For many years, WordPress has been a popular option for those who want a small, basic blog or website for free. There are many ways to Take Control of Your Free WordPress Site. It takes just a matter of minutes to set it up, choose a design and receive a URL so you can share your content with the world.
While there is some flexibility when it comes to adding plugins, with the free version you are very much limited to selecting pre-made themes rather than being able to design your own. You also have no control over the advertising WordPress puts on your pages. The only way to take back this control is to find a new host for your website. This doesn’t mean that you will have to spend large sums of money on hosting. It is the opposite, actually. You will be able to find affordable prices on this site. Here some things you should consider before making the big switch from a free site to your own.
Take Control of Your Free WordPress Site
Choose a host
When it comes to choosing a host, you’ll probably be presented with a grid of about 15 different measurements to judge the performance you’ll be getting. The two you should be most concerned about is visitor count and data storage. Pick a plan that’s more than big enough to store your new website and cater to the number of visitors you’re expecting.
Before committing to any plan, it’s important to check the reliability of any hosting provider. Luckily there are expert industry reviewers online to break down most of the popular hosting provider’s pros and cons. Make sure any review has tested the uptime (the amount of time the website is hosted online without any loss of service). Look for one that is as close to perfect as possible. For example, a recent Kinsta review in 2020 found the provider had a 100% uptime record for the week they tested the company’s plan.
Choose a design
Once you’ve chosen where to host your new website, it’s time to decide exactly how your website will look. In the free version of WordPress, you are able to choose from a handful of designs. Now you have access to tens of thousands of different themes created by developers from across the world. If you’re a novice in website design, the easiest way to get your website looking the way you want is to choose one of these themes closely matches your vision. Then you can edit the finer details like colours and fonts to match your brand.
Choose a web address
Now that you’ve made your website, you’ll want to make it as easy as possible for people to access it. Previously you would have had to use the wordpress.com/ slug at the end of your web address. With your own, you can take control of the whole address, removing the need to mention another company. When coming up with your new URL, try and keep it as short as possible. More than three words and it becomes confusing and tiresome to type into a browser. Remove any punctuation from your phrase, including apostrophes, before searching to see if your domain name is available.