Wondering how you can create a free WordPress website?
To get your website online, you need a domain name and web hosting. If you don’t want to pay for it, keep reading this post.
A domain name is what people type to get to your website. It’s your website’s address on the internet. I use wpmakesite.com for this site.
On the other hand, web hosting is where your website lives. It’s your website’s house on the internet.
In this post, I will show you how to get your free domain name and free web hosting service so you can start building your website.
Keep in mind though that free domain and web hosting usually are not as good as premium services have to offer. This is basically used for testing and showcasing simple websites or projects. If you are an established blogger or website owner this might not be a recommended option for you.
Are you ready? Let’s get started.
How to Create a Free Website Video Tutorial
If you prefer written instructions continue reading below.
How To Make Your Own WordPress Website For Free
A quick answer on how to make a WordPress website for free is outlined below.
- Get A Free Domain Name with Freenom.com
- Sign-up a Free Account With InfinityFree.net Web Hosting
- Configure InfinityFree Nameservers
- Install and Setup WordPress
You might wanna ask, why not use Wix or WordPress.com?
Although WordPress.com and Wix are great free website builder it doesn’t provide you with a top-level domain name. You have to pay to get your custom domain name. On the free account, what you will get is a sub-domain like this:
wpmsdemo.wordpress.com
wpmsdemo.wix.com
On the other hand, if you’ve already bought a domain name from Namecheap you can follow this tutorial instead and proceed to step 4.
Step 1: Get A Free Domain Name with Freenom.com
Freenom is the world’s first and only free domain name provider.
To get started, go ahead and open up www.freenom.com website and create an account.
Now, enter a name in the input field and click the Check Availability button to check the available domain name.
For testing purposes, I am going to enter: wpmsdemo
You’ll be presented with an available domain name extension based on your input. Select the available domain name of your choice with the corresponding extension by clicking on the Get it now! button. I’ve chosen the .ga for this example.
Hence, wpmsdemo.ga to be my domain name. This domain should be added to your cart. You can do so by just clicking on the Checkout button that appears above it.
On the next page, you should select a period of time. The default is set to 3 Months. I’ve chosen 12 Months, which is absolutely free. And then hit the Continue button to proceed with the checkout process.
You may need to enter your email address and verify your account to continue to the next step.
Go to your email and click on the link Freenom sent to you to verify your account. Supply your personal details and tick I have read and agree to the Terms & Conditions.
Finally, click on the Complete Order button.
Once you’ve supplied all the necessary details, you should receive your order confirmation shortly.
That’s all there is to it. You have now successfully registered a free domain name with Freenom.
Step 2: Sign-up a Free Account With InfinityFree.net Web Hosting
InfinityFree is an independent free hosting that aims to provide reliable free hosting services for the masses. Visit the www.infinityfree.net website and click on the Sign Up Now button. You’ll be asked to enter the following information:
- Enter your email address
- Enter a password for your account
- Check I’m not a robot and
- Agree to their terms of service
A confirmation email will be sent to you. You’ll need to verify your account to start managing and setting up your free WordPress website with InfinityFree.
See also: Free Web Hosting Providers For Your Small, Portfolio, and Test WordPress Website 2021
Step 3: Configure InfinityFree Nameservers
Now that you’ve successfully signed up for both free domain name and web hosting. The next thing you’ll need to do is set up the nameserver to point to InfinityFree.
To do this, log in to your InfinityFree account. Once logged in, go to the Accounts tab and click the Create Account button.
You’ll need to copy the highlighted nameservers and add these to your Freenom profile.
Open up a new tab in your web browser and log in to your Freenom account.
In the dashboard, click on the gear icon next to Manage Domain. Now, select Nameservers from the drop-down under the Management tools tab and then tick next to Use custom nameservers (enter below).
You’ll need to enter the following nameservers provided by InfinityFree:
- ns1.epizy.com
- ns2.epizy.com
Click on Change Nameservers to save your changes.
That’s it, you’ve now successfully configured your new nameservers which will point to InfinityFree. Back to InfinityFree create a new account page, input your freenom domain name, and hit the search button.
