In this step you need to install a theme and plugins. DO NOT worry about designing your site. That will come later, but you should at least set this up, which will only take a few minutes. Once you have a theme installed and the correct plugins, mark this step as done with the “Mark Completed” button at the bottom of thepage.

If you signed up for hosting on Bluehost, you might have a Bluehost plugin. You can keep it. If you’re on another hostand they have a plugin installed by default on your site, that’s fine. But all the other plugins that came pre-installedshould be deleted. You don’t need them.

Now, we can start fresh with a clean site.

Start by picking a themeThe theme is the visual framework for your site. If there’s some feature that you see on another site that you reallywant on yours, you’ll need to use the same theme. Don’t think that you can install a free basic theme and then add inall the cool functionality that you see on other sites. That’s not how it works. If you want images above the header,that’ll be part of the theme. You want a slider on the homepage? It’s probably part of the theme.

The most important thing with themes is to pick one that meets the following criteria.

It is designed to make your site look how you want your site to look. The biggest headache you can give yourselfwould be to install a theme and then spend hours trying to customize your site in ways your theme wasn’t designed for. Pick one that you like. Check out the theme’s website and look at their demos. Is there one that you like? Then this theme will work for you.
It has good support. You want a theme that will give you support, especially in the early days after buying it.You’re going to have questions. See if they have a good support forum. Do they offer chat, case, or phone support? Check out YouTube for tutorials. Are there some good videos showing how to use the theme?
It is responsive. This means that the look and layout of the site is capable of changing for mobile devices. A highpercentage of traffic these days is mobile, not desktop. You need a site that renders nicely on a mobile screen.
It has a history of good reviews. There are other factors that matter that you probably won’t be able to tell rightaway. Some themes are coded in a clunky way so they make your site run slow. If a site has a little history or ismade by someone who has received some really good reviews online, then it’s probably a good theme.

That’s the “how” behind picking a good theme. Now let’s get to some of our favorites. Please note that we haven’ttried every theme out there. There are others that are as good as these themes. But the themes below are ones thatwe have personally researched and tried out and that we feel confident recommending to you.

Our Three Favorite WordPress ThemesX Theme by Themeco. We have used X and X Pro and still do on most of our websites. It’s worked really well on smallniche website as well as on huge authority websites. X Theme has 4 stacks, each with an entirely different look andfeel, so you’re basically getting 4 themes in one. We’ve talked with other web developers who also love X because ofhow powerful it is. It works well with tons of plugins. It has a nice visual builder called Cornerstone that once you’reused to, works great for building great webpages. And it’s got a lot of built-in shortcodes that make it easy to addbuttons, boxes, accordions, maps, and a wide variety of other features. Check out the demos by clicking on “LivePreview” on the X Theme website.

Divi by Elegant Themes. Divi has become really popular in the last few years. One of their key features is the drag and drop nature of their page builders. While the majority of the content we create is in posts and we don’t build a lot of highly visual pages, it’s still really nice to be able to build pages in such an easy way. Divi is backed by a strong support team and a good company. Elegant Themes has really stepped it up with their themes of late and we’re really comfortable recommending Divi. Their other themes aren’t at all bad either. Check out their demo content on their site here.

Texas theme by Coothemes. You do not HAVE to spend money on a theme. If you’ve already invested your maxbudget into this program, then don’t let that slow you down. Get started with a free theme. There are tens ofthousands of free themes available, but the one that I like is called Texas. The reason I like this theme is that it’s verylightweight and simple to configure. It’s easy to upload your logo, and the featured images don’t show up at the top ofthe post, which is a big pet peeve of mine. So if you’re getting started for free, this is the one we recommend. It willnot have all the fancy features as Divi or X Theme, but it is MUCH simpler to use and will let you focus more oncreating great content. If you’re not very good with technology, then this theme may be BETTER than Divi or X Theme.You really can’t go wrong with either of these. In short, if you want to endlessly play with the design and look of yoursite, Divi will be more user friendly. If you want a site that you’ll just set and leave, then we still like X Theme forthis.So pick the one that has the look you like the best and we’ll move on.

Install the basic plugins for your siteOne of the most important things you can learn about plugins is to not use any that you don’t need! This is the #1easiest and most common way to break your site. In fact, if you ever a major glitch on your site, the fastest way totroubleshoot the problem is to disable all plugins and start adding them back one at a time until you find the plugincausing the problem.

Don’t Add Too Many PluginsThese are the plugins we recommend for you to get started with your site. For most niche sites, this is all you need. Ifyou are going to add functionality later—like a membership area or a course—then it’ll make sense to add in some more. Add these by clicking on “Plugins” and then “Add New”. Then search for these plugins by name.

1. Google Analytics for WordPress by Monsterinsights2. Shortlinks by Pretty Links by Blair Williams (not the paid pro version, the free one)3. Anti-Spam by Webvitality4. Yoast SEO by Team Yoast or All in One SEO Pack by Michael Torbert5. Amazon Affiliate Link Globalizer by Attila Gyoerkoes, Markus Goetz —This one hasn’t been updated forsome time but it is still working well and we haven’t yet found one we like better. However, you don’t need a pluginfor Amazon to work. Just use the Amazon SiteStripe to create your links once you start adding links to Amazon.6. Really Simple SSL by Rogier Lankhorst

Don’t worry too much about the plugins right now. We’ll come back and get all the settings right in a later step.Move onYou’ll notice that we’re not customizing the look of your site right now. We’re sticking with the default settings for yourtheme and moving on. Don’t worry. We will come back to that later, so don’t worry too much. It’s just a lot easier tomake your site look great after you have some content up.

Step 6: Picking The Right Theme & Plugins