How To Create A Free WordPress Website For Lawyers (2020) | [For Beginners]

hello guys welcome to this YouTube video in this tutorial I'll show you how to create a website for Liars step by step this is the website that we are going to create but I will also show you how to completely start from scratch like registering a domain name and hosting creating the website will be completely free the only cost a full thought for hosting just like any other website after the tutorial you've created a model looking website and you know exactly how to edit it according to your law firm style for instance where to create a logo change text or change buttons on size color and shape I'll also show you how to include contact forms and we're to create a business email if you would like one if you want to skip certain topics or rewatch parts of this video in the description down below you'll find timestamps and links to external sources for downloads and discounts now it's some our affiliate links which means I receive a commission based on each redirect don't worry it won't charge you more in fact it helps me to create these kind of tutorials now before we start when you finish your website do not forget to leave a comment down below including the URL link of your website I really want see the end result let me give you an overview of what we are going to cover in this video first off we are going to register a domain name and web hosting inside round secondly install WordPress as a sell certificate and email account thirdly overview of the basic settings in WordPress fourthly install the Astra theme starter templates and elemental page builder and lastly create and edit the WordPress website now if you already registered domain name and web hosting you can skip to the second part of this video if not let me tell you more about what a domain name and web hosting are for example let's go to apple.com what we see here is the domain name apple.com and over here we see the web site the domain name is actually the address of the web site if apple.com doesn't have a domain name then it would look like this but that is too complicated for people to remember and search for therefore we use domain name the domain name is linked to all content on this website now web browsing is a very fast 24/7 working computer that saves all of these websites files basically you need if you want to engage on the internet now to make it easy SiteGround offers everything in one plan according to many review sites and Facebook groups they ranked number one and it's the fastest web hosting service out there it has many advantages first off site one has data centers in the USA Europe and Asia Pacific false loading servers and free CloudFlare account which enables CDN for your website basically this increases sign and page speed which is important for your site visitors and rankings in google secondly the services are designed for wordpress users as well as the quality support at site ground offers for instance you can live chat and phone them or create tickets 24/7 so if you have certain issues with your site you can directly contact them also SiteGround performs daily website backups so if something happens or changes to your site you can easily reset it back to normal and sometimes they even do that for you at last site round is really affordable and offers a 30-day trial now if you want a 60% discount offer go to day listen calm - side ground and click on get started scroll down until you clearly see the web hosting plans you can choose between the startup probic or go get plan the startup plan is fine if you are determined to only make one website you will get for instance a free SSL certificate you can create an infrared email but also make daily backups 10gb is more than enough for one website now if you are not satisfied or don't want to continue with site ground you will have 30 days to cancel your subscription to get a refund and if you want to upgrade from startup to grow big or from grow big to go geek is also possible and I presume you only want to make just one website so we click on the get started plan what we can do now is choose the domain name you can register a new domain or big an existing one let's say how to create a test website and over here you can choose the domain extension I would always choose for calm or local extension such as Darnell for the Netherlands if you want an international oriented site you can also choose net org all right let's click on proceed now we need to fill in some account and client information here at client information you can fill in the value add a text or v80 these taxes will be deducted from the total costs now fill in your payment details and then go to purchase information as you can see we select the startup plan but by clicking on this icon you can still change to a different one pick the data center that's closest to your hometown and over here you can select the membership period now this is important to know the 60% discount is deducted for the upcoming 12 months however after that you paid a regular price of 995 when you directly pick 24 or even 36 months the 60% remains for the complete period you can see this in the price calculation when you select 12 months you can also renew your hosting plan at the end but then you will get a discount of only 30% all right now for extra services the domain registration is already marked consider the domain privacy by doing so your email and client information remains protected the SG side scanner you don't really need because we can download free plug-ins for that then confirm and agree to site grants Terms of Service and Privacy Policy and if you would like you can also receive special offers by email I personally do not want those and then click pay now after you've been transferred to the payment gateway and finish your transaction it says thank you for purchasing cyclone hosting services