How to Start A Self-Hosted WordPress Blog in India [The Non-Technical Guide]

Are you wondering How to start a Self-Hosted WordPress Blog in India? – well, you’ve landed in the right place.

Well, to be fair, it doesn’t really matter if you’re from India or anywhere else in the world, the process to start a blog is exactly the same.

So, even if you’re not from India, you can still use this guide to get started with your blogging journey.

Okay, before starting the Guide, you must first buy a Domain name and Hosting Plan.

If you’re not familiar with the words WordPress, Domain and Hosting then here’s a brief:

Domain name – is the address where you send people to read your blog, it is also called a URL; for example, facebook.com.

Hosting – is where you store your website’s files and data.

WordPress – is the application that runs your blog.

Here is an analogy for you to make it even simpler:

If someone asks you to open a specific word file from a flash drive, which is not your – first, you will need the file name, that is your domain name – second, you will need the flash drive (storage drive), that is your hosting – and lastly you will need an application like MS office to open the file, that is WordPress.

I hope you’ve understood. if not, let me know in the comment section at the bottom of this blog post.

How to Start A Self-Hosted WordPress Blog in India?

Okay, now that you have bought your web-hosting and domain name, I don’t see any point in delaying your blogging venture.

Let’s not wait anymore and get your blog up and running.

The 6 steps to Start A Self-Hosted WordPress Blog:

1. Buy a domain name and hosting
2. Install WordPress
3. Install a theme
4. Install the required Plugins
5. Connect your new blog to Google Search Console
6. Publish your first blog post and start blogging

#Step1 – Buy a domain name and hosting

We have already talked about what is a domain and hosting. So, let’s talk about why and where to get them?

FYI, it is possible to use your laptop or desktop to host a website. Just google it you’ll find the answers, but it’s not worth the time.

Even if you manage to set it up there are still going to be many complications, here are the most basic ones:

• – you’ll have to keep your laptop or desktop switched on all the time, 24/7 and 365 days
• – your laptop or desktop won’t be able to handle the heavy load.
• – it will constantly need technical assistance, anything goes wrong your site will go down.

It is a stupid idea to configure a hosting server of our own at home because it will cost you a lot of money and time.

So, the wise thing to do here is buying the hosting space you required, for a monthly fee from a company that will take care of everything for you.

Besides, buying a hosting plan will take away all the unnecessary hassles from you and let you fully focus on your main goal, to grow your blog.

If you’re looking for recommendations then here are the best service providers I know:

To buy Domain Name – Namecheap – you can save money in the long run.

To buy Hosting Plan – A2Hosting (I am currently using this one), Bluehost

So, go ahead first make the purchases then come back here. If you’re on a tight budget and you’re from India then Hostgator is another good option.

If you’re from India and looking for a hosting provider that accepts Indian debit cards and allows you to pay in INR, then, A2Hosting and Hostgator are the options.

#Step3 – Install WordPress

Now, I would suggest, don’t rush into anything and do whatever you’ve been told, not knowing what you did exactly.

Don’t just follow the steps I share, whatever you’re doing, understand it.

Take your time, take hours. If needed, take the whole day, even the whole week, but don’t just follow the instructions without having any clue about what you’re doing.

Think of it this way, you’re about to get into a new relationship. So, just like any relationship, you need to know it inside and out. That will come in handy in the long run.

I don’t want you to get too technical with it and screw your head up. I just meant that, be aware of the steps and consciously perform the steps. If you’re typing a URL, then just know why you did that, and what will be the effects.

You’ll thank me, if in the future you come across any minor issues or bugs with the blog, you will have a broader scope to troubleshoot the problem yourself, instead of depending on someone else.

Enough said, let’s dive right in…

Note: I am using A2Hosting for the demonstration. But the process is almost the same for any hosting plan from any hosting provider. And most of the time the dashboard also looks similar. So, just follow the steps, you’ll be ok. Still, if you find difficulties, send me an email I will help you out.

Okay great! Let’s get into details.

If you’ve bought your domain and hosting from different companies then first you’ll have to point your domain name to your hosting server.

But, in case you’ve bought the domain and hosting from the same company or got your domain for free with your hosting plan then you can skip this step and move forward.

Connect your domain to your hosting server

To connect your domain with your hosting server, you need to update your domain’s default nameservers with the nameservers provided by your hosting provider.

In my case, I have bought my domain from Godaddy and I’ll be hosting my blog in A2Hosting.

So, I will be updating my domain’s nameservers in Godaddy with the nameservers provided by A2Hosting.

Note: in case you can’t find your host’s nameservers, just contact their support and ask them, I am sure they will help you with the same immediately.

