How to Create Your own Cake Website

In fact, everywhere on the internet, you can find step-by-step guides on how to create your own blog or website. This includes creating your own cake website or cake blog. And, it is actually easier than you think. Hence, I wrote this simple tutorial to help you get started. I also provide a specific recommendation for a service provider that can help you get started on the right foot. 

You see, the problem is not building the blog or website. It's what happens after that. Once the site is live. There is so much more you need to do after you launch the site. That's when you encounter issues and need help. That is when you can become helpless and frustrated. So much so that some people actually abandon their websites or blogs completely.

Now, if you are an expert SW programmer, or IT professional, you may be able to solve those issues on your own. However, if you are like me, a regular person with no coding or IT experience, you need help.

The good news is that there are professionals and service providers who can help. They can design, build, and maintain your site. The prices for these professional services can go from a few hundred dollars (one-time fee) to over a few thousand dollars! It all depends on how much you are ready to spend. I know a friend who spent a little over five thousand dollars because she really was so obsessed with her blog.

Can you afford that? Not me! I went the DIY route and guess what it really was easier than I thought. And I consider myself technically handicapped. Back then I knew nothing other than just using email. And yet, I learned a lot the hard way (including my sites getting hacked).

But there is another option

If I had the help that I have today back when I started blogging - my blogging life would be a lot less stressful and so much more enjoyable. What does that mean? Some of us can't afford to hire professional website developers because it's expensive. And doing everything yourself can be stressful and in the long run more expensive (correcting mistakes is a lot more expensive sometimes). But there is a third option. And that's what I want to share with you today.

We can divide the task of creating a website into two parts.

• The first part is designing and developing the site itself.
• The second part is the ongoing operation and maintenance of the site.

1. For the first part, there are several good tools and platforms that offer generic website designs free of charge. You can literally be up and running in no time. It's simple, easy, and doesn't require any technical skills. That's what I used when I started my blog.
2. The second part is more challenging. It requires technical skills and experience. Most of us don't possess these attributes. So, we can try to do it ourselves, and learn the hard way. And yet, in my experience, that's a bad choice. It leads to costly mistakes, in terms of time and money. Furthermore, when your site is down it adversely affects your business. You lose customers, advertisers, and followers. That could amount to 100's of dollars every day your site is down

What are managed hostings?

Wouldn't it be nice if there was someone who could manage and maintain our site for us? That way, every time we encounter a technical issue we can get immediate help and resolution. For example, issues such as website down, slow page loading, or changes we want to make to our website's design. Well, there is such a service. It's called WordPress Managed Hosting. I will explain more about it below.

You can think of Managed WordPress hosting as having a dedicated person on a call or concierge service to help you manage your website server 24x7.

First, for those of you that are new to creating your own cake website or cake blog - here's some general info. 

You get what you pay for

1. Own your blog - You can start a blog for free. Yes, you can!  With this option, you won't own your blog. Your blog URL will be something like yourblogname.wordpress.com or perhaps yourblogname.blogspot.com. Rather than yourblogname. com. And yet, that's a reasonable compromise to make if you want to start fast and with minimal expenses.
   It's a quick and cheap way to test your idea and see if this is right for you. Once you decide that you are ready to commit your time, energy, and money to your blog, or website, you can buy your own domain name and select a hosting company that will host your website.
2. Managed hosting - Today, there are many hosting companies to start a blog. I myself have used a few.
   My blogs are currently hosted by WPOven. They are like lifesavers to me. They provide managed hosting services for WordPress websites. I came to them when I really needed help getting some technical work done and they helped me no questions asked.
3. In addition, their monthly fee can be as low as $20 dollars.
   • Also, there are other hosting companies that offer lower-cost options. Some are as low as $5 dollars a month. And I've used them in the past. And yet, you get what you pay for.
   • Personally, I'd rather pay $20 for the quality service and peace of mind. Rather, pay less per month and get lesser service and risk website "blackouts" (the site is down for an extended time).
   • Every day that my site is down costing me $200. So it's very simple math for me - it is worth every penny.
4. Another advantage of using a hosting company like WPOven is that you get your own dedicated VPS server, rather than a shared server with multiple other clients. That's part of the reason why their monthly fees are not as low as others.

What does WPOven offer?

The guys at WPOven believe that you should spend your valuable time developing content for your website and not maintaining it. They manage the technical support of your site, so you can manage your business. Let them handle all your WordPress website maintenance so that you do not have to worry about any of that.

Also, WPOven provides all the tools that you need to run a successful business website. Here's what they offer. 

We will take care of:

• Your server and site's security. We provide free SSL certificates, free CDN support, daily malware scans, free malware clean-ups, and daily off-site backups across all plans.
• Daily advanced site analytics for all sites.
• Manage your clients. If you are a web developer or a web agency, you can manage and bill all your clients and their sites using our client Manager.
• WPOven is a CloudFlare-certified partner. This means you can integrate and use CloudFlare directly from your WPOven dashboard.
• We provide one free email with all servers across all plans.
• Use the inbuilt recipe builder to create great-looking WordPress sites in minutes. The recipe builder has a number of premium themes and plugins to choose from at no added cost.
• WPOven also provides add-on packages for any custom development work that you might need, site speed optimization, and SEO optimization.
• Get our highly experienced WordPress support staff to resolve any issue with your WordPress site quickly and efficiently. 

