If you have your website hosted through HostGator, you can setup a professional email in just a few minutes.

Here’s how:

Log in to your HostGator dashboard and click on email accounts.

On the top right hand side there should be a button that says create, click on that.

Make sure under the domain tab you select the domain that you want the email for.

Under username enter what you want the email to be, for example info, sales, support or just your name.

Next you will enter a password under the password section and then click on the create button.

Your new email address will now be created!

You will be redirected to your email accounts section, find the email you just created and click on manage.

On the next screen go to allocated storage space, here you can change it from 500mb to unlimited, scroll down and click on update settings. Now your email has unlimited storage space!

You’ll now be back on your email accounts page, find your email again and click on check email.

On this page you can choose to open your email, set up on a device and more.

There are a couple choices for a webmail client, I use the Roundcube but you can also use horde. It doesn’t make a difference which one you use, it’s just my preference.

Click on open and you will now be in your new professional email where you can send and receive emails!

I would send a test email to make sure everything is working properly. Once the test email goes through you’re good to go!

That’s all there is to it! If you have any questions on how to setup your professional email in HostGator, leave a comment below or send me a message and I will be glad to help you out.

What’s a plugin? It’s basically a piece of software like an app you would have on your phone and will help improve the functionality, customization and security of your blog. We’re only going to install a few to start with to help us build our pages a little easier but first we need to deactivate and delete the ones that come pre-installed.

Go to your left side menu and click plugins > installed plugins.

Check them all and in the dropdown click on deactivate and then click the apply button.

Select them all one more time and then in the dropdown click delete and then click apply. A popup will say are you sure? Click yes.

Now we’re going to add a plugin, just one. As we build out our site we will add more but for now go to plugins > add new and we’re going to search for a plugin called Elementor Page Builder by Elementor.com. It has over 5,000,000 installations and is ranked as one of the top page builder plugins out there!

Click on install now and it will automatically install the page builder. Once installed you will want to click on activate as shown below.

That’s it! You can use this same process to install any plugins you may need for your site functionality and design help. A good security plugin and an SEO plugin are highly recommended. We’ll install them at a later date. Our next step is to install a WordPress theme.

Install a Theme

Here’s another one of those there are thousands of choices… Themes… A theme is basically a professionally designed template that will help with the design of your blog and allow you to customize the appearance.

A few worth mentioning are Astra, Hello Elementor, Sinatra and Ocean WP. We use Hello Elementor and Astra for most of the sites we build.

On your dashboard navigate to appearance > themes , click on add new.

In the search box type in Astra. This is one of the best free themes out there and also has a paid upgrade for even more options. Right now we will just use the free version of Astra.

Once it loads up from the search, click on install and then activate.

Once it is activated we can delete the other themes, they will no longer be necessary. Go to appearance > themes and click on theme details of each of the themes (except Astra) then delete. A popup will say are you sure? Click OK. Delete all the themes that are there except for Astra.

That’s all for this step, we have successfully installed a theme and deleted the unnecessary ones.

Step 1 : Purchase Hosting and Domain Name

Hosting is important because… well, without hosting your website or blog wouldn’t be viewable to anybody. There are numerous hosting companies out there and one day we’ll make a complete list but since this is probably your first blog let’s keep it simple and economical.

A good company to use for your blog’s web hosting is HostGator . They have a good track record for uptime, have great customer support and have been around for a long time, not to mention they are very affordable.

Click the Get Started button and then select the buy now on the hatchling plan package. You can upgrade to the baby plan if you are going to build more than one website if you choose.

Step 2: Get a Domain Name

Your domain name should be simple and easy to remember, it could even be your own name if you wanted. If you are stuck picking out a name, there are a few blog name generators out there that can help jog your brain a little.

Once you have your blog name picked out we need to see if it’s available and purchase it. A domain name is generally around $15 a year. We have used GoDaddy.com, Namecheap.com and HostGator.com for domain names in the past. Currently we rely on HostGator for all of our domain name and web hosting needs. They have never let us down.

Once you have picked out your domain name you want to enter it in the field shown above. If it is not available (which happens sometimes) it will say unavailable and you will unfortunately have to pick something different 

Choose your hosting package next, it should already be selected from the first step but if you change your mind and want to do a different plan you can do this now. Keep in mind that the longer billing cycle you choose, the better price you will get!

You now will have the option of choosing if you want domain privacy protection. This will keep your information private and we highly recommend it. If you choose to not purchase it, be prepared to get a ton of spam emails from people trying to offer you website building services and apps. It’s very annoying !