And if you’ve bought your hosting from A2Hosting then just use the nameservers shared below:

ns1.a2hosting.com

ns2.a2hosting.com

ns3.a2hosting.com

ns4.a2hosting.com

Just log in to the account from where you’ve bought your domain name and locate the DNS settings of your domain, and update the nameservers.

If you’re on Godaddy, this is how to do it:

Log in to your GoDaddy account, go to My Products from the menu, and locate the section that says Domains.

Inside Domains you should see your domain name, just click the DNS button seen against it (Refer to the image)

Now, inside domain settings scroll down to find the Nameservers section. Here, hit the Change button and a drop-down will appear, select Custom from the list.

Now two new blank boxes will appear, where you need to enter the nameservers you’ve received from your hosting provider.

In the case of A2Hosting, use the above-shared nameservers.

Enter one in each box, use the Add Nameserver button seen right-below to add extra boxes (refer to the image).

Once you’ve entered the nameservers correctly, just hit the Save button and you’re done.

Note: in some cases, the DNS gets updated right away and in others, it might take up to 48 hours to get successfully updated. So have patience.

In meanwhile, you can still install the WordPress in your hosting plan and connect it to your domain; and once the DNS is successfully updated you can access your blog by typing your URL in the web browser.

Before you could install WordPress, if you’ve registered your hosting plan with a different domain then you will have to create an Addon Domain for the domain where you want to install WordPress.

Create an addon domain

To do that,  at first login to your hosting account or cPanel, navigate to Addon Domains, and create your domain.

If you’re on A2Hosting, then follow the steps below:

Login to your A2Hosting cPanel,

Locate Domains section, find Addon Domains

Enter your domain name and hit the Add Domain button below

In case, if you’re getting any error message, something similar to this – “You cannot park your main domain.” This simply means you’re trying to add the domain that you’ve already registered with your hosting plan while buying the plan.

So, you don’t need to add the domain you can directly start installing WordPress.

How to install WordPress on your Hosting Server?

Just follow the steps carefully and you’ll be good to go:

Step 1: – Log in to your hosting account ( in my case, I will log in to my A2Hosting account). If you’ve bought your plan from Siteground, Bluehost or Hostgator then log in to that.

If you haven’t already bought your hosting plan then here are the offer links:

A2Hosting – Get a 51% discount on the Regular price

Bluehost – Get a 60% discount on the Regular price

Hostgator – Get a 50% discount on the Regular price

Step 2: – Find the cPanel link and click on the button that says, “cPanel login”.

Step 3: – Locate the “WordPress A2 Optimised” icon inside the dashboard. In the case of Sitegroud or any of the other hostings, it will be just “WordPress”. Once you find it click it to go inside.

Step 4: – Inside the next page scroll down, you should see a screen with 2 buttons, something like the screenshot below; Just ignore the My Apps button and click on “Install Now”.

Step 5: – Fill out the form on the next page.

Software Setup:

From the drop-down, select your protocol and domain name.

Note:  in the case of A2Hosting, the HTTPS protocol gets enabled by default once you’ve registered your hosting plan with the domain name or you added it as an addon domain. But in the case of Sitegoround, select it as HTTP and you’ll get the option to enable the HTTPS feature once you’ve installed the WordPress and have installed Siteground’s in-house plugin “SG Optimiser” in your WP blog.

· Keep the install path/ In Directory space blank.

In Site Settings:

· Give your blog a name; I am sure you have already decided what your blog name would be, but in case you haven’t, just keep whatever you like, you can change it later. Site Description is basically your tagline.

· Create an admin username, set a password, and type in the Email ID where you want to receive admin notifications related to your blog.

· Now while choosing your username, don’t just keep “admin” as it is easy for anyone to hack. And you’re also not allowed to use characters like, “-”, “@”, “#”, “$”, “%”, “^”, “&”, “*”, “(”, “)” or the so-called symbols.

Use your creativity and mix it up with some numbers and make it something non-guessable and yet you can easily remember.

Select your preferred language, and once you’re all set, click on the blue button that says, “Install”

…your installation will start now.  it will take a few minutes, and if you like you can switch tabs since it requires no supervision.

Finally, “Congratulations, the software was installed successfully”; if you have done everything right so far then you should see this message.

It can vary depending on your hosting provider. And, In case you’re not seeing the success message, then, just start over and make sure you didn’t miss anything.

Okay, now below the success message you’ll see your just installed blog URL and its admin URL. Refer to the screenshot below.

Note: if you’re not using A2Hosting then the admin URL would be something like this: http://yourdomainname.com/wp-admin; A2Hosting adds extra protection by changing your admin URL so that no one can guess the URL and try to hack into your admin dashboard. Although, with the other hosting providers you can install a WP Security plugin to do the same.

You can now log in to your blog’s dashboard by going to the admin URL and using the username and password you set during the installation.