Complete the captcha and click on the CREATE ACCOUNT button.
Wait for a few minutes to allow InfinityFree to create the hosting account for you. When done, refresh the page and you should now have full access to Cpanel.
Step 4: Install and Setup WordPress
The first thing you need to do is log in to your current Account Cpanel, you can do this in two ways. The first is by clicking on the Control Panel button directly from the Accounts page.
Note: Infinityfree allows you to have a maximum of three domain names for a single account. To add more websites, you need to upgrade to their premium hosting services.
The second is by clicking on the Manage button which will open in a new tab. Then, you need to click on the Control Panel button.
Both of these work the same way.
Both of these will open in a new tab/window and automatically sign you into your Cpanel area. Once logged in, go to Softaculous Apps Installer under the Software section. A new tab/window will open where you can select a variety of scripts and cms. Choose WordPress and then click the Install Now button.
Next, you need to provide the necessary details:
Software Setup
- Choose the version you want to install – you should select the most current version of WordPress. As of this editing, the current version is 5.8.2
- Choose Installation URL
- Choose Protocol – choose whether you want your website to have a www or non-www. An HTTPS option is also available if you have a valid SSL certificate.
- Choose Domain – if you have multiple domains, you can select them here. Otherwise, use the default domain for your account.
- In Directory – you can specify a name here if you wish to give WordPress its own directory. Otherwise, leave this field empty.
Site Settings
- Site Name – give your website a unique name don’t worry you can always change this later.
- Site Description – like site name, you can always change this later. Just give it whatever description you prefer for now.
- Enable Multisite(WPMU) – this is useful if you wish to run multiple WordPress sites from within one WordPress installation. Click here to learn more.
- Disable WordPress Cron – if you know what you are doing you can enable this option otherwise no change is required.
Admin Account
- Admin Username – this is what you’re going to use to log in to the Dashboard. Make it unique and hard to guess for security purposes.
- Admin Password – always use a strong password. You can use a strong password generator to help you choose a great password.
- Admin Email – add a real email address here. You can use it to recover the account if you forgot your username and/or password.
Choose Language
By default, your website will be set to English. Otherwise, select the language of your choice. Just select one from the drop-down menu.
Select Plugin(s)
- Limit Login Attempts(Loginizer) – I highly recommend this. Enable this plugin to make your site safer from hackers.
- Classic Editor – This option will allow you to use the Classic Editor on top of the latest Gutenberg block editor.
Advanced Options
This is something more advanced, unless you know what you are doing, you can update the settings here. Otherwise, use the default values.
Select Theme
You can leave this section for now. You can always add/change new themes later.
Finally, when everything is set, hit the Install button.
Wait for a few minutes until you see a success message. You can now visit your newly created WordPress website at the following address – www.yourdomain.com or www.yourdomain.com/wp-admin to the WordPress admin area.
That’s it. I hope this article helped you learn to create a WordPress website for FREE. You should start configuring your website by following these essential settings, creating posts/pages on your website, customizing WordPress, creating custom menus, and more. Plus a few more helpful resources are below.
See also: How To Get Free SSL Certificate for InfinityFree Hosting
If you liked this article, then please subscribe to my YouTube Channel for WordPress video tutorials. You can also find me on LinkedIn and Facebook.
91 Responses
Thank you for sharing this sir. I have tried this but why is it everytime I login to my CPanel to install the Softaculous apps installer. It keeps prompting that my IP address has changed and always ask me to login again?
Hey there, Van.
Try clearing your browser cache and see if that fixes your problem. You might want to try login in using an incognito.
Thanks
Thank you so much sir. I have now my personal website using WordPress. Still under construction but getting there 😊 More power to you.
Thank you, Van. Glad you’ve finally decided to create a website with WordPress. Let me know how can I help you. Keep it up.
Thank for sharing for this thought
Superb article and very useful
Hey there, Sandip. It’s my pleasure to help. Thank you for finding the guide useful. Keep coming back for more.
Thank you so much! Very helpful article. Just Created my website in less than 1 hour!
Thank you for sharing your thoughts, Annabel. Glad you’ve finally created one for yourself. Keep it up.