Next you will want to setup your account details. We are using HostGator in this example because we have used them for years without any issues. You’ll be asked to enter your email, a password and a security pin.

Enter all of your billing information. You can pay for the domain name and hosting services with a credit card or through PayPal.

The next section will be for adding additional services. We choose not to select any extras at this time because we can do all of this on our own without buying them, however, if you want to purchase any of the additional services it is entirely up to you.

Review your order details, check the box that you agree to all the terms and conditions and then click checkout now.

Step 3: Install WordPress

Installing WordPress through HostGator is easy, from your HostGator customer dashboard you just click on Install WordPress.

Choose your installation URL. If this is your first time, it should already be in there. Leave the directory field BLANK (this is important!)

Choose the version you want to install. It should already be on the latest version so if you click the dropdown it should be the top choice.

Enter your site name and site description (we can also add or change these later so it’s not super important)

Under the admin account enter a username and password. It would probably be a good idea to write these down somewhere because you will need them to log into the backend of your new website!

Change the admin email to an email that you can check. You can change this in your WordPress dashboard later if needed.

Select your language.

Skip over the select plugins, advanced options or the select themes sections, we’re going to add this stuff in manually in a later step.

Scroll to the bottom of the page and click install

It should only take a few minutes to install WordPress.

You should now see a screen like the one below that says Congratulations, the software was successfully installed.

There will be two web addresses shown, one is your main site’s web address and the other one is the important one, your website’s administration URL. It should be whatever your website’s name is /wp-admin.

You may want to bookmark this as it is the address you will need to log into your WordPress dashboard to make all the changes to your site and to upload and add all of your content, so it’s kind of a big deal!

Click on the administrative URL and it should take you to the WordPress Dashboard! Awesome job!

*Note – sometimes you will get an error screen that says site not secure or site not found. If this happens, it means that your website hasn’t fully propagated through the internet yet. Wait about 15 minutes or so and click on your administrative URL again. On a rare occasion, this could take up to 24 hours but from our experience it either works immediately or within 10-20 minutes.

If you are looking for a way to change your username in WordPress but find that when you try you get the message that a username cannot be changed, there is a quick solution.

From your WordPress dashboard, head to users then add new. Enter the new username that you want to use and enter an email address, first and last name and website if you wish to add that also.

Enter a password and change your role to the appropriate setting.

*If you are trying to use the same email address, it won’t let you. If you are using a gmail account the workaround is to just add +wordpress. Example – yourname@gmail.com change to yourname+wordpress@gmail.com. It will still go to yourname@gmail.com.

After you have completed this step, log out of WordPress and then log back in with your new username.

Go to your original username and click delete. You will then be asked what you want to do with the content created by the original username. Select attribute all content to your new username and then click confirm deletion.

You can now go back to your new username and change your email address from yourname+wordpress@gmail.com to yourname@gmail.com. You will be sent an email to confirm this change. This step must be completed and you are all set with your new WordPress username!

Hopefully this tutorial helped you change your username in WordPress. If you would like to receive our latest tips, consider subscribing to our weekly newsletter below

Adding Pages to Your WordPress Blog

This is my favorite part, actually creating the stuff that your viewers will see. Adding pages, images and content.

What pages should my blog have? A good start would be the following:

• About
• Contact
• Disclaimer
• Privacy Policy
• Terms of Service
• Start Here or Home Page
• 404 Page
• Blog
• Gallery

From your dashboard go to pages, then click add new.

You can also access the menu in the top toolbar. Hover over the +New and select page.

Your new page will appear where you can add your title, all of your content, images, videos, etc.

Set visibility, template, permalinks and maybe add a featured image. Choose whether to allow comments and set page attributes if needed.

You can now choose to save it as a draft or publish it.

Elementor Keyboard Shortcuts:

1. Undo: hit Ctrl + Z
2. Redo: Ctrl + Shift + Z
3. Copy: Ctrl + C
4. Paste: Ctrl + V
5. Paste Style: Ctrl + Shift + V
6. Delete: Delete Key
7. Duplicate: Ctrl + D
8. Save: Ctrl + S
9. Finder: Ctrl + E
10. Show / Hide Panel: Ctrl + P
11. Responsive Mode: Ctrl + Shift + M
12. History: Ctrl + Shift + H
13. Navigator: Ctrl + I
14. Template Library: Ctrl + Shift + L
15. Keyboard Shortcuts: Ctrl + ?
16. Quit: Esc

For those of you that have a memory like I do (which is I forget why I walked into a room…a lot…) my recommendation is to just remember shortcut number 15 because once you hit Ctrl + ? a nice little window pops up revealing ALL the shortcuts!