Create Your Online Shop with WordPress & WooCommerce

First things first, you need your own URL to send people to your website. This is called a domain name, and it's cheap/easy to get. I'll show you exactly how to do this and give you some tips on what works best as well as the options you need and don't need.

Purchase your domain name through Namecheap.

In the next lesson, I'll show you how to setup your hosting account with HostGator. Sometimes for hosting I'll use BlueHost. I'm only mentioning it now because sometimes they offer a free domain when you signup for a hosting account. So you might want to check it out first.

Next up, you'll need a place to store all of your website files, this is called a hosting account. You don't need anything crazy, but I'll show you the difference between the options and what I recommend. After you signup for a hosting account, I'll show you how to connect your domain name with it.

In this video, I will explain how you can purchase your very own hosting account.

For this demo, I used HostGator. I'm also a big fan of BlueHost. I've been using both companies for several years and they are very similar. You can't go wrong with either one!

In this video, I will explain how to point your domain name to your hosting account, so the domain name knows where to find your files on the internet.

Once you signup for your hosting, they will send you an email with login details for your Control Panel (cPanel). Click the link and enter the username/password they sent you.

Once logged in, you'll copy the two hosting account nameserver codes. Then you'll go back into your domain registrar (Namecheap) and paste those into your domain name DNS settings.

If you signed up for a hosting account that allows you to have multiple websites, you will need to know how to setup an addon domain name at some point. That's what this video is for.

Chances are you won't need to complete this step, but it's good to know how to do it if you want to add multiple domains to your hosting account in the future.

This is the framework/platform that you will use for your site. Over 25% of all websites on the internet are using it, and it's constantly being updated, so I'm not the only one who understands how powerful it is. I'll walk you through the whole process.

This video will show you how to Install WordPress and how to login to the admin area.

In this video, I'll walk you through the admin area within WordPress. This is where you'll be spending most of your time.

Now that you've got the structure setup, it's time to add content. You'll setup new pages (home, about, contact, etc) and add text/photos for each. I also recommend that every website has a blog section, so I'll also show you how to set that up here.

In this video, I show you how to add new pages in WordPress. Once you know how to add pages, posts and products are almost the same, just a few extra settings.

In this video, I'll explain how to work with posts for your blog section.

Every WordPress site is built with a theme. We will work with a specific one in this training, and I'll also show you where I recommend buying premium themes from. And once you have the theme setup with some content, it's time to add a menu and some widgets.

This video will show you how to install a new theme, and we'll be using the WooThemes / WooCommerce e-commerce theme called Storefront. You can download it for free on the WooCommerce website.

There are thousands of premium theme options out there and I've bought a ton of them over the years. A great place to buy one is ThemeForest.

In this video, I show you how to setup new menus.

With every site I build, they all start out with the same handful of plugins. In this step, I will show you exactly which plugins those are and how to set each of them up. When it comes to plugins, less is more. I'll also mention some cool optional ones.

In this video, I explain plugins and we'll start adding them.

The main plugins I recommend are: Akismet, All in One SEO Pack, Google XML Sitemaps, iThemes Security, Jetpack, Pretty Link Lite, Search Meter, and WooCommerce.

The optional ones I mentioned are: Contact Form 7, Google Analyticator, and Instagram Slider Widget.

On the WooCommerce module, I'll share some of the optional plugins/extensions that I use on various sites.

In this video, we continue adding more plugins.

In this video, I explain the settings I use for each plugin.

In this video, I continue explaining plugin settings.

Here's that pretty link I setup for my microphone so you can test it yourself: podcasthowto.com/microphone.

This is one of the plugins that you'll be installing. It's the shopping cart you'll be using for your site. Since it's extremely robust and has a lot of settings, it deserves its own step. This is also where you'll connect your website to your PayPal account to receive payments from customers.

In this video, we will run the setup wizard for WooCommerce. Going through it will easily create all the shop/cart pages you need.

In this video, we will edit the inventory settings in WooCommerce.

The heart of your business is your products. You can add one product or hundreds. A product can be a simple product, like a printer, or a DVD, or a pillow. They can also be variable products (with options) like tshirts, or phone cases, or shoes. Lots of flexibility. I'll take you through all of the options in various scenarios. We'll also touch on menus and widgets again.

In this video, I'll explain how to add a simple product (like a digital recorder, or a pillow, or a book). Then we will create a variable product (like a tshirt, or a tire, or a pair of shoes).

In this video, I'll continue editing the settings for a simple product.

In this video, I'll explain how to add a variable product.

In this video, I explain shipping classes and when to use them.

In this video, I'll explain a few ways to edit the homepage.

In this video, we'll update all of the menus.

In this video, we'll update the various widget areas.