DreamHost WordPress Tutorial 2026: Step-by-Step Setup Guide

Hi there, I'm Matt and today I'm going to walk you through creating your WordPress website with DreamHost. In this tutorial, we'll start by setting up your DreamHost hosting account and I'll make sure you know how to get the lowest price available. Then we'll configure your domain name and get WordPress up and running. From there, I'll demonstrate how to access a massive library of professional website templates, all completely free and designed to look great on any device. Finally, I'll teach you how to personalize these templates using Elementor, which is an incredibly userfriendly drag and drop website builder. The best part is almost everything in this guide is completely free. You'll only pay for your DreamHost hosting. To get the best available deal for DreamHost, go to the link right here at the bottom of the screen or just scroll down to the video description and click on the first link that you find there. You'll land on this page here. To get started, click sign up now under the Dreamress promo offer. On the next page, you'll see the pricing options. For the absolute best value, select the annual billing option. This qualifies you for a free domain name for the first year and gets you the lowest monthly rate at $16.95 per month. Build annually. Next up, let's set up your domain. Choose register a new domain and then type in the domain name you're interested in. In my case, I want to see if matt dhwpsite.com is available. Then we'll click search. Good news, that domain is available. When you find a domain you like, go ahead and select one of the free options and add it to your cart. Now, we'll move to the checkout page. Here, you can review your order summary. You'll notice there are several pre-selected add-ons like Liftoff website builder, Dreamshield Protection, Woo Commerce, and SEO Toolkit. Unless you specifically want any of these, I recommend unchecking them. Personally, I like Dream Shield Protection because it runs daily malware scans to keep your website safe. So, I'll keep that one checked. The good news is that domain privacy is included for free, which helps protect your personal information online. Next, enter your payment details. I'll use PayPal for this. Then, fill in your account contact details. You'll also see an optional marketing email checkbox at the bottom of the page. I'll go ahead and uncheck that. When everything looks good, click submit order. After your payment is confirmed, you'll be prompted to create a password for your account. If you chose the email sign up method, go ahead and create a strong password. Then click continue to Dream Press. You'll land on the DreamHost dashboard where you'll see a banner that says your account is pending. Here's the great thing about Dreamress. WordPress is automatically installed for you. So, there's no manual setup required. However, this setup and approval process can take several hours to complete. When your account is approved, DreamHost will send you a few emails. The first one you should open has the subject immediate verification required. Click the link inside to confirm your contact information for your domain registration. After that, return to your inbox and find the email with the subject account activated. Complete your website setup. Open it and click the link to access your DreamHost panel. If it's been a while, you may need to log in to DreamHost again. You'll be immediately routed to a starter website setup form. This is designed to have DreamHost create a WordPress site for you, but since we'll be creating our own website today, we'll skip this. On the left navigation, click websites, then manage websites. Next, click the manage button for your website. You'll be routed to your website management dashboard. On the right side panel, click log to WordPress. You'll be automatically logged into your WordPress admin panel. Welcome to WordPress. Now, there are two ways to access your WordPress admin panel. You've just seen the first one, accessing it by logging into DreamHost first, but there's an easier, more direct way that allows you to simply log in by going to a hidden page on your website. Let me show you how to set that up. You'll see a banner that explains you're using an autogenerated password for your account. Click yes, take me to my profile page. Then, click set new password and create a new password. When you're done, click update profile at the bottom of the page. Now, let's take a look at how to use this more direct login method. I'll quickly close out any extra tabs, then click my profile name in the top right of the WordPress top bar and click log out. You'll see a WordPress login screen. To access this login screen directly in the future without having to go through DreamHost, just enter your site URL followed by /wp-admin in your browser. Then log in with the same email you used to create your DreamHost account and the new WordPress password you just created. I recommend saving these credentials in a password manager. This is your WordPress dashboard. It's like your command center for website management. To start, we'll dismiss this welcome banner. We'll also clean up this dashboard by clicking screen options at the top and then unchecking all these boxes. You can always add back panels that you want to see later. Next, let's deactivate any unnecessary pre-installed plugins. On the left side, click plugins. A WordPress plugin is kind of like a smartphone app. It adds additional functionality to your website like an app does with a phone. Depending on which plan you choose, when you sign up, and when you watch this video, you might have different plugins pre-installed. And it's nice to start with a blank slate and add your plugins when you actually need them. So, to deactivate all default plugins, click the check box at the top left of the plug-in list. Then click the bulk actions drop down and select deactivate. Then click apply. Next, let's install a theme. A WordPress theme controls the overall site structure and appearance. On the left side, click appearance and then at the top, click add theme. You can browse around for a theme that suits you. For this tutorial, we're going to use Astra because I think it has a nice, clean, modern look. In the top right, search for Astra and then it should show up as the first option. Click install and then click activate. When it activates, you'll get this confirmation message and you can click the X to close out of it. Next, let's jump start the design for our website by adding the starter templates plugin. On the left side, navigate back to plugins. Then, at the top, click add plugin. Then search for starter templates. And when you see this one, click install now. Then when it appears, click the activate button. You'll be immediately routed into the onboarding flow for starter templates. Depending on when you watch this video, you may see different things at the beginning of this onboarding flow. In my case, I see an AI website builder. Go up and click the top right dropdown and then select Elementor. Now, if Elementor doesn't show up in the drop down at the top right, let me show you really quickly how to enable it. You'll go to the bottom and click exit to dashboard. Then on the left side, you'll click settings. Scroll to the bottom to the starter template section. Then for the option disable Elementor, make sure it's unchecked. Then click save changes. Return to plugins and under starter templates, click get started. Again, in the top right, select Elementor from the drop down. After you've selected Elementor for your page builder, you'll see this gallery of templates that are available to you. A template is different than a WordPress theme. A theme is the overall design framework that controls your site's look and feel, while a template is a specific page layout within that theme. You can simply scroll through and look for options, or you can use the category