How to start a website: domain, hosting and WordPress
Published on 3 October 2026
To start your own website you need three things: a domain name, web hosting and software to build the site with, such as WordPress. You can sort all three in an afternoon: pick a name, get hosting, install WordPress and switch on HTTPS. Below you’ll find each step, how it compares with a free site builder, and the mistakes worth skipping.
Free site builder or your own website?
A free site builder is a fine place to start. You drag blocks into place and your site is online without installing anything. But free comes at a price. Take Wix: the free plan gives you an address like yourname.wixsite.com/yoursite, 500 MB of storage and 1 GB of bandwidth. Connecting your own domain needs a paid plan, and so does getting rid of the Wix ads.
The biggest catch only shows up later. You can’t take a Wix site to another host: Wix itself says your site has to run on its servers, because it’s built on Wix’s own technology. If you ever want to leave, you rebuild.
Your own website works differently. The domain name is registered to you, your files and database are yours, and you can take them to any host. In return you do a little more yourself, such as installing updates and keeping backups. As you’ll see below, that’s less work than it sounds.
What do you need to start a website?
| Part | What it is | What it costs |
|---|---|---|
| Domain name | Your address on the internet, such as yourname.com | A yearly fee |
| Web hosting | The server your website and database live on | A monthly or yearly fee |
| WordPress | Software to build and run your site | Free, because it’s open source |
WordPress isn’t the only option, but it’s the best known. According to W3Techs, more than 40 percent of all websites run on it (as of October 2026). That means there’s a guide, a theme or a plugin for almost any problem you’ll run into.
Step 1: choose your domain name
Pick a name that’s short, easy to say and hard to misspell. For an international audience, .com or .eu are the usual choices; if your visitors are mostly in one country, a country domain such as .nl or .be feels more local. Always register the name in your own name, not your web designer’s. You register it with a registrar, for example through our domain names page. How to choose a domain name covers what else to look out for.
Step 2: choose your web hosting
WordPress needs hosting with PHP and a database. WordPress recommends PHP 8.3 or later, MySQL 8.0 or MariaDB 10.11 or later, and HTTPS support. Beyond that, make sure you get enough storage for your photos, a way to make backups and protection against attacks. Every point is covered in How to choose WordPress hosting.
Web hosting at CakeHosting: SSD storage, databases, mailboxes on your own domain and DDoS protection through RoyaleHosting, with more than 6 Tbps of capacity, and you can cancel any month. View the web hosting plans.
Step 3: connect your domain name to your website
Your domain name needs to know which server your website lives on. You set that up in your domain’s DNS, in one of two ways:
- Your host’s nameservers: at the company where your domain is registered, you enter your host’s nameservers. Your host then manages all DNS records for you, including the ones for your email.
- Your own records: you keep DNS at your registrar and add an A record for your domain with your hosting’s IP address, plus a CNAME for www that points to your domain. If your hosting also has an IPv6 address, add an AAAA record as well.
Mind your email. New nameservers move all of your DNS, MX records included. If your mailboxes live somewhere else, copy those records over first. Then run nslookup yourdomain.com in a command prompt or terminal to check that your domain returns your hosting’s IP address.
After a change it takes a while before everyone sees the new address. How long depends on the TTL: the time computers hang on to a DNS answer. Only turn on https (step 5) once your domain points to your hosting: your host can usually only issue a free Let’s Encrypt certificate when the domain points to the server.
Step 4: install WordPress
Many hosts have a button that installs WordPress for you. If you do it by hand, WordPress reckons it takes about five minutes:
- Create a database, plus a user with full rights on that database.
- Download WordPress from wordpress.org and upload the files to your hosting.
- Enter the database name, user, password and host in wp-config.php.
- Open yourdomain.com/wp-admin/install.php, choose a site title and create your admin account.
Give that account its own username and a strong password. WordPress itself advises against using admin as a username: it’s the most obvious guess for login bots.
Step 5: switch on HTTPS
HTTPS encrypts the traffic between your visitors and your site, and it’s no longer optional. Since Chrome 154, released in September 2026, Chrome asks for permission by default before it opens a public site without HTTPS. That’s not a warning you want your visitors to see. Many hosts give you a free Let’s Encrypt certificate that renews itself. Once it’s on, check that all your pages, images and forms load over HTTPS.
Step 6: theme, plugins and your first pages
Pick a lightweight theme and start with a few pages: a homepage, a page about you or your club, and a contact page. Only install plugins you actually use. Every plugin is extra code that needs looking after.
Got a contact form or a newsletter? Then you’re handling personal data, and under the GDPR you have to tell people what you do with it, usually in a privacy statement. The Dutch government’s business portal puts it plainly: a privacy statement on your website is mandatory.
Last of all, sort out your backups. WordPress recommends weekly backups for a small site and daily ones for a busy site, with copies in different places: on the server, in the cloud and on your own computer. Back up both your files and your database, because one without the other won’t get you far.
How much does your own website cost?
WordPress itself is free. You pay for your domain name, yearly, and for your web hosting, monthly or yearly. On top of that you only pay for what you choose to, such as a premium theme or plugin. A paid site builder plan bundles hosting and software into one price, but then you’re tied to that builder.
Which mistakes should you avoid?
- The domain in someone else’s name. Don’t let your web designer or host register your domain in their name. If you ever fall out, you lose your address.
- Never updating. On 22 September 2026, WordPress released version 7.1.2 to fix a critical security vulnerability. Turn on automatic updates or check once a week.
- No backup off the server. If something happens to the server, you want a copy that lives somewhere else.
- Too many plugins. Five good plugins beat thirty half-used ones. If your site has slowed down, read How to speed up a slow WordPress site.
Sounds like a lot? Most of it you only do once. After that, looking after a website is a bit like baking: once you know the recipe, it practically makes itself. And if you get stuck, just send us a message.
