How to set up a WordPress site on GoDaddy

This article assumes that your have a domain registered with GoDaddy and a hosting plan purchased from GoDaddy.

Associate your hosting package to your domain.  From the accounts page, expand Web Hosting and I think you click on Launch next to New Accounts.  You be prompted to choose your domain that the hosting will associate with.  Your FTP username will be given.  You’ll be prompted for a password.  Choose a strong password.  Jot down your username and password.  Press either OK, enter, or continue (I can’t remember which it is.)

Wait a while for the setup to complete.

Once setup is complete, go to your Hosting Details page.  From your accounts page, expand on Web Hosting and select your domain that has the new hosting.  In the Hosting Details page, select Install WordPress.  Select your username, password, and email address.  This is going to be your administrative username when you log in to your WordPress site.  This not your FTP username.  Do not use ‘admin’ as your username.  Hackers try to log in using admin.

Wait awhile for the install to complete.  Once the install is complete, click on Applications.  In the Manage Applications page, press Log In.  Enter your WordPress username and password.  You should enter in the back-end of your WordPress page.

First, install Wordfence Security plugin.  On the left side of the page, go to Plugins->Add New.  In the search box, enter Wordfence and press Search Plugin.  Go to Wordfence Security and press Install Now and press OK.  Then select Activate Plugin.  This plugin is like a firewall plugin.  It adds a layer of security to keep hackers at bay.

You might hear stories about WordPress pages being hacked.  Hackers are out there.  They might find your WordPress page before a search engine does.  So it is a good idea to keep them out.  One time I finished this WordPress web site on a Saturday night.  The hackers were doing there thing on Sunday morning trying to register accounts on my site.  On Monday I think a hacker tried to login as admin 20 times.  Wordfence locked the user out.

Back to Wordfence, go to Wordfence->Options and go down to the Alerts section.  Check everything in the section.  Go down to the Scans to include section and check Scan theme files against repository versions for changes and check  Scan plugin files against repository versions for changes.  Go up to enter your email address of alerts.  Scroll to the bottom and select Save Changes.

Go to Settings->General and uncheck Anyone can register.  While your here, set your time zone and Week Starts On.  Click on Save Changes.

Go to Settings->Permalinks.  Select anything except for default.  WordPress SEO plugin recommends post name.  Better WP Security needs the permalink setting to be other than default.  I use post name.  Select Save Changes.

Install Better WP Security plugin.  Do the same thing as you did with Wordfence except install Better WP Security.  Click on Security on the left side panel.  Click on Create Database.  This backs up your database and emails it to you.  Then select Secure My Site From Basic Attacks.  You’ll be taken to another page.  Address issues that are in red.  For me, number 5 and 6 are in red.  For number 5, click on Click here to change user 1’s ID.  Click on Change User 1 ID.  Go back to Security->Dashboard.  For number 6, click on Click here to rename it.  Click on Change Database Table Prefix.  After you select the button, jot down the table prefix in case you need to restore your database.  Note that the database that was emailed to you has a table prefix of ‘wp_’.  The prefix that you jotted down is the new prefix for your database from here on.  The table prefix is important if you need to restore a database.  Go back to Security->Dashboard.  You can address the yellow warnings.  For me, it is numbers 1, 8, and 9.  For number 1, select Subscriber and select Save Changes.  For number 8, select a range of time that you’ll not be logging in your web site.  For number 9, check Enable Default Banned List and select Add Host and Agent Blacklist.

Now,  remove the Site Admin link.  Go to Appearance->Widgets.  On the Main Sidebar, move the Meta box to the middle side of the screen.  This should get rid of the Site Admin link.

Activate the Askimet plugin.  This plugin should already be installed with WordPress.  This keeps spam away from your comments.  You just need to activate it.  Click on Create New Askimet Key.  Follow the instructions.  Note that the plugin is free.  It’s just when you register for the plugin, Askimet will prompt you for credit card information.  If you don’t want to pay a donation for the plugin, move the slider to the left to zero.  This will make the credit card fields disappear.  Otherwise, you going to pay $36 every year.

It is a good idea to backup your database every so often.  You can schedule a database backup.  Go to Security->Database Backup.  Check on Enabled Scheduled Backups and select Save Changes.  By doing this, you should receive a zip file containing your database in your email account.  The file size of the zip file is probably going to be around 250KB.

That’s about it in setting up WordPress account.  Now you need to create posts and pages.  Check out the following link to know the difference between posts and pages: http://www.wpbeginner.com/beginners-guide/what-is-the-difference-between-posts-vs-pages-in-wordpress/.  This article is a post.  The About page is a page.

The WordPress install comes with the Jetpack plugin which is a collection of tools provided by WordPress.com.  I am currently learning to how to use it.  It is a lot of tools.  They are not important to set up your WordPress page.  They are nice to have.

I hope this was helpful.  I am thinking about creating another post on tips on maintaining a WordPress site after it is created.   Stay tuned.

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