drop downs at the top to quickly filter and find templates that are suitable for your site. As you scroll through, you'll see that some sites have a premium tag. A premium tag indicates a template that costs money. All the other templates are free. For our tutorial, I really like the look of this one at the top left, so I'll go ahead and select this. Next, you'll get some initial customization options. First, you can upload a site logo by clicking to upload a file. But if you don't have a logo right now, that's okay. I'll show you how to add one later. You can also choose your font pair, toggling through to see which one you like the best. I like this one. Next, you can choose a color palette. Again, toggling through until you find one that you like. I really like it with this yellow button. Once you've got your initial setup dialed in, go ahead and click continue. You'll be prompted to select features. Check any options that you want, or just click skip this step. You'll get this page here, and you can fill it out if you'd like to, or you can just click I understand. Let's go and then click submit and build my website. This will take a few moments to process as it sets everything up. When it's done, you'll get this fun little confetti animation. And you can click view your website to see how it turned out. And here we go. You can see that the starter template is all loaded into our site. Now that we're in our editor, you can close out the starter templates tab. Next, let's start to edit our site. We'll use Elementor for our page builder. To access this, go to the top and click edit with Elementor. And here you can see the Elementor interface. Elementor is a drag and drop builder, making it super easy to make changes to your site. Let's take a quick look at how this web page is constructed. There are two main types of building blocks in WordPress, containers and elements. These broader sections here are containers, and the individual parts within them are considered elements. To understand the structure of the site better, we can use the structure panel. Click the drop- down arrow next to the containers. And if you click the various items in the list, you can see the various containers and elements highlighted so you can understand fully what you're looking at. Containers do exactly what they sound like. They hold other things, including other containers and elements. You can click the I button next to any element in the structure panel to hide and show it. You can also do this for entire sections by clicking the I next to containers. Let's close out of this structure panel by clicking the X. You can always pull it up again later by hitting command I on a Mac or controlI on Windows. If you scroll down to see the next container on the page and hover over it, you'll see that this pink edit container tab appears. You can click these six dots to drag the container to a different location on the page. You can click the plus button to add a new container, or if you want to remove a container entirely, you can click the X. Next, I'll show you how to edit text, buttons, and images. Elementor makes it super easy to add new elements and make changes. To edit the text on a page, click on the text you want to update and then simply type like you're in a word processor. You can also update text styles by clicking the style tab in the left side inspector panel. To update buttons, it's similar. Click on the button you want to change and then in the left side panel, change the text. You can link the button to a destination in the link section on the left side panel. First, delete the pound sign. Then start typing the name of the page you want to connect and select it when it shows up. The link will fill in automatically. For external links, just paste the full URL. And like text, you can update button styles by clicking the style tab. It's also really easy to add new elements to a page. Go up to the top and click plus to add an element. Then find the element type you want to add and drag it in. To move the element to a different spot on the page, simply click on it and drag it elsewhere. To remove an element, simply secondary click on it and then click delete. Next, I'll show you how to update the images. Click on any image you want to change and then in the left side panel, hover over the image and select choose image. Then click select files to upload an image from your computer or click media library to find one that's already on your site. You can also click search images to find stock images. When you find one you like, click insert. Now you know how to edit containers and elements on your page. But what if you want to add a new page? Elementor makes this super easy. Simply go up to the top and click the drop down next to your current page name. In our case, that's home. Then click add new page. You may get a window asking you to save before you leave. Go ahead and click save and leave. Here you can see the blank page. First, we'll want to name it. So go up and click the gear icon. And then in the left side under general settings, find the title field and give your page a name. In my case, I'll call it the team. Next, you could click the plus button to add a container. Select the layout for the container and start adding elements. This is great if you want to build a page from scratch. But if you don't want to build everything from scratch, you can use starter templates to give you a jump start. Click the starter templates logo. Scroll through the gallery to find a general design you like. And when you open it up, you'll get options for individual pages. In my case, I like this about us design here. So, I'll go ahead and click to open it and then click import template. And just like that, the template has been loaded onto the page. And I can quickly change this header to say the team. Now, if someone were to go to this website right now, they would not see this page. And that's because if you look at the top next to the page name, it says draft. To make this page live, click publish in the top right. And here you can see the draft tag next to our page name has disappeared and the page is currently live. To preview this page on your live site, you can go up to the top right and click the eye icon. And there it is. But there's just one problem. this page doesn't show up in our navigation bar. To add this new page to the navigation bar, go up to the top left and click customize. Then on the left side, click menus and then click main menu. Here you can click add items and then select the new page from the list and click publish to see your changes. If you don't like the order of the items in the menu, you can simply grab the new page and drag it to a new location. Again, when you're happy with your changes, you can click publish, and then you can back out to the main menu. Now, while we're in here, let me show you how to update the site's header and footer. We'll start with the header. On the left side, from the menu, click header. And next, we can update the site logo. To change the logo, click the change logo button, and then add your new logo from the media library or upload a new file. Just like that, the logo's been added to the top left of the website. And I can change the logo size by changing the logo width with the slider here. Next, let's update the site footer. We'll back out to that main menu and then select footer. And here you can make updates by dragging the various elements in this editor down below. When you're done, be sure to publish your changes. When you're done making changes to the site settings, click the X to back out. And here we can see our beautiful new website. Now you know how to set up your WordPress website with DreamHost. and you know how to customize it using Elementor's intuitive tools. Remember, if you haven't signed up yet, use our special partner link in the description to get the best deal on DreamHost hosting. Thanks for following along.