In this tutorial I'm going to show you how to build a website, no code required using Astra Starter Templates. This is probably the easiest method to build your own website I've come across to date.
All tools used to build this website are free to use and we'll be using WordPress, the world's leading website platform.
We'll be using all free tools, and all excellent quality, to build our new website. WordPress, the world's most popular website platform is the base for our new website.
We'll be using the free Astra theme (or you can use your own theme too if you wish). And the Astra Starter Sites / Templates plugin to choose and easily import a quality pixel perfect professionally designed website into our WordPress installation.
From there we'll have a complete website ready for us to replace the dummy images and text with our own data. It's the fastest way I've discovered to build a website quickly and easily, with no custom coding required.
P.S. No need to download any of these tools yet, we'll do that a bit later.
I'm going to assume your hosting account uses cPanel with Softaculous software installer. I'll then easily install WordPress with a few clicks as follows:
Login to your cPanel hosting account and scroll down to the Softaculous Apps Installer section. Find the WordPress icon and click it to start the WordPress installation.
Click the "Install Now" button to proceed with your WordPress installation.
Enter all the information for your site including ensuring the correct folder is selected (see top arrow on the image). In my case want my website installed in the root and have ensured the directory text box is clear. Click the "Install" button once you are ready to proceed.
When the installation has completed, login to the backend of your newly installed WordPress website by clicking the "Administrative URL" link. You'll now automatically login to your WordPress dashboard.
In your WordPress dashboard click Appearance > Themes > Add New. In the Search Box type "Astra". Click the "Install" Button on the Astra theme to install it.
Don't activate your newly installed Astra theme, let's rather use best practices and install and activate a child theme for your Astra theme.
An easy to generate a child theme for Astra is to use the free Astra Child Theme Generator provided by the developers of Astra theme. Here is the link to the Astra Child Theme Generator: https://wpastra.com/child-theme-generator/.
In the Child Theme Name box type a name for your new child theme and click the "Generate" button.
Your new child theme has now been generated and downloaded automatically to your PC. We are now going to install and activate our new child theme.
In your WordPress dashboard click Appearance > Themes > Add New > Upload Theme > Choose File and find the child theme file we just downloaded.
Click the "Install Now" button to install our child theme. Now we can activate our new child theme by clicking the "Activate" link.
We've now installed the Astra theme and a child theme for our Astra theme and activated the child theme.
Using a child theme ensures any updates to the parent theme, will not be overwrite any customisations we've made to our theme.
In your WordPress dashboard click Appearance > Plugins > Add New and in the search box type "Astra Starter" and you'll see the Astra Starter Templates plugin. Click "Install Now" to install the Starter Sites plugin.
In your WordPress dashboard click Appearance > Starter Templates and choose your pagebuilder of choice. I'm using Beaver Builder as I've found it to be the most stable and lightweight pagebuilder to date. You may choose one of the other supported pagebuilders e.g. Elementor, Brizy, Gutenburg etc.
After selecting your pagebuilder of choice (in my case Beaver Builder), you'll see a comprehensive list of complete starter websites. Browse through these websites, find a website you like and select it to import it.
Now you have a complete website to ready to be customised with your preferred colours, images and text... It's just that simple!
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