Hi Rodney,
Thank you for sharing your knowledge about wordpress. I already have created a website in WordPress.com, but im having a hard time searching for the free plugins necessary to optimize my site. Im planning to create another in WordPress.org. because i noticed that in wp-org, there are still free plugins available.
Advice please..
thank you.
Hey, Fe. Thanks for stopping by and sharing your experience.
WordPress.com is limited with regards to using plugins unless you upgraded to premium. In order to manage and add more plugins, I suggest having a self-hosted WordPress (wordpress.org) instead. You’ll just need to have a good web host and a domain name. I highly recommend using SiteGround or Bluehost.
Thank you.
hi rodney. tk domains are not supported to free hosting? why is that?
Hey there, Antonio.
.tk domains are not supported for free hosting with Infinityfree for now. Try using .ga instead. Let me know if you successfully registered your new account. Thanks
.tk domain is blacklisted because they are heavily abused by spammers and phishers and blah blah blah!
Hi Rodney, very nice article, thanks for sharing this great article with us. keep up the good work.
Thanks for finding the guide useful. Keep coming back for more great tips and tutorials.
Hi Rodney, thank you for sharing this info. This is very helpful to the upcoming wordpress developers who wants to try a free hosting and domain.
God bless you more.
That’s great, Lemwell. Not only that, if you want to, you can buy a .com domain name and temporarily host your website with infinityfree until you have enough budget to buy most reliable WordPress web hosting.
You can buy domain names on Namecheap – very affordable .com domains
This is very nice article & helpful article & thank you for sharing this article ……keep up the good work…..
Thank you so much sir… Learned a lot and very useful for me as a beginner… God Bless
Hi Gezelle, glad you found the guide useful. Keep coming for more great articles shared on this website.
Hi Admin, I have set up my WordPress website and added things there. But when i type http://www.mydomain.com, it takes me to infinityfree website with is detail:
Let’s Make Something Awesome
Your account is all set up, it’s time to build your website!
Not sure where to start? Here are some suggestion:
Quickly build a beautiful website with the site builder.
Install a script or CMS with Softaculous.
Upload your website with FTP or a file manager.
Join the free hosting community.
But i have built the website already by installing WordPress and published a page already
what do i do now sir.
Best Regards
Hey Jude, thanks for stopping by and congratulations for following the tutorials.
With regards to your concern, have you already modify the nameserver to point to InfinityFree?
You have to log in back to your Freenom account and update the nameservers there. You should update the nameservers to something like these
NS1.BYET.ORG
NS2.BYET.ORG
NS3.BYET.ORG
NS4.BYET.ORG
NS5.BYET.ORG
Let me know if this solves your problem. I more than happy to dig deeper if everything is still not fixed.
Regards,
Rod
Hi Rodney,
I’m having the same problem as Jade. I followed every step and also connected to freenom etc. , but when I go to http://www.mydomain.com (mine is http://www.finallylivingblog.com if you wanna see the notifaction yourself) it takes me to an infinity side saying this:
Let’s Make Something Awesome
Your account is all set up, it’s time to build your website!
Not sure where to start? Here are some suggestion:
Quickly build a beautiful website with the site builder.
Install a script or CMS with Softaculous.
Upload your website with FTP or a file manager.
Join the free hosting community.
Any solution to that?
-Michelle
Hey Michelle, all you need to do is modify the nameserver from freenom to point to infinityfree. Kindly refer nameserver provided below:
NS1.BYET.ORG
NS2.BYET.ORG
NS3.BYET.ORG
NS4.BYET.ORG
NS5.BYET.ORG
Ho sorry made a mistake, website is http://www.finallylivingblog.ga
-Michelle
I would like to thank you for the efforts you have put
in penning this site. I’m hoping to see the same
high-grade blog posts from you later on as well.
In truth, your creative writing abilities has inspired me to get my very own website now 😉
You are great bro. finally i got a free hosting site where i can host my freenom domains…..
Excellent! Thanks so much!! I followed your steps and everything has worked!! Soooo excited! Thank you!
Glad it worked for you, Karlene.
So cool! Thank you!
