A business website need not cost a fortune or take forever to get started. And here's why. We've combined world class tools with our user-friendly web hosting into our Create a Website package.
It is possible to get a business website in under 10 minutes, using these tools I'll show you how.
Our website will include four pages:
I won't be adding actual content but there will be placeholders for the image and text. You'll then simply replace the images and text with your own images and text. It truly is possible to get a business website in record time. And the bonus, it will be responsive, SEO friendly and beautiful. It won't be some patch job that you'll be ashamed to show off. Your website will be stunning, you can proudly showcase your business to the world.
The tools we'll be using:
You can do these very same things with WordPress and BeaverBuilder on your own hosting account with any other hosting company. We've just baked everything together with our awesome hosting to make it as easy as possible. So let's start.
If you've signed up for our Create a Website package you can skip this part. Our Create a Website package automatically pre-installs WordPress for you during your order process. That means it's installed and waiting for you.
If not, here is an article explaining how to 1-click install WordPress with one of our other hosting plans.
If you've signed up for our Create a Website package you can skip this part as we install it for you. If not let's install BeaverBuilder theme and page builder.
2.1 In the WordPress dashboard go to Plugins > Add New > Upload Plugin > Choose File. This will open the file browser on your computer, find the BeaverBuilder plugin, click it and click Install Now.
2.2 Once BeaverBuilder plugin is installed click Activate to activate the plugin.
2.3 Now we'll install BeaverBuilder Theme.
Note: If you have a theme you want to use you can install that instead as BeaverBuilder pagebuilder plugin works with practically any theme.
2.3.1 To install the BeaverBuilder theme from the WordPress dashboard click Appearance > Themes > Add New > Upload Theme > Choose File > Install Now. Don't activate the theme as we are going to install the themes child theme and activate that instead. (see below for short explanation). Instead click the Return to Themes Page link.
Note: There will be two theme files to install. The Beaver Builder Theme and Beaver Builder Child Theme. It's good practice to ALWAYS install a theme's child theme along with the theme and then activate the child theme and NOT the actual theme. This way all your custom changes will be preserved when updates to the theme are released. In other words, your hard work will never get overwritten when you update the theme. And you want to update any theme when updates are available).
2.3.2 Now to install the Beaver Builder Child Theme, the process is the same as installing the parent theme above. From the WordPress dashboard click Appearance > Themes > Add New > Upload Theme > Choose File > Install Now. Now you can click Activate to activate the BeaverBuilder theme.
If this is a new site your site will look bare bones now, most likely something like the site below. That's normal, but we'll soon be filling it it with loveliness.
Now we start with the really fun stuff!
3.1 From the WordPress dashboard go to Pages > Add New. Then in the text box type "Front Page" and click "Publish" to publish this page.
3.2 From that same page go to Settings > Reading. At the "Front page displays" option select "A Static Page" and then in the Front Page dropdown select "Front Page". You are now setting the Front Page you just created as the front page of your website. Then click "Save Changes".
3.3 Now go to Pages > All Pages and click on your "Front Page". We are not going to use the BeaverBuilder plugin to create the page layout.
Once the page editor opens click the "Pagebuilder" tab. This will load the page into the BeaverBuilder pagebuilder. This is where the magic happens! 🙂
Note: If this is the first time you are using the pagebuilder you may get a popup screen welcoming you and asking you if you want to take a tour. I recommend you take the tour as it's really informative and helps you get started with BeaverBuilder's pagebuider. For our purposes I'm choosing not to take the tour.
3.4 Now you'll see a screen showing you all the various options you have for page layouts. There are lots of lovely options to choose from. Take your time and choose the one you like. I'm selecting the beautiful "Deluxe" template, you can select anything you like.
The page template you selected will now be loaded into the page. For now we're done. Click "Done" and "Publish Changes" to save your page.
Your new Front Page with the new layout will be loaded. It already looks stunning.
3.5 If you scroll down to the bottom of your new Front Page or Home Page you'll see that there is a section for comments. You most likely don't want that there as this is not a blog post but a page. Let's remove that.
3.5.1 Go back to your WordPress dashboard by hovering over your site name in the top left corner and clicking "Dashboard".
3.5.2 Then in the WordPress dashboard click Pages > All Pages. You'll then see your Front Page listed there, hover over it to see the additional options appear. Click the "Quick Edit" link.
3.5.3 Deselect the checkbox (untick it) and click "Update" to save your changes.
That comment box has now been removed and our page looks stunning.
The process is exactly the same as creating our Front page except we skip the second step (3.2). The reason we skip step 3.2 is that we only assign one page as our Home Page.
Note: For the contact page there is a special template you can use for a contact page with forms already created. For the other pages there are many templates for products, services, about pages and a whole lot more. You can view them all right from inside the BeaverBuilde page (See the image below).
Once you've completed creating the rest of the page templates, view your front page, somethings missing but what? The navigation menu and a logo is missing, let's take care of those.
5.1 Click the "Choose Menu" link as seen in the above image.
5.2 Type in the name of your menu in the name box e.g. Main Menu and click "Create Menu".
5.3 This part has three quick steps.
5.3.1 Select the pages you want to display in your Main Menu and click "Add to Menu".
5.3.2 Select the location for this menu. In this case it's the "Header Menu", go ahead and click it.
5.3.3 Click "Save Menu" to save your brand new menu.
Let's view our site to see if everything looks good. Ok there's a bit of a problem, first the menu order is not what I like and second the homepage is called "Front Page. Let's fix this.
5.3.4 In the WordPress dashboard click Appearance > Menus. Then simply drag and drop the menu items in the order you like.
5.3.5 To change the "Front Page" menu name to something more descriptive like "Home" click the drop-down arrow on the side menu item and type in the name you want. I'm changing it from Front Page to Home. Then click "Save Menu" to save your changes.
From the WordPress dashboard go to Appearance > Customize. The WordPress Customizer will now open.
Click Header > Header Logo and on the "Logo Type" drop-down select "Image". Then click "Select Image" and browse for the image on your computer you would like to use as your logo. Click "Save and Publish" to save your changes.
Voila! Your new business website is up and running in under 10 minutes! All you need to do now is swap out the placeholder images and text for your own text. You'll also need to check the settings in your contact form to make sure they send to the correct email address.
Checkout our Create a Website package to get all these tools neatly packaged and get a business website in under 10 minutes .
This is by far the quickest way I've found to build a beautiful SEO friendly and responsive website, if you know of anything quick, let me know in the comments below?
