How to create a website in Kenya

Millions of Kenyans nowadays access the internet daily. From mobile phones and desktops to laptops, nearly everyone uses Google. This means that you can reach out to many Kenyans and have them read your content. For a business, a website is an essential tool for reaching out to the pool of potential customers online. With a website, your business can sell services online, establish itself, connect with customers, and so on.

Starting a website is one of the best-kept secrets for generating a passive income and making money online. Here is a step-by-step guide on how you can start your own self-hosted WordPress website.

Having developed various websites, we learned the best, fast, cheap (In fact, less than the cost of a bag of rice!) and easiest ways to start a top-notch website.

Note that YOU DON’T HAVE TO BE A WEB DEVELOPER OR HIRE ONE. You can start a website on your own. Trust me even your 100 years old Grandmother can develop a top-notch website.

Why you need to create a website

Here are some top reasons why you should create your own website:

1. Generate income while sleeping or seated down.
2. Work from anywhere as long as you have an active internet connection.
3. Build your CV. This is especially true if you are a freelancer.
4. Starting a website is easy, fun and cheap.

How to create a website in Kenya

WordPress is a free CMS (Content Management System) that anyone can download, make changes to, design and manage. It is beginner friendly; therefore, you don’t have to pay someone to develop a WordPress site on your behalf.

Statistics show that WordPress powers 25% of all the websites in the world including CNN as well as varsityscope.com! Victormatara.com, CitizenTV.co.ke, Capitalfm.co.ke, Venasnews.co.ke, Kiss100.co.ke, and KahawaTungu are some popular websites in Kenya which are powered by WordPress.

Here is all you need to start a website in Kenya:

1. Choose a suitable hosting provider

Every website must be hosted. A hosting provider is simply a company that provides a home to your site. It acts like a remote computer that then serves your website contents whenever anyone visits your domain name.

For this tutorial, we will be using Namecheap. They will take care of everything including domain name, hosting space, website builder, one-click WordPress installation and many more.

For this reason, your blog will be up in less than 10 minutes. Wait, less than 10 minutes, am I kidding? No, you read it right.

Namecheap is offering a special 50% discount on all its plans for the first year to OUR readers plus 50 free positive SSL certificates for your main website and sub-domains! 

Why host with Namecheap?

1. Best 24/7 customer care services.
2. Simplicity, therefore, it is beginner friendly.
3. 100 plus free plugins.
4. Very reliable: 99.9% uptime
5. One-click WordPress installation
6. Quality and cheap: $2.88 per month (Ksh. 288) and $15.44 per year (Ksh. 1,544)
7. 30-day money-back guarantee
8. Unmetered Bandwidth: your website can receive as many visitors as possible without restriction.

Stellar Pack features (Cheapest)

• 20 GB SSD
• Unmetered Bandwidth
• Can host up to 3 domains
• 30 subdomains
• Free backups twice a week
• 30 email accounts: for example you@yourdomain.com
• Ten mailing lists
• Instant setup and 24/7 customer care service
• Free virus scanner and website compressor
• All these and many more for only $15.44 per year (1,544) and $2.88 per month!

In a nutshell, Namecheap offers unbeatable high-quality services. The company hosts all our sites, and we have never experienced any problem.

All our websites are far much faster than all the Kenyan websites you know! Here is a Google speed screenshot of our recent mobile and desktop speeds.

You can also use Google Speeds Insights to compare our website’s speed to any other website you know, and you will see a big difference.

We incorporated Google Ads on our homepage. The speeds have since reduced to much lower figures compared to the above screenshots.

As you might be aware, ads slow down the loading time of a website.

2. Register your preferred domain name

A domain name is what other people including your friends will be using to access your website via a browser. For example “tuchapiane.com” is a domain name. Our emails also use it. For example, info@tuchapiane.com, sales@tuchapiane.com, and so on.

You can choose between .com, .co.ke, .net, .info, .org, .biz and many more extensions.

Most companies charge Ksh. 1,200 to register a domain for one year.

Check the availability of your domain name. If it is available, create an account add it to cart. Don’t stress yourself in this stage as there are hundreds of tools online than can suggest a very good domain name for you.

You can also use a free domain name before you get inspiration.

3. Complete your order

Make payments so that you can be able to access all the items you have added to cart.

You can either use a Visa, MasterCard, PayPal or Bitcoins to make payments. Once you complete the process, an email will be sent to you with all your account details including cPanel login username and password.

4. Setup your website

You can start by setting up your website offline by use of tools like XAMPP. However, we don’t recommend that as it will give you challenges when it comes to uploading the site to your hosting file manager.

Just login to your cPanel, and scroll down to until you see “Softaculous apps installer” section. Click on the WordPress icon and follow prompts to install a WordPress site to your homepage successfully.

You will be required to choose a theme; we recommend using “Ocean WP” as it is versatile and free.

Login to the WordPress admin page: you will see the link to the admin page after the installation is complete

5. Add some content!

Now, you have successfully purchased a hosting plan and a domain name. You have also installed WordPress to your home directory, viola! It’s time to add some content.

Place your cursor on the “posts” option in your admin page then click on “add new.” We recommend typing from your Microsoft Word and then copy-pasting the contents. Add a featured image and publish your post.

So, in conclusion, you should:

#Step 1: Choose a suitable hosting provider (Namecheap)

#Step 2: Register your preferred domain name

#Step 3: Complete your order

#Step 4: Setup your website

#Step 5: Add some content!

Bravo!!!

That is it, you have successfully created a WordPress site in less than 10 minutes! 

Conclusion

Building your first business website or improving on an existing one doesn’t have to be overly complicated.

You can either approach it in a very complex way or keep things simpler by using the right tools with the right plan. A business website doesn’t need to be expensive or time-consuming to create.

Once you know what to do and which tools to use, building a business website can be a lot easier than you were led to believe.

With a good drag & drop website builder, you can build a professional-looking and functional website in days or weeks while keeping your financial commitment under control, rather than spending months and thousands of shillings.

Do you think this article will help someone? Don’t forget to share.

If you have any questions and/or comments, don’t forget to drop them in the comments section below.

If you need help in customizing or speeding up your site, contact us.