And by clicking the “Return to Overview” link on the same page you can see your currently installed WordPress sites.

Congratulations!! Now you’re ready to customize your blog the way you like.

If you had decided to go with Hostgator, then, here’s a guide to Start a WordPress Blog in Hostgator. I published this post when I was just getting started with WordPress.

So, it can be a bit outdated but you can still follow the instructions, the look and feel of the interface might have changed but the whole procedure should still be the same.

And in case you’re on Siteground, then here’s a link to a video that should help you out: https://youtu.be/Sm9RcNJVn9c

The next step, install a theme. let’s start…

#Step4 – Install a theme

You can install a theme in three different ways, by search, by upload, and by FTP.

Here, I have shared the easiest one of all of those three techniques.

You can check out the other techniques here >> 3 ways to Install A Theme in WordPress

How to install a WordPress theme?

When you are just starting up with blogging, chances are high that you won’t go right away for a premium theme. First, you would want to understand the platform, how it works.

So it’s obvious that you will start your blog with a free theme.

The best way to install a free theme is, log in to your WP dashboard and go to > Appearance > Themes>

Here you will see the default themes that are already installed. It’s highly likely that you are not going to use any of the defaults; so, first, delete* all the default themes.

Note: you cannot delete the theme that is currently active on your blog; so, first find a new theme and then come back here and delete the default.

Here are the steps to find and install a theme from the WP Dashboard.

Step 1: Once you are on the themes page, click on the Add new button on the top left after the title “Themes”.

You can also click on the big plus sign next to the installed themes.

On the next screen, you will see some themes under the featured section; these are the ones that are promoted by WordPress. On the right to it, you will have the options to filter out the latest themes, the most popular ones, your favourite ones, and then the advance filtration option to filter out the themes as per your requirement.

The latest and the popular sections are easy to understand; it simply shows you the latest themes that are added and the most popular ones.

The favourites section simply allows you to see the themes that you have favourited while browsing through themes at wordpress.org.

To take advantage of this feature, you will have to use wordpress.org as you cannot favourite a theme from inside the WP dashboard.

You will first have to create an account at wordpress.org.

Go to >wordpress.org, create a new account, confirm your email id and you are good to go.

Now you can browse through all the themes available at wordpress.org and you can favourite the ones that you like and would want to refer back to later, before finalizing the theme for your blog.

Note: You have this feature for plugins as well; The feature works exactly the same for both. So, next time when you read about some plugins or themes that you would want to try out, just make a search in wordpress.org (given it is not a third-party plugin or theme) hit the love icon to favourite it and you can always come back to it later.

To see the themes that you have favourited, navigate to Appearance>Themes>Add new>Favorites and type in your user name and click on the button that says “Get Favorites”; it will list down all the themes that you have loved so far.

Next, you have the Feature Filter section; here you have the advanced options to narrow down your choices.

Simply select what type of layout you want, what features you want and select the subject of your blog and click on “Apply Filters”; it will list down all the themes that have those features you have just checked off.

Finally, if you have already researched and decided on your theme, then just type in the name of it in the search box to the right side of the filter bar.

Step 2:  Navigate to the theme you want to install. When you hover over the theme thumbnail the “Install” and “Preview” buttons will appear.

Click on “Install”

Step 3: Now, once the installation is finished, the “Install” button will turn into “Activate” and the “Preview” button will change to “Live Preview”.

You can activate or have a live preview of your blog from here by clicking the respective buttons or you can go back to the installed themes page and activate the theme from there.

That’s it! now go ahead and customize your blog the way you want.

But before that let’s install the required plugins as well.

#Step5 – Install the required Plugins

Just like themes, there are three ways you can install a WordPress plugin; by search, by upload, and by FTP.

Here, I have shared the easiest one of all of those three techniques – that is from the dashboard, by searching.

You can check out the other techniques here >> 3 ways to Install A Plugin in WordPress

How to Install a Plugin in WordPress?

Step 1: first thing first, login to your WordPress dashboard, if you have not already.

Step 2: Go to > Plugins > Add new

You can either navigate to it from the side menu or from inside the plugins page. It will open up the page where you can see a list of plugins available with WP.

There are more than 50,650 plugins available with WordPress. It’s easy to get lost when there’s a plugin for literally anything you can imagine doing on your blog.

So, just stay focused and stick to what you had planned, search the plugin you were looking for.

If you are not sure which plugin you should use, then, here’s my list of the must-have plugins for any blog.

Go ahead and check out the list and if any of the plugins match your requirement, then, you can surely opt-in for the one I have listed, as the list was made after extensive experimentation on more than ten websites. I have only listed the best as per my opinion.

If you like, you can also test all the available plugins for yourself and pick the best ones as per your liking.

