How to build a custom WordPress website

List the pages the site needs before changing the design. Most small sites need a home page, an about page, a services or products page, a contact page, and any legal pages required for the business.

Sketch the navigation and decide which action matters most on each page. Keep the main menu short; putting every page in it makes the site harder to use on phones.

Choose a block theme if you want to edit the header, footer, templates and global styles in Appearance > Editor. The Site Editor is available when a block theme is active and lets you work with templates, template parts, styles, navigation and pages.

With a classic theme, design controls usually appear under Appearance > Customize, while page content is built separately in the block editor. Do not start importing demos until you have a backup: demo content can add pages, menus, images and settings that you later need to remove.

Go to Pages > Add New and create the pages from your plan. Use blocks for headings, text, images, buttons, columns, testimonials and contact sections. Give each page one clear heading and one primary action.

Set the home page deliberately under the reading settings if you want a static front page instead of the latest posts. A common Friday problem is editing a page called “Home” while WordPress is still displaying the posts page or a different template on the front end.

In a block theme, open Appearance > Editor > Styles to set the colour palette, typography and layout used across the site. You can also adjust the appearance of individual block types, so buttons, headings and links remain consistent.

Then edit the header and footer as template parts. Changes to these repeated areas affect every page that uses them, not only the page currently open in the editor. Use templates for page types such as pages, posts, archives and search results rather than rebuilding the same layout repeatedly.

Add the important pages to the Navigation block in a block theme, or create and assign a menu through the theme’s menu controls. WordPress lets you add pages, posts, categories and custom links to navigation.

Preview the site at narrow and wide widths. Check that the logo does not push the menu off screen, buttons are easy to tap, headings do not wrap awkwardly, images are cropped sensibly, and the footer still works. Clear any caching layer before deciding that a saved design change has failed to appear.

For a varied business site, portfolio, blog or shop, use Infinite as the starting point. Choose a suitable demo, replace its content, then adjust the layout, colours, fonts and sections with its theme controls and drag-and-drop builder instead of designing every template from a blank page.

The manual WordPress route is perfectly reasonable for a small site with a distinctive but simple layout, especially when a block theme already provides the templates you need. Infinite is the faster option when you need several page types, reusable layouts, WooCommerce support or more styling controls without writing the design from scratch. Back up the site before importing a demo, and review every page and menu it creates.