if you order the local domain name such as Dutton L it can take some time usually an hour to process the order but a.com domain should be live immediately alright now we reduce the domain name and hosting now go to my side ground com click on setup side click on select and the start new website and select WordPress over here you can create the email address but it will also be the login details for your website make them up and click on continue again ignore the extra servers because we don't need side scanner there are plenty of free plug-ins to download now click finish and your website is being created this can take some time however you don't have to wait go to websites next to home in the menu and select the WordPress kit and then go into the WordPress admin login which you recently created email address over here you see the WordPress starter but you do not need to use this so click on exit and now you've completely finished installing WordPress now another thing that I see is that the website is not secure so we need to go back to my side ground com to install the so called SSL certificate which basically is a secure connection from a web server to a browser all right click on websites then click on site tools security and SSL manager over here you select your domain name and then let's encrypt click on get now the request is being processed which can take some time once it's installed go over here at manage SSL now click on the three point icon and force HTTPS and enable HTTPS and force and we are done installing WordPress SSL certificate and email account now let's go back to the WordPress website as you can see over here your website is now secured now let me tell you more about WordPress WordPress is the most popular and in my opinion best content management system available it's a system to run and manage your website blog or webshop it allows you to focus on the creative part of building an online platform rather than putting effort into the technical aspect of coding now what you see here is called the backend and the front-end is what you see online on the Internet let's check out what our website currently looks like over over my WordPress and click on visit site this is what WordPress looks like in default settings not very beautiful to be honest but we are going to change that let's go back to the backend so that I can give you a short summary of the wordpress dashboard so over here you see updates once you click on it you can check if plugins or themes need to be updated it's important to regularly execute the updates to keep your website secure and of course up-to-date now when hovering over posts you get the option to create new blog posts and same goes for creating a new page over here at pages you can create for instance a home page about us or for example a contact page in the media you can upload visuals or videos add comments you will receive incoming reactions from visitors that you can either accept or decline to be visible on the website you can also keep them private depending on the settings you install at appearance you decide your website's overall layout and style currently you notice it looks crappy but within several clicks that will change I'll show you in a bit at plugins you can add additional functions and features to your website this will often become visible in the overview on the left side as users we can add or delete users to this website over here you can use some tools and that settings you can change some basic things such as overall language of the website let me quickly show you how to do that over over to Settings General over here you can change the language are normally I would choose Dutch I will keep it on English now whatever you change in your website don't forget to click Save Changes down here the first thing we want to do is clean up the website let's start with deactivating and deleting the pre-installed plugins over here you can find the SD optimizer and WordPress starter both we don't need so we click here and then select deactivate apply just as a note always deactivate plugins first before you delete them many plugins add their own files to the main ones of your website without deactivating these plug-in files will remain which could cause problems on your website later on alright now let's finish this by clicking on actions again then delete and apply and click on ok now go back to the dashboard and as you can see we have one pre installed page go to all pages and do exactly the same as we did for plugins don't forget to empty the trash over here it says howdy and then your email address let's change some personal information go to users and then your profile scroll down and over a you should fill in your first and last name change your display name to your name so that this display properly on your side over here you can change your profile picture with Gravatar but let's click on update profile down below so we can continue now let's clean up the dashboard you can either click on these triangles to close them but if you want to completely get rid of them go to screen options and disable everything [Music] now hover over to Settings General and here you need to change your site title now you can type for instance law firm X our ranking purposes you'd better fill in keywords you want to be found on in the Google search engines so let's say insurance disputes personal injury and business litigation and then law firm X and for the tagline make something up like leading law firm and protecting people in Amsterdam change the WordPress and site URL from HTTP to HTTPS and check if your timezone is correct that can be useful if you want to schedule blog posts or news articles on certain date and time now let's click on Save Changes down below now you most likely need to log back in so let's do that now let's hover over to permalinks now this part is really important because a bad permalinks