
If you click Field Options you can click on a part of the form and then make changes from
the side.
You can select to make this part of the form a required or not required part to fill out.
If you click advanced you can click the part of the form you want to change and you can
select between the size of the form field for that area and then change if you want
anything to show in the form field where they input their information.
You can click preview to preview the form.
Click save to save changes.
When you are done click the x button and you’ll be taken back to the editor for the page.
Let’s get to know the drag and drop editor Elementor better.
At the bottom left of the page you’ll see the update button.
Click this when you want to update the changes you’ve made.
If you click the arrow you can save it as a draft or save this page as a template to
then use for another template of another page you create.
To view changes you’ve made to your site click the preview changes button and it’ll
showcase your site.
If you click responsive mode you can view what your site looks like on desktop, tablet,
or mobile devices.
If you click the menu icon in the top left and click site settings you can change the
colors of your site, fonts, and more.
I’ll click the x button.
Click the menu icon.
If you choose view page it’ll show you the view of the page and this is the easiest way
to get back to the Wordpress dashboard.
If you want to make edits to a certain page on your site you can click it in the menu
and then click edit with elementor.
To go to the WordPress dashboard hover over your site title name and click dashboard.
If you hover over the pages tab click add new to add a new page to your site.
If you click all pages it’ll showcase all the pages on your site.
If you hover over the media tab and click on library it’ll show you all the images
you have uploaded in WordPress.
If you click add new at the top you can then upload or drag in an image into WordPress.
If you hover over posts and click add new you can create a new blog post for your site.
If you click all posts, it’ll pull up all the posts you have on your site.
If you click the comments tab you will see all the comments you have on your blog posts.
You can easily reply, mark it as spam, or trash the comment.
If you hover over the plugins tab and click add new you can then search for or browse
plugins to add to your site.
Any feature or customization you might want on your site, more than likely there is a
plugin for that.
If you hover over the appearance tab in the left side menu click on menus.
This is where you can edit the menu on your site.
You can add new pages to the menu or drag a page to a different order.
If you click the tiny arrow you can change the name of it or completely delete it from
the menu.
If you want to create a completely new menu you can click create a new menu.
Now let me show you how to make edits to the footer area of your site along with uploading
a logo, favicon, and other customizations.
If you hover over the Appearance tab in the side menu and click Customize you’ll be
on the customize page.
Click the footer builder.
You can then click an area in the footer area where you see the pencil icon to start making
edits to that section over on the left side.
You can also click what you’d like to edit in the left-side area.
Both will take you to the same place to make edits like seen here.
If you click the plus icon you can then add whatever you’d like to the footer area in
that section.
If you hover over an area of the footer and click the design button you can then design
things like link colors, font colors, fonts, and more.
You can click the x button to remove that area from the footer.
If you click the pencil icon here on the left-hand side you can then choose how many columns
you want your footer to be.
You can then click the plus icon to add sections to that part of the footer.
I’m going to click the back arrow twice.
If you click Site Identity you can then upload a logo and a favicon which is the site icon
for your site.
Click select site icon to then upload your site icon also known as the favicon for your
site.
If you click site title and logo settings you can then change the logo to your own and
make other customizations to the logo area for your site.
I’m going to click the back button twice.
You’ll now see a bunch of different options you can select from for different parts of
the site such as header builder, blog, pages, sidebar, performance to help speed up your
site, and more.
You now know how to access pre-made professional templates, how to start build a website with
DreamHost and making edits to it using the drag and drop editor Elementor page builder.
That is my DreamHost tutorial going over how to build a website with DreamHost step by
step.
If you have any questions, get in touch in the comments as I'm here to help you with
anything you need.
Give this video a thumbs up and leave us a comment letting us know if the tutorial was
helpful or not as the comments help improve our tutorials.
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