How to Create Your Own Cryptocurrency Blog With WordPress
Today, there are over 1300+ cryptocurrencies with a total market capitalization of over $350 billion at the time of writing this. This means that now is a great time to start a blog about them.
If you’re considering launching a professional blog about digital currencies, I’ll show you how to easily go about it. In this tutorial, you’ll learn how to use WordPress to create your own blog dedicated to the cryptocurrency world.
Also read:
– 15+ Best Cryptocurrency & Bitcoin WordPress Themes
– Crypto WordPress Theme Review
I created this guide to help crypto experts, traders, commentators and spectators looking to start a blog to cover blockchain, BitCoin, Altcoins and any other topic in the cryptocurrency industry.
The blog you create will be able to:
- Show live coin prices
- Have dedicated coin pages
- Show historical price data for coins
- Compare crypto coins against fiat currencies
- List ICOs on your site, and much more.
Let’s get started.
What You’ll Need
- A domain name
- A good web hosting service that works well with WordPress
- WordPress installation
- WordPress theme suitable for cryptocurrency blogs
- About 45 minutes to 1 hour of your time
Creating Your Own Cryptocurrency Blog
STEP 1: Choose a Suitable Web Hosting Service
Web hosting is one of the key aspects of a successful website. Choosing a suitable hosting company for your cryptocurrency blog matters.
Your blog readers and visitors will want the ability to access your site at any time of day/night, so you must make sure it’s in the right hands.
WordPress is compatible with most good web hosting companies. It’s requirements are:
- PHP version 7 or greater
- MySQL version 5.6 or greater
When looking for a hosting provider, the most important thing to have in mind are your needs.
There are various types of web hosting available, which include:
- Free web hosting – These are usually not reliable and can leave you hanging at any time. If you’re serious about your cryptocurrency blog, then it’s advisable to stay away from free web hosting.
- Shared web hosting – This is one of the most popular types of web hosting and is a great solution for starting bloggers and small businesses.
- Virtual Private Server (VPS) – With VPS you basically own part of a web server and have extra control and privacy. Best solution for high-traffic blogs, developers, intermediate users and mid-sized businesses.
- Dedicated Server Hosting – In this case you lease an entire server from the hosting provider. Suitable for sites with extremely high traffic and you do not need it if you’re just starting out.
- Managed WordPress Hosting – Due to the huge popularity of WordPress, various companies emerged that specialize in WordPress hosting and nothing else. Go with this if you want fast and hassle free WordPress hosting where the company optimizes your site for performance, keeps regular backups for you, makes sure your site is secure, and much more.
With that said, some things to consider when choosing a hosting provider include:
- Performance – You want your site to load fast
- Reliability – Will your website always be available to your users online?
- Customer support – The hosting company’s customer support should be able to offer quick help when you need it.
- Features – They must be able to offer all the features you need to build a successful website
- Pricing – Is the price within your budget? Are there any deals available to help you save? How does their pricing compare with others in the industry?
In this tutorial, we will be using a shared hosting plan from a well-known company called Inmotion Hosting. They offer reliable hosting with award-winning 24/7 technical support based in the US. They also offer a managed WordPress hosting plan which is fine-tuned for WP users.
Select a Hosting Plan
Once you’re on Inmotion Hosting’s homepage, you’ll see the various web hosting plans they offer. These are Business Hosting, VPS Hosting, Dedicated Servers, Reseller Hosting and WordPress Hosting.
I went ahead and selected their Business Hosting plan, which comes with 1-click WordPress installation, a free domain, SSD drives, Secure IMAP Email, 90-Day guarantee and much more. Plus, they offer special discounts regularly and at the time of writing this tutorial, their popular “Power” business hosting plan was selling for $7.99/month (usually it’s $9.99/month)
Inmotion Hosting’s managed WordPress hosting is also a great option if you’re looking for hassle free WordPress hosting for your blog or site. Their managed WordPress hosting platform is optimized for WordPress and it comes with WP pre-installed, free domain, 90-Day guarantee, access to premium themes and plugins, hack & malware protection, free backups and much more. Their managed WordPress hosting plans start from $7.99/month.
Once you’ve selected your hosting plan, Inmotion Hosting will take you to another page where you can choose the location of your server and whether or not you want a dedicated IP address. You can also choose to have WordPress automatically installed on your new hosting account.
STEP 2: Register Your Domain Name
After you’ve chosen your hosting plan, click “CONTINUE” to proceed and register your domain name. Ideally, you should go for .com, .net or .org domain name. Make sure it’s related to your cryptocurrency blog, easy to remember, and easy to pronounce and spell.