structure for example what you see on the screen right now can affect your rankings in the search results therefore I highly recommend selecting post name to get a clear and clean permalink structure for every page and post you create lots Save Changes down here now that's it for the basic changes let's start with the bigger ones now we want to change the complete appearance and display of our website so we are going to install a theme in this case the free Astra theme go to daily send calm - Astra these are all paid versions but we will use the free one so we skip all these and scroll down below over here you can download the file if you leave your name and email address you will automatically get updates and learn more about the new features in my case I'm always curious about new changes so I fill in my name and email address and click on subscribe and download however you can also say no thanks and still get the file now go back to your WordPress website go to appearance theme and here you can find all themes that you installed at this moment we are using the 2020 theme now click on add new upload theme and drag the zip file over here or choose file click on install now and activate the theme now let's check how the front-end looks like right now it's still very basic as you can see but the advantages of using the Astro theme is that it creates a lot of flexibility to be creative especially for a free theme it works seamlessly with a great page builder called alimentar it makes editing your website easier and better especially when you install the ready-to-use site templates plug-in but that we will do in a second now go back to appearance and themes so I can show you the second method for installing a theme over your search for a strap and as you can see it pops up you can install it over here however you won't receive updates about your installed theme or when new features are added now another thing I would advise you to do is to delete the old themes over here simply click it and then delete ok now let's continue where we left we also need to install the page builder called Elementor go to daily listen calm - element Cleveland get started and now it asks do you have a wordpress website answered by clicking on continue where it says yes I sure do now fill in your URL then check for WordPress select click to install and click on install now and activate as you can see the plug-in is installed and visible on the left side over here you can also find the page builder in the plugins section search for Astra starter sites now it should pop up right over here and click on install and activate now you have to select the page builder we choose Elementor and here you will find all the starter templates but before we continue let's notice what we did so far we were almost there keep on going now let's search for the term lawyer one has this agency sign which is a premium version you will have to pay for but the other one is free now let's check out the preview of the free side well in my opinion it looks professional all the pages are pre-built and from here on we can make it more on bespoke now let's import the complete site click import again and wait a few minutes click view site and here we go complete new site so I won't start off by changing the logo over here you can do so by clicking on customize now you can see the pencil once you click on it it will take you to the site logo section here you can change it click on it and upload the file make sure to choose the right image dimensions so 180 by 60 pixels if you don't have a logo yet for legal firms I recommend hiring someone else to do it for you you probably heard of Fiverr if not go to Edison calm - Fiverr so that it redirects you to the top logo designers that create beautiful and cheap logos within sometimes just one day you can also do it yourself completely free by going to canva calm click on make your own design and fill in the logo sizes from WordPress so 180 by 60 and then you click on create design and from here on you can play with preset design shapes and images for now I'll keep the default logo made by Astra alright let's continue where we left over here you can upload a retina logo to make it look sharper and clearer on high density screens you can also change the logo with by dragging this to the left or right I think this looks fine however here you can select the side icon also called a favicon what this will do is change the little visual before your side title in the tab section I can show you let's choose something basic for now and select this image and crop it I'll click on publish click the refresh button and as you can see we got a new favicon and the site's logo is adjusted another thing we want to do here is to change and increase the size of the typography not only for the menu but also for the entire text of the website so open the customizer go to where it says global and select typography base topography over here you can change the overall font size check our changes in the menu and text choose a representable fund let's pick Helvetica [Music] I can also adjust the thickness but keep in mind that these changes take place on the entire website in this case I'm fine with the default settings now let's click on publish and leave it like this so we can continue to the next part now let's go back and click on colors here and base colors let me give you a short preview what happens if you change these options you can change the overall text color to for instance black to make it more clear where you see this the link color changes when you hover over it with your mouse we can make it more light blue or keep it in default settings so just yellow and blue click on publish and go back now select header to make different changes such as making a transparent header or making changes to the primary header and menu lost mentions changes the layout for instance you can put the logo