So you’ve decided that you want to sell your handmade items in your own online shop and have heard the WooCommerce is a good option for this – Good news, you are 100% right WooCommerce is by far one of the best ways to create your own online shop.
WooCommerce is a WordPress plugin that takes a standard website and turns it into an all-singing, all-dancing eCommerce store that is fully customisable for your needs. Oh and did I mention that it’s FREE?!
The only cost associated with having a WooCommerce based shop is web hosting (which you would need for any other website too) so I’ve put together this post to help you get set up with WooCommerce hosting via a company called Dreamhost.
A bit about Dreamhost
When it comes to building websites for anything, not just WooCommerce hosting, I only ever personally recommend using Dreamhost.
I have used them for over 8 years now to build every website I work on and I cannot fault them at all, their customer service is second to none and their dashboards are nice and simple to navigate, it makes it so quick and simple to set up new websites and Woocommerce stores. The majority of the work we need to do for our WooCommerce hosting is ‘one-click’ installs thanks to the way Dreamhost have set up their system so it’s literally just a case of following these simple steps to get your online store set-up and ready to customise.
Signing up to Dreamhost
This link which will take you to a page all about shared hosting, scroll down the page a little bit and make sure to click the ‘monthly’ option for pricing and you should see this.
We are going to go for the $10.95 option a month in this scenario (I’m taking these screenshots whilst I’m doing some rebranding work for a client) as we want the option to have more than one email address with our domain. If you don’t currently need email for your shop or are happy to carry on using your current Gmail or similar email then you can go for the $4.95 a month option.
Domain Selection
The next screen will ask if you’d like to add a domain. If you want to choose a domain for your shop then just click ‘Register a new domain’ and see what options you have for your business name – I would usually recommend a .co.uk or .com domain but there is a whole host of option available.
You can see on the lefthand side of the screen that I have opted to add BebeBoxesUK.com to our package.
Payment and Optional Extras
We then get to our payment screen, this is largely self-explanatory, fill in your payment details and add the email address you’d like to use to log in to your Dreamhost control panel. I opt out of all tick box extras on the plan section (left-hand part of your screen on checkout) I’ll quickly explain why
‘Pre-install WordPress’ – I uncheck this as I prefer to install WordPress manually, the Pre-installed versions come with bits you don’t need and can slow down your website. Manual Installation is very very easy, literally called a one-click install, and I’ll show you how to do this on the next step.
‘Dreamshield Protection’ – This adds a few extra £ to the price and honestly, you don’t need it.
‘G Suite’ – You’d get a free months trial of this if you tick the box BUT it’s billed at £6 a month after that, I prefer to use their free webmail inbox or run it through the Mail app on my iPhone.
RELATED – 4 Steps to Create your own WooCommerce Website (and beat those pesky Etsy fees)
Account Creation
Once your order has processed we get an Order Completion screen and you get to choose your password that you will use to log into your Dreamhost account, make sure to keep these login details safe.
You then want to continue to your control panel and you will be met with this screen…
…give it a few minutes and CONGRATULATIONS, you’ve now got your very own domain and hosting sorted ready to build your WooCommerce shop on!
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