Great Tutorial! Found it easy to look for a hassle-free way to setup my own personal portfolio site!
Thank you for finding the tutorial useful, Joshua. Glad it helps you setup your site.
Hi, Thanks for the info. I have a site now following the instructions here but when I try to install the theme in WordPress, it asks for hostname, FTP username, and password? Can you please help me?
Hi Abhi, thanks for dropping by. Are you able to login to the Dashboard already? If so, installing a theme can be done by going to Appearance>Theme>Add New.
You don’t need those credentials anymore unless otherwise, you are using an FTP to upload a theme.
Let me know.
Rod
I really love your post. thanks for sharing this and looking forward to seeing more from you.
Dear Sir Thank U so much
Hi Rodney, Thank you very much, great tutorial, clean and easy to follow. I used to use cloudaccess which is nice but kinda slow when you host WordPress site even if it is just for Theme developing purpose. InfinityFree is really great alternative .. everything went very easy and smooth. I got my site up and running in less than 5 minutes 🙂
Thanks again.
Glad it helps you, awran5. I would really love if you share this as well with your friends and families. Thank you so much.
Hi.
“.tk domains are banned on free hosting due to abuse.”
What can I do now?
Hey Bongi,
That’s not a problem. Don’t limit yourself. There are other domain extensions you can use instead. Try .ga or .ml whichever you like most.
Thanks for sharing this article with us keep it up for good work.
Thank you for stopping by, Ashraf.
I have a wordpress package, how can I unzip that in Cpanel?
Great post! Helpful and easy to understand. Thanks for sharing.
Hi Rodney
Many many thanks to you for helping me in each and everywhere in this topic.
I just created my first web site within only 30 minutes and even completely free.
Your tricks helped me a lot.
Thanks again!
And don’t forget to visit my new site that I just created now
checkmysite.cf
Thank you Rodney for the in depth tutorial! You’re amazing!
Hello, I did as I said in the tutorial, but every time I try to get into the wordpress admin page it will not. which would be rocketstudio.ml/wp-admin.
thank you so much . but can you tell me how to chnage the default theme??????? I dont want to work on default theme
Is this method free, even after the 12 year term?
Is this method totally free even after the 12months term
Yes, you might want to renew in advance for the domain name though.
Awesome explanation, you have covered all deep details helpful post for beginners and individuals how to want to create a website on WordPress for free.
Thanks for the feedback, Ramiz.
I able to follow step by step procedure to create free website freenom ,free web hosting InfinityFree untill completed to WordPress installation.But when I log in to cPanel which is Vesta I failed to log in.According to InfinityFree support they are not hosting other Cpanel.What I going to do now.I was registered at freenom.It make my mind scrumble with this situation.Can you help me.Thank you
Hello Reynaldo, make sure you used the correct credentials. You can check that from your account.
Thanks a zillion times Rod!
I am extremely happy, that because of you, I am able to create my first WordPress site for absolutely free!!!
Keep up the good work.
Hello Sir, The tutorial you have provided is very useful and it is lot easy to follow the steps. It has greatly helped me.
Thank you sir.
Thank you so much for all this information, it is very useful for me. You made my day =D
Thank you man! Finally today ı have set up succesfully my website by following your steps. God bless you!
Thank you for the great post really it help me.
Hi. Nice article and i am trying to follow the instructions but after setting up the name servers and creating account it gives me this error saying “Your domain is not yet pointing to our nameservers. You need to change your domain’s nameservers to ns1.byet.org, ns2.byet.org, ns3.byet.org, ns4.byet.org and ns5.byet.org first. You can also create an account with a subdomain.
Got my web hosting and domain. My domain is not showing that I have one listed but my web hosting is showing that I have one. Can I go download my word press?
Hi, Rodney thanks so much for your contribution, advice, and help. Your posting saved me and others a lot of money.
I successfully created all the accounts and now doing my website. I am the administrator of our company website so I have all the login details. We usually hire a web developer to do some changes. I want to learn to do this so we can save money too. As we own this website, with all access login details, can you advise how I can clone the whole website so I can learn and practice? The website will be on my freenom account so no one would see hopefully.