a menu section in the middle or logo to the right however I think the most logical format is the logo on the left and the menu on the right all right now let me show you how to change the menu section for instance how to remove or add new pages let's go back by clicking on the cross over over here and click on menus you can simply select them right here and click on remove now let's presume you don't want to frequently asked questions in a menu section I mean a frequently asked questions section can be added to the about page it doesn't need to be present in the menu in my opinion now by doing so you don't remove the actual pages only their visibility in the menu section let's also delete the contact page from the menu but because we already got a bit into the request an appointment now let's redirect the request an appointment button to our contact page go to appearance customize and click on the pencil icon that's right here now insert the contact URL of our website in the box underneath button link you can also change the button text and say contact us for example now click publish and test the button open a different tab refresh and click on contact us however the contact form is missing so we need to install it by using WP forms this is a pre-installed 3 plugin to make various kinds of forms but first open the Elemental page builder click over here and what you see now is an empty component with an ID code this code has to be changed let's go to dashboard and check the preset contact form now what we see here is that the ID is different than what it actually shows on the website now before we copy and paste the correct code i want to show you what the contact form looks like click on edit on this contact us page here you can see that everything is already set up for a request and an appointment if you still want to change things you can easily add it or remove it you can also include other fields such as the multiple choice option but I think it looks fine like this now click on the Settings tab on the left and click on notifications this is important because filled in contact forms are sent to this email change it to your legal office email and click on save copy the shortcode now go back to the contact page and edit it with the Elementor page builder and click on the empty spot and insert the new code right into the content area on the left click on update and the contact form is added to the contact page furthermore you've got some preset elements over here you can simply click it and change the text on contact details and working hours where you can add social media icons and your left mouse click the element you can either add icons or delete them by clicking the cross to change the link just click on the box to open it you see and besides changing the link you can change the colors by selecting custom let's check out how pink looks like I rather choose the default one so the official color okay now click on update because I want to show you how to add more page to the practice area in the menu section because most law firms are specialized in multiple fields go back to the dashboard click on add page and only fill in the title for instance personal-injury we do not fill the page just yet but directly click on publish now go back to menus add the new page to menus and drag it underneath the practice area click on save menu and as you can see the page is added to the menu now I want to go more in-depth about the element or page builder as you know by now you can get access to Elementor by going to the page you want to add it and click on edit with Elementor now on the left side you can see different elements you can use to make changes to the website it's a drag-and-drop system for instance if you want some social icons on your page you simply drag the element and drop it onto the page now for a free version you have all the elements you need to build a perfect website the pro version only offers some extras some other things that I want to cover are these icons over here this one is the navigator and allows you to rearrange different elements the history is useful when you make mistakes and want to redo or undo edits this ican shows the responsive mode basically how each page looks on mobile tablet and desktop very useful because if something looks good on desktop and not on mobile you simply edit the mobile page and leave the desktop page as it is as you can see the Astra theme is mobile-friendly by default but if you think it doesn't look good you can change it for instance make the title a bit smaller so change the font size on a particular page over here you can easily change the text by just clicking on it for example let's change Melbourne to Amsterdam now let me delete some components and elements to make the default website a bit more clear I do not think we need to address header or social media icons that I just added so simply right mouse click it and delete furthermore I want to change the header background so right mouse click on it and click Edit section you can also just click on it then we go to where it says style and you can see the image that is installed by default perhaps you didn't notice the building because of the thick blue overlay in my opinion it should be more transparent so we go to the background overlay and drag it down or upwards I think the middle looks fine and I'm okay with the blue color however you can change it if your law firm has a different style now I want to change the visual as well and if you don't have any visuals you can also download royalty free images on Google let me show you go to google.com and let's fill in courthouse as an example tap images click on Tools label for reuse now you'll see copyright free images you can use to be honest these are not beautiful as I see now fortunately I got some other sources such as pixels and pixabay that's over off 2 pixels and search for courthouse well