Just make sure you don’t do it on your primary domain as you might screw up the whole website if you are not adept with coding or if you’re not from a technical background. So, either buy a secondary domain or create a sub-domain on the main domain and do all your testings on that.

Step 3: Type in the name of the plugin or a keyword related to the plugin in the search box.

It will show the most relevant plugins based on your search terms.

Step 4: Pick the one you want to install and click on the “Install Now” button next to it.

Now it will turn into a blue-coloured button written as “activate”; which means the plugin is successfully is installed.

Step 5: Now, you can either click on the blue button available here to activate the plugin or you can go back to the installed plugins page and find the plugin you’ve just installed and “activate” it from there.

All set! Now you can start configuring the plugin as you want.

Note: After the installation, the plugin should show up in the side menu of the dashboard. If it is not showing there, check if it is inside any of the other side menu items – plugins, tools, appearance, media or the settings menu.

Look for a name that is similar to the name of the newly installed plugin. For example, Yoast SEO will show up as just “SEO”, WP Facebook Messenger will show up as only “Facebook Messenger”.

And sometimes, some plugins for custom fonts or some shortcode plugins might not even show up anywhere in the side menu, these usually show up when you add a new post or edit one.

And some plugins might not show up anywhere at all, for example, Hellobar; the plugin is simply used to connect your blog to the Hellobar dashboard outside of your blog.

#Step6 – Connect your Blog to Google Search Console

If you want your blog to be found in Google when people type in some specific keywords in your niche then you’ll need to do SEO.

And in SEO, connecting your blog to the search console is the first step.

Now, if you are a complete beginner then connecting your blog to the search console might seem like a daunting task. But trust me, it is not.

Just follow the steps below and you will be ok.

Let’s start…

First, go ahead and sign in to Google Search Console with your Gmail account.

You should see a Welcome page once you’ve signed in.

Step 1: – Insert your blog’s URL where it says, “Site URL” and click on ADD PROPERTY

Step 2: – A pop up should appear asking you to verify your ownership of the domain.

Now, it will give you 5 different ways to verify your domain. You need to use just one.

Here we will talk about the easiest one of all, by installing an HTML tag.

Let’s start…

Inside the popup only, scroll down to see the alternative methods and Click the first option that says, “HTML tag”.

It will unfold and show you an HTML meta tag that should go in the section of your blog, before the first section.

If you understand what Google is asking you to do here, by all means, go ahead and do the needful. But if you’re not technically strong, then, don’t worry, just follow the instructions below.

So, to make it as simple as possible, we will use an inbuilt feature of the Yoast SEO plugin to verify our domain.

Note: For this option to work you must always have the Yoast SEO plugin installed in your WordPress and never remove the tag. But, in case, in the future, if you decide to try another SEO plugin or don’t want to use any at all, then, verify your domain with any of the other options that are available or use this one only by editing the header file of your blog.

Okay, now, instead of copying the whole meta tag just copy the section found in the content tag without the quotes. Refer to the image below:

Now,  login to your WordPress dashboard and navigate to SEO>General>Webmaster Tools>

Here locate “Google verification code“, paste the copied code inside the box against it and save the settings.

Now, go back to Google Search Console and click on verify (make sure you’ve selected HTML tag as the verifying option.)

If you did exactly as instructed, you should now see the congratulations message from Google.

The Google bots would now start crawling your blog and start to index the pages and posts, but the bots don’t know your site that well yet, so to make it easier for them, it is important that you submit a sitemap of your blog to the search console.

Here is how to do this:

Step 1: Go to SEO> General>Features

Scroll down a bit and locate XML Sitemaps; enable it, if it is not by default.

Step 2: Now, make sure the sitemap is working; go to http://www.yourdomain.com/sitemap_index.xml. Replace “yourdomain” with your own domain name.

For Example, here’s mine: https://honingbird.com/sitemap_index.xml

Step 3: Next Log in to the dashboard of Google Search Console. Click on Sitemaps on the left sidebar menu.

On the right side of the menu, you will see a tab that says “Add a new sitemap“. And under that, you will see your blog’s link and a blank space after it. Just type in “sitemap_index.xml” here and hit “SUBMIT“. refer to the screenshot below.

Below that section you’ll see a section called “Submitted sitemaps”; here you’ll find the submitted sitemaps and their current status.

That’s it if you have followed all the instructions right then your sitemap is now successfully submitted to Google and the Google bots will start to index your blog soon.

#Step6 – Publish your first Blog Post

Once all of the above requirements are met, it’s time to start blogging.

Clicking a few buttons is very easy, but the hard part is creating content for your blog. If you’re still having trouble figuring out what you’re going to write, I recommend revisiting your interests.

Also, I recommend you read my guide on blogging in India first.