InMotion Hosting can host any domain and register .com, .net, .org, .biz, .us and .info. To register a new domain, select the radio button that says “I would like to purchase a new domain”, enter your preferred domain name in the field below and click continue.
If you already have a domain name, just select the radio button that says “I already own this domain”, enter it and then click “CONTINUE”.
Now you’ll be asked to provide your account, billing and payment information. After you review your order and finish your purchase, you’ll get an email from Inmotion Hosting with information on how to login to your web hosting control panel (cPanel).
Cpanel is a web hosting dashboard that provides the interface and tools to simplify the process of hosting a website. Furthermore, this is where we’ll install WordPress.
STEP 3: Install WordPress
Now that you’ve bought your web hosting and registered your domain name, it’s time to install WordPress and get your cryptocurrency blog up and running.
There are 2 ways to install WordPres on your server:
- Install automatically using a software installer
- Install manually
If your server does not have a software installer installed (some VPS and Dedicated servers do not), you can install WordPress manually. Download the WordPress files from wordpress.org and upload them to your server. You’ll need to create a database and database user, upload the WordPress files using FTP or the cPanel file manager, and configure the config.php file on your server.
Installing WordPress Using Auto Installer
Almost every reputable web hosting company has integrated a software installer that can automatically install WordPress in just a couple of clicks.
Inmotion Hosting uses Softaculous auto installer to upload your WordPress files, configure your database and set up the installation for you.
Here are the steps you should follow:
- Login into your cPanel
- Go to the Top Applications section and click on the WordPress logo
- This will open a page with information about WordPress. You’ll see various options such as Install, Overview, Features and Import. Click on the Install link.
- Fill in the WordPress set up details. You’ll need to choose a domain to install WordPress, enter a username, password and email for your WordPress dashboard login.
- After you’ve filled the necessary information, click Install. Softaculous will check the submitted data and install WordPress files to your server
Once the installation is over, you’ll see a success message from Softaculous.
After you’ve installed WordPress on your hosting account, you can now head over to your WordPress login page. Your login URL will look something like this:
http://www.yourdomain.com/wp-admin
You can now login to your WordPress site using the admin username and password you provided previously.
STEP 4: Install WordPress Theme
A WordPress theme determines the front-end design or style of your site.
There are thousands of WordPress themes out there to choose from – both free and paid. If you’re on a limited budget, you could go for a free theme – but these have their own limitations.
If you’re serious about your blog, then it’s better to go with a paid WordPress theme. Premium themes offer a lot more bang for your buck.
Lately, many amazing WordPress themes have emerged that are designed specifically for cryptocurrency blogs and websites. You may want to look at our collection of the best cryptocurrency & bitcoin WordPress Themes.
In this tutorial, we’ll be using the Crypto WordPress theme from MyThemeShop. The Crypto theme is designed specifically for bitcoin and cryptocurrency blogs. Besides the regular blogging features, it comes with specific features for cryptocurrency sites, including ability to show live coin prices, dedicated coin pages, historical price data, coin and currency comparison, custom made widgets for coins, ICO archives and much more.
Click here to learn more about the Crypto WordPress theme. You can also view a live demo of the Crypto theme to see how your cryptocurrency blog would look like.
Now that we’ve settled on the theme we’ll use, it’s time to install it on our site.
- Head over to MyThemeShop.com and download the Crypto theme.
- Login to your WordPress dashboard and navigate to Appearance >> Themes >> Add New
- Click Upload Theme and choose the Crypto theme’s zip file you downloaded earlier, and then click Install Now
- Click Activate to make the theme live on your blog
Once you activate the Crypto theme, you’ll be prompted to install required plugins. The theme requires these plugins to function properly. Select all and bulk-install and activate them.
After you’ve installed your theme and any required plugins, you can now go ahead and add your content and customize your blog to reflect your style and personality.
STEP 5: Add Content to Your Site
Importing Demo Data
Now, if you don’t have any content ready for your site, the Crypto theme provides some dummy content to help you set up your site.
Go to Appearance > Theme Options > Import/Export. You’ll see that Crypto includes 2 demo designs. Check out the demo that appeals to you, and click on Import Theme Options, Widgets & Content to import demo.
Adding Regular Posts and Pages
A WordPress site is made up of blog posts and pages. Use posts for content that changes often like news articles and pages for static content like your about us and contact us pages.
To add a page, go to “Pages” > “Add New” in your WordPress admin dashboard. You’ll be taken to a screen with an editor where you can add your text, images and more to build your page.