these look way better now you can download them for free over here select ninety twenty times twelve eighty and click on download let's go back to the website and upload the image don't forget to fill in the title and alt text so that the Google crawlers can understand your content now what's good about this setup is that you can still see the visual and header that makes it more appealing to your visitors one more thing I think the header visual is too big therefore we need to change the padding go to Advanced Settings I think this looks fine so I click on update then I notice this component over here it requires some change as you can see click on the icon and change it I think gray looks more professional in addition I find the borders too sharp and the column width really needs to change make it smaller also change the text icon and phone number so I just wanted to show you quickly how to edit this specific component in the end I made this is an example just to show you what you can do however I rather delete this component because I find it a bit useless so let's delete it completely by clicking on the cross sign now if you want to edit a different page than the home page you can exit the dashboard over here but there is also a faster way click on the finder and search for about and click on it now we are on the about Us page because I want to delete some components and show you how to add testimonials scroll down a bit now we don't really need this component so we click on the cross sign actually the rest looks quite nice so we only need to include new components to create the testimonials let's go to the bottom of the page and click on the plus icon choose the three structure option now let's create a heading go to the elements section and drag a heading element over here change the title to for instance client testimonials click on this icon to Center it now you want this header above the three structure component so we click on this icon and drag it here now let's see I want to add some sort of divider you can find it here in elements drag-and-drop it this divider doesn't look very fancy does it therefore we need to change it a little bit let's select a width of hundred thirty pixels and align it to the middle let's change the color and thickness in the style tab a blueish color is more suitable I choose the color code zero six four four seven six for weight I choose three and I want to minimize the gap to two now go back to elements and choose the intersection and drag it over here you can delete this small component right mouse click delete now we need to add an image simply go to elements track and drop purely the image is too big let's make it a thumbnail size okay now let's check what image the library has and pick this one we call her Mariam Robinson so we need to change the title and alt text to something like this all right that's fine now the component needs to include her name as well that Strega heading underneath the visual to give this happy client a name change the color over here at style and center it in the content tab now drag a text editor underneath the header so you can write a nice story about your own company okay let's enter the text at style and alignment I also want a five star rating underneath it go back to elements search for star and add them underneath and Center it now you can give the intersection some shadow so for changing settings to the intersection basically the smaller box you need to click on these dots icon go to style border and box shadow let's give it a blur of ten let me see what we could do next I think the corners are too pointy over here you can change the border radius I know ten is fine let me show you it looks quite nice doesn't it now you can duplicate each intersection by right mouse clicking on the dots icon duplicate and drag it accordingly this saves a lot of time because you only need to edit the visual adding and text then click on update now I want to talk about the food of section at the bottom of each website you can find this section you can and should change it to information about your firm and legal obligations such as the disclaimer Terms of Use and privacy policy now before we start to add the food of section we first have to create these legal pages go to the WordPress dashboard and create them like I showed you in the tutorial after you are done go back to the front end and click on the Edit footer section with Elementor page builder remove the site title shortcode and delete the extra component so you can Center this one now you need to add some codes just copy mine I obviously still need to fill in the pages but I'm not going to cover that in this video because each company has different terms and policies and the only thing left is centering the text click on update and then check if the links are working now I notice that everything works except for the terms and servers redirect that's because I made a mistake in the URL anyway that's all for the food a section if you still have questions leave a comment down below now let's see we covered everything from registering a domain name and web hosting to actually create and edit the WordPress websites for lawyers now thank you for watching this YouTube video I hope it was helpful and whether you're a criminal defense lawyer legal secretary corporate lawyer whatever are really curious about the end result of your website so comment it down below in the comment section and I will have a look at it now see you in my next video bye

Channel: René Delescen

Views: 1,097

Keywords: How to create a website for lawyers?, How to make a website for lawyers?, How to build a website for lawyers?, How to create a website for a law firm?, Create website lawyers, Create website for a law firm, Create a WordPress website for lawyers, Build a website from scratch

Id: P6yw596rkGM

Length: 34min 23sec (2063 seconds)

Published: Fri Apr 17 2020