Hello sir Thanks for this article NOW i try to build my website it’s really help me for that thanks alot
Hello there, Sahir.
Glad you’ve found the guide useful.
If you need any help just post them here.
Good luck with building your website.
Thank you so much, i was able to create one. i’m just using localhost and now i want to explore something new with a live. appreciated your help 🙂
Hello there, Leah,
Glad you’ve found the guide helpful. Good luck with building your website.
Hello Sir, I typed a name and names were displayed when I click on get it now, it will display no available. I have used different names, same thing. What do I do?
Hello Vivian, it looks like freenom has discontinued this service due to a lot of spammers using this feature. You might want to try other options like http://www.dot.tk/.
Let me know if you are able to make it work. Otherwise, you might want to get a more professional domain in NameCheap.
You mention if you already have a domain and talk about a tutorial BUT there is no link to it & no way to search this site for it. Does it even exist? If so, pls post the link.
Hello POB,
Yes, you can follow the tutorial by clicking on the link. Otherwise, you can learn more about it here: https://bit.ly/30twbyE
Thank you for stopping by.
Hi there, Rodney. How can i crate more traffic on my website? Can you share some strategies.
Hi there,
Followed all instructions as explained, however I’m still getting the error:
This site can’t be reachedCheck if there is a typo in mydomain.com.
DNS_PROBE_FINISHED_NXDOMAIN
Not sure if I have to point the domain to an IP address, if so where I can do that?
Please help.
Thanks.
Hi this is kind of of off topic but I was wanting to know if blogs use WYSIWYG editors or if you have to manually
code with HTML. I’m starting a blog soon but have no coding
experience so I wanted to get advice from someone with experience.
Any help would be enormously appreciated!
Hi, thanks for stopping by.
In general, it really depends on how you build your blog. With WordPress, you can create your blog without having to worry about HTML. You can use the WYSIWYG editors just like how you write in word documents.
Let me know if this helps.
Thanks
Hi Rodney, thanks a lot for taking the time to create such an insightful article. Great job! I have followed the above steps, but instead of that “secure” padlock sign it show an “insecure” warning sign. Will that not affect my traffic?
Hello Judy, thanks for stopping by.
You should get yourself an SSL with infinity or any other provider. A good alternative would be Cloudflare. And yes, an insecure warning is bad for SEO.
Freenom never works for me. No matter what name I choose, it always says “not available” when I click on the options. Even names I know can’t possibly be already used.
Hi LQ, thanks for dropping by and I am sorry to hear that. Have you reached out to their support?
infinityfree shuts my site down every other day for unspecified reasons. Their readme says that it is impossible for them to tell me what exactly is causing them to shut it down. I sense a bait and switch since my site is very light and has little traffic.
Hello David, I am sorry to hear this. How many domains do you have? I have been using the service for some of my websites but haven’t experienced that problem. thanks
Hi, I have followed everything from this tutorial but for some reason I did not get my site to work. I am getting a DNS issues? Can you help, please.
Appreciate your help. Thanks
Hi Alicia, thanks for your feedback.
Any specific issues/problems? Are you able to add the correct nameservers? I’ve updated the post maybe this is the one that causing your issue. The new nameservers are: ns1.epizy.com and ns2.epizy.com
Let me know if this helps. Thanks
Very informative. Thank you for sharing. Can you help me please having hard time getting my domain at freenom.
Freenom does not have free domains = No matter what you put in there – I tried 25 characters of garbage – it says unavailable.
Hi, apologize for the inconvenience but you get that without a problem. If it still persists kindly reach out to them. That would be great. Let me know by then. Thanks
thankyou so much for this information i really appreciate your efforts to educate us thankyou once again , i will be visiting often
Hi Anikait, thanks for visiting. Sure thing. Let me know if there is anything I can help you with on your website.
Very informative. Thanks for sharing. I have my site now and also installed an SSL using your another tutorial. Thank you very much, Sir. Keep it up.
Thank for this great guide. What will happen after the domain term expires? Can I still renew it?
Hello Philippe, it would much better not to wait for the expiry date and early as much as possible before the due date. And no, you cannot renew for free whatever is lapsed.