Congratulations you have a website ready to show to the world. In this tutorial Koen and I dedicated this project to the late and great Charlie Chaplin so it’s time for submitting your website to Google and starting getting some visitors.
Step 1 – How to Setup Hosting and a Domain
Step 2 – How to Move WordPress Local to Live
Submitting Your Website To Google – Create a Sitemap
To create a dynamically updating we need to install a plugin. This is a cinch by going to Dashboard > Plug-ins > Add New and then search for Google XML.
Once you install the plug-in look for Create sitemap and create your first sitemap which for us can be found at http://www.TheCharlieChaplin.com/sitemap.xml.
Submitting Your Website to Google
It will help to have a Gmail account for this next part,so if you don’t have one get one here.
Register for Google Webmaster tools > Add New Site > Choose alternate verification method > Add Meta and copy the line of code.
Now we just need to put this into the <head> of our WordPress theme. Please login to the dashboard > Appearance > Editor > Header (header.php) > Copy the <meta… just below the <head> which will be towards the top.
Add Google Analytics
We want to see how well our website is doing so lets install Analytics. Start by registering and by clicking the top right icon you can Add a new account:
We now need to copy this into the theme, every theme is different but new ones tend to have a place prepared for you to drop in the code. Our Elegant theme here has a nice spot under the Dashboard > Theme Options > Integrations > Above Head
What did we just do?
- Search for domain name and use domain suggest if you need help
- Purchase the domain using services like GoDaddy or NamesCheap
- Setup hosting either by purchasing a new account or doing an addon domain
- Copy the nameservers details from the hosting to the domain (simmer for 10 minutes to 2 days)
- Zip local files and upload via filemanager in cPanel then expand the directory
- Use the phpMyAdmin to export the local database
- Use Notepad++ or Mac equivalent to open the SQL file and find and replace “http://localhost” with “http://www.yourwebsite.com”
- Create MySQL database, create the user, add the user to the database
- Edit the wp-config and change the local details to the new database
- With your website ready add the sitemap plugin and submit to the Google webmaster tools
- Register for Google Apps and then add the tracking script to your theme
- Double check all the pages on your site, grab a coffee and congratulate yourself
WordPress Training Courses
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