To create a new post, go to “Posts” > “Add New“. Unlike pages, you can group your posts using categories and tags. Use categories for broad range of topics and tags for more specific topics.
Creating ICO pages
Crypto is one of the best WordPress themes for cryptocurrency websites. One of the reasons for this is the theme’s in-built ICO custom post types. You don’t have to spend any more time creating new ICOs on your site. Everything you need to build a new ICO is available for you in this theme.
To create a new ICO, simply go to your WordPress dashboard and hover your mouse on the “ICOs” tab. Click on “Add New” and you’ll be taken to an add-new-post screen where you can create your ICO post.
You’ll see various custom fields available for you. You can add a title and some text just as you would with normal posts. You can also add a review for your particular ICO.
The “Custom ICO Info” section has various fields to enter your custom ICO details. You can add the coin website, start/end date, tagline, button text and a URL for ICO media such as video, audio or image.
You’ll also find a section to add social media sharing buttons for the ICO, an ICO teams section to add team members as well as any advisors that might be available for the ICO.
Creating Dedicated Coin Pages
The Crypto theme also comes with the option of creating price index pages for any kind of cryptocurrency. Such dedicated coin pages will help you provide readers important information about the cryptocurrencies they’re interested in.
To create a new coin page, you’ll follow the normal process for creating pages in WordPress. Then once you’re on the Add-New-Page screen, choose the “Price Index” template in the “Page Attributes” section to display the “Coin Details” fields.
The “Coin Details” section has fields where you can enter coin symbol, currencies to compare against, historical price data for the coin, and more.
You’ll see that the Crypto theme comes with everything pre-built for you to display as much data about cryptocurrencies as you want.
Step 6: Customize Your Website
Now that you’ve added some content to your blog, you can now proceed to customize your site to your liking.
Let’s start by creating a child theme.
Create a Child Theme First
Before you start customizing your WordPress blog/site, it’s advisable to first create a child theme. A child theme allows you to make changes to your site without messing with your original theme’s files. This way, you won’t lose your customizations when you update your parent theme.
With the Crypto theme, creating a child theme is as simple as it gets.
Go to Appearance > Theme Options > Import/Export. You’ll see the Child Theme section at the bottom. Enter your desired name and hit the “Create Child Theme” button.
Once you’ve created your child theme, go to Appearance > Themes and you’ll see it there. Click on Activate to make the child theme live on your site.
Theme Customization Options and settings
All settings of the Crypto theme reside under Appearance > Theme Options. This is the theme’s control panel and it contains lots of easy customization options and settings to help you achieve a unique site even without touching a single line of code.
You can navigate the settings using the tabs on the left.
Let’s go over some of the customization options available in this theme.
- General Settings – Under this section, you’ll find general settings that will apply to the whole theme. From here, you can do things like uploading your logo and inserting code in the header and footer.
- Performance – Contains performance-related options to help improve your site’s speed.
- Styling Options – This is where you can control the visual appearance of your site. You can modify things like colors, layouts and patterns, and even add your own custom CSS code.
- Header – From here, you can control the layout of the header section, elements of the Top Navigation, logo section, main navigation, and the Coin Prices section of header.
- Footer – Has settings for the footer section
- Homepage – This section has options for the homepage
- Single Posts – Under this tab, you can control the appearance and functionality of your single posts page.
- Archive ICOs – Contains settings related to the ICOs archive page
- Single ICOs – Here you can control settings related to single ICO posts
- Social Buttons – Enable or disable social sharing buttons, choose their position and organize how you want them to appear
- Ad Management – Allows you to manage all your adverts. No need to install a third party plugin.
- Sidebars – From here, you can add custom sidebars and manage them
- Typography – Allows you to control the fonts used on your site. The Crypto theme comes with 17 font sets, and you can also use the Google Fonts Library.
Changing Your Site Title and Tagline
Your site title is the name of your website while the tagline is a single line that explains what your site is about. Titles play an important role in search engine rankings so you might want to include the keywords you want to target.
To change you site title and tagline, simply navigate to Settings > General in your WP admin dashboard and fill in your details.
Homepage Setup
Unlike some other WordPress themes, Crypto makes it easy to manage and update your homepage. It comes with unique drag-and-drop sections and you can create unlimited homepage layouts.
To manage your homepage, navigate to Appearance > Theme Options and then click on the “Homepage” tab. You’ll be able to choose which sections to show on the homepage and organize how you want the layout to appear.
The available homepage sections are “Featured Area”, “Small Grid Section” and “Posts Section”.
With the Featured Section, you can enable/disable the Featured Slider, which shows featured articles from selected categories.
