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I will show you how you can build a beautiful website with Astra Theme & Elementor in less than 1 Hour.If you want to create your own website without any special coding and without having to pay a web designer thousands of dollars, then follow along in this tutorial.
The theme we will be using is called the Astra theme and it is completely free WordPress theme. It is beginner friendly which with the help of a free page builder called Elementor makes it easy to design a professional looking website.
To get started you will need your own domain name and hosting. If you do not have hosting you can sign up with my number 1 recommended hosting provider Bluehost. You can find out more here on how to set up your hosting with Bluehost. Once your hosting and WordPress is setup you can get started.
1. Install and activate Astra Theme and starter templates plugin
The first step is to install the free Astra theme. You will find this option under apparence then click themes. Click on add new in the top corner then search Astra in the search bar.
Click on install then activate. After you have activated your theme you will get an option to install the starter templates plungin. Click get started.
2. Select Elementor page builder
After you have succesfully installed the starter templates plugin you will be prompted to select a page builder. We will be using elementor page builder for this tutorial.
As you can see we are half way through with building your beautiful site.
3. Choosing a pre-made template
We are finally getting to the part that brings you website together. Browse the templates to see what suits your type of website or blog best.
The templates that is “agency” marked requires you to install the premium version of Astra theme. You can filter your search by choosing free if you are happy with only the free theme.
Once you’ve seen a design you like, click on it an you will get a preview. You can choose to import one page templates or complete website templates. For the purpose of creating a website quickly, we will choose to import complete site. The template for this tutorial is fashion lifestyle blog.
Once your site has been succesfully imported you will get a message to confirm this. Click on view site and be amazed at the website that you have just created with a few clicks and within less than 1 hour.
4. Customizing your website.
As tempting as it is to save more time by leaving your stunning website as is, you now need to personalise your website to make it your own.
To customize your theme you need to go back to your wordpress dashboard and click on apparence then customize. Another way to access the customizer when on your website front-end is to simply click customize on the top of your page.
The customizer is where you can start personalising your website to your own preference. Take your time to go through all the differenct tabs and make changes where you need to. You can play around as much as you want with colors and fonts and the real changes will only take place after you click the publish button.
With the customizer you can change your primary colors, fonts, site logo, site icon, footer and more.
5. Styling your pages with Elementor page builder.
With the customizer you can style the overall theme of your website, but with Elementor page builder you can design and customize individual pages and blog posts to make it look like a professional designed website.
The drop and drag interface of Elementor is user friendly and makes designing your website easy.
To get started go back to your WordPress dashboard, click on all pages and open the page you would like to edit. Click on edit with Elementor.
Now you can start editing your website to your liking. To edit elements, click on the blue pencil when you hover over a element.
You can edit sections by hovering over the whole section and click edit section. Here you can change the background image of your top section. You can aslo delete sections that you do not want.
Elementor also comes with a library with pre-made templates. You can add full pages or sections only. To add a new section using a template, scroll down to the bottom of your page and click on the folder icon.
The Elementor library will pop up. You can browse blocks or full pages to add to your page. The ones labeled pro can only be used if you have the pro version of Elementor installed.
Choose the template you would like to import and click on insert.
You will need to create a free account to access the elementor library. Once you have done so you will have plenty of templates ready to import to any of your websites pages.
Conclusion
With Elementor and Astra theme you can build a stunning looking website within a few hours. Elementor is one of the most powerful page builders for WordPress. With it’s user friendly drop and drag interface, it is used by thousands of website owners to build beautiful websites and personal blogs.
Take some time to get to know the Elementor page builder and Astra theme and soon you will have the courage to build your website from scratch.