Step 1: Sign up with WPOven from here.

Step 2: Select a plan

Once you have signed up with WPOven, you can create a SuperFast and optimized server for your sites. Before creating a server you need to select a plan. You can find all the details for the plans on the Plans and Features page.

Step 3: Select the server

Once you have selected the plan that best suits your requirements, you need to select the server location. If your site targets users from a particular geographic location, for example, Australia, then you can select Sydney as your data center location. And, if your site targets visitors globally, then we would suggest our Dallas or New York data center.

So, if you are based in the US then you want to choose a location in the US so your website will load quickly. 

Here is the list of the available Data center locations:

• Australia datacenters: Sydney
• US datacenters: New York, Texas, Newark, Fremont, Atlanta,
• Europe datacenters: Netherlands, London, Frankfort,
• Asia datacenters: Japan, Singapore, India

Step 4: Select the payment method

You have an option of either :

• Creating a monthly subscription via PayPal, or
• Use your credit or debit card

Step 5: Create your server

After you have selected all the options, simply click on the ‘Create Hosting’ button and your server will be created.

Step 6: WPOven dashboard

You can manage and view various stats for your newly created WPOven server from the WPOven dashboard from the 'Servers' tab.

Step 7: Adding your domain to the WPOven dashboard

Now that you have created your server with WPOven, you can start by adding your domain to the WPOven dashboard. To add a domain/site to your WPOven server, simply log in to the WPOven dashboard and navigate to the 'Sites' tab. You will now see a form to add a new site. Fill in the form and your site will be installed on your WPOven server, with the latest WordPress version installed on it.

Have a site with another host? 

But what if you already have a website that is hosted by another hosting company? As I previously mentioned, I had my sites at another hosting company and I had no clue how to transfer them to WPOven. No problem. WPOven will help you transfer your site for free. Yup, they do it for free!

Step 8: Migrating your site

If you wish to migrate your site from your previous hosting, simply click on the 'Request Migration' button and fill in the migration form. WPOven offers free migrations for all your sites.

Step 9: Update your DNS records

Once your site has been added to your WPOven dashboard, you can then update the domain’s DNS records as mentioned here.  This was new to me too but WPOven has it all detailed very well. And they helped me with mine. 

Log in to your WordPress site

All WordPress site log-ins are usually: yoursitename/wp-admin. So just go to google.com and type your domain name followed by wp-admin.

For example: if your site is happy cakes, you would type https://happycakes.com/wp-admin. Bookmark that page for future use so you always have it ready to log in.

Use the username and password you just created to install the WordPress Site.

This is your WordPress dashboard

From now on you will be working out of this dashboard. This is where you will work on your blog/site on a regular basis. Installing your theme, plugins, back-ups, writing your post etc. It all happens right here.

Congratulations on your new blog!! 

The disadvantages of free themes

• Your blog looks like all other blogs instead of being unique or one of a kind.
• The functionality you get for free is pretty basic. So you need to add plugins for other useful functions. More plugins can slow your site. That is very undesired by your target customers/readers.
• There is no customer support with free themes.
• A free theme is very rarely updated. In fact, often they are abandoned by their developers.
• Free themes are less secure. This can lead to malware and spam on your website.

Following are some recommended themes from Theme Forest.

• Foodie -A Whimsical Food Blogging Theme
• This Foodie PRO  - StudioPress Themes for WordPress (This is the one I am currently using on this blog) 
• I Cook - another food blogging Theme

Some useful plugins for your food blog

Once you start your blog these are some of the first few plugins you want to install. Most of these are free to download from your WordPress dashboard. Of course, some of these have more features when you upgrade. 

• Akismet - It's a free plugin against spam comments on your blog. Here is a simple video on how to set it up - Akismet Plugin setup.
• SEO by Yoast - The best free and paid plugin for your blog SEO.
  This a great video showing you how to set it up - How to install and set up WordPress plugin SEO by Yoast.
• WordPress Backup to Dropbox - This is a free plugin to back up your site in Dropbox. There is a video on how to set it up
• Comment Luv or Disqus - These are two different comment plugins - both are good therefore you can go with either one. I use Comment Luv
• Finally, If your site has recipes use a recipe plugin - you must use the best WP Recipe Maker. They do have a free version but the paid is better and affordable.
• Google Analytics - A very useful analytics tool, which gives you insight into your visitors. Demographic, location, age, device, etc. Setting up takes a little effort but once done it is very valuable. I strongly suggest you set it up. Here is a video that can help you set up your Google Analytics.
• Social share plugins - Is found in the plugin section; helps share your social network connections so your visitors can share your posts on different social networks. I used the Grow plugin.
• Contact Form - Found in the plugin section as well.  The contact form is a better way to let visitors contact you rather than making your email address public.