With the Small Grid Section, you can set a title, choose to show latest ICOs or latest Posts, select article categories and number of posts to show, border color as well as background color and image.
From the “Posts Section”, you can select the post categories to appear on the homepage, pagination type, category colors, and organize how you want the post meta info to appear on the homepage.
Customizing Your Single Posts
The Crypto theme also allows you to control how you want your single posts to appear and behave.
You can choose to enable/disable featured images, tags, related posts and author box on single posts. You can also show/hide post meta info, i.e. author image and name, publication date, categories, views count as well as comments count.
Lastly, you can turn ON/OFF breadcrumbs, Facebook comments, highlight author comment and date in comments.
To control how your single posts appear and function, navigate to Appearance > Theme Options and then click on the “Single Posts” tab.
The Crypto theme’s header is made with drag-and-drop sections, so you can easily control how it looks. You can enable/disable the top navigation, logo section, main navigation as well as the coin prices section.
For the Top Navigation, you can set the background color, pattern and image.
From the Logo Section, you can control your logo, add social media icons in the header, enable/disable header button, and set the header background color, pattern and image.
The Main Navigation section let’s you control elements of your main menu such as floating navigation menu, header search, and the background color, pattern and image.
You’ll also find options for controlling the Coin Prices section of header. You can choose the layout to use and add crypto coin details from here.
You can manage the above header options by going to Appearance > Theme Options and then clicking on the “Header” tab.
The Crypto theme’s footer options are located right below the header section when you go to the theme options panel. From there you can enable or disable footer widgets and set footer background color, pattern and image. Besides, you can also change or remove the copyright text that displays at the bottom of the footer.
Navigation menus make it easy for users to browse around your site. WordPress comes with a robust menu system and WordPress themes can work with it to display navigation menus.
The Crypto theme supports 3 menus – Top Menu, Main Menu and Mobile Menu. The top menu will be located at the very top of your site, while the main menu is located just underneath the logo.
To add a navigation menu to your blog, first go to the menu editor by navigating to Appearance > Menus.
- Add a name for your menu and click on the “Create Menu” button.
- On the sidebar, you’ll see options for pages, posts, custom links and categories. Check your desired navigation items and click “Add to Menu”.
- Drag to rearrange and structure your menu in the “Menu Structure” panel.
- Under “Menu Settings”, select the location you’d like to display the menu.
- Click “Save Menu” when done.
Customizing ICO Posts and Archives
You can also control how your ICO posts and archive appear and function.
For the ICO Archive page, you can show/hide the ICOs seach form, organize the tabs, set number of ICOs to display, and select the pagination type.
To control settings related to the ICO archive page, go to Appearance > Theme Options and then click on the “Archive ICOs” tab.
The customization options for single ICO posts are situated just below the Archive ICOs section in the theme options panel. You can control the tabs, comment section, slug, and social sharing buttons for your single ICO posts.
Managing Your Blog’s Sidebars
The Crypto WordPress theme gives you total control over your sidebars. You can select a sidebar for each section of your site, or choose a custom sidebar on a per-post basis in the post editor.
To manage your sidebars, go to Appearance > Theme Options and then click on the “Sidebars” tab. From here, you’ll be able to create custom sidebars and select the sidebars to display on the various sections of your site, i.e. single posts, single pages, archives, search results page, 404 error pages, and more.
To add content to your sidebars, navigate to Appearance > Widgets.
Step 7: Install Essential Plugins
There are thousands of WordPress plugins around that you could install to add more features and functionalities to your blog or website.
Let’s look at some essential ones that you can install right away. All of these are free but some might have premium versions.
- Contact Form 7 – This simple but flexible plugin allows you to create contact forms on your WordPress website.
- iThemes Security – This plugin offers 30+ ways to protect your WordPress website.
- Yoast SEO – This plugin helps you take care of your WordPress SEO. Can help you reach the top of search engine rankings.
- W3 Total Cache – A WordPress performance plugin that can improve your blog’s speed and user experience.
- UpdraftPlus Backup/Restore – My favorite WordPress backup plugin. You can schedule daily backups to a remote storage.
- Akismet Anti-Spam – Protects your blog from spam.
- Google Analytics Dashboard for WP (GADWP) – This one connects with your Google Analytics account and brings your site’s traffic stats right to your WordPress dashboard.
To install a plugin, go to Plugins > Add New and then type the name of the plugin you want to install.
That’s it – You’re ready to launch
Congratulations! By following the steps in this tutorial, you now have a fully functional cryptocurrency and ICO website. What remains is for you to launch your blog and let the world see your work.
If you have any questions, don’t hesitate to ask in the comments below.
