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“Follow the plan outlined here and you can create your own website from scratch without writing any code for less than $300.”
You can make all sorts of websites with WordPress.
And gym websites are no exception!
A website built for a gym isn’t as simple as a blog, but it’s not the most complex website either.
An awesome gym site should be able to do the following things:
- Let new members signup
- Share class schedules
- Display the gym’s address and contact info
- Show a photo gallery of the facility
- List the trainers with photos & bios
But let’s not get ahead of ourselves.
In order to build your website, there are two things you have to do first before you can think about any of those features.
Get yourself a domain
Before you can even build your website, you need to get a domain name.
A domain name is your website’s address. For example, google.com and twitter.com are both domain names. It’s where people go online to visit those companies’ websites.
If you already have a domain, then you can skip to the next step, but if you need some help finding one, then follow this guide.
How to Find a Great Available Domain Name →
The main challenge in getting a good domain name is finding one that’s actually available. Hopefully, your brand name is available to register as a domain, but the guide linked above will give you some tips to find a simple variation for a cheap price.
Get a basic website online
You’re going to start with a basic WordPress website and then use a theme and plugins to get all the features listed at the beginning of this post.
To get your website online, you need to start by signing up for hosting.
If your domain is like the property you build your business on, then hosting is like water, gas, and electricity. Without hosting, your website won’t load at all.
There are tons of web hosts to choose from, but the one I recommend these days for new WordPress users is Nexcess.
Nexcess will create a new WP site for you once you signup, so there’s no technical process required.
As a “managed WordPress host,” they offer superior performance compared to “shared hosts,” which are not configured specifically for WP and share your site’s resources with other websites.
In short, Nexcess remains an affordable option while handling complex and simple sites like a gym website perfectly well.
Once you have your WordPress website online, you can get to the fun part: customizing your site.
How to customize your gym website
To customize the style of your website, you’ll use a WordPress theme.
You can find 19 free WordPress themes on our website, but they’ve been developed mainly for bloggers. That’s why instead, I’m making a recommendation for a theme by another developer.
The Gym Edge theme is exceptional for building a gym website.
It’s got an impressive 4.94/5.00 rating on Themeforest from 50 total ratings, and for good reason too. This theme has a great design and is extremely customizable.
There’s a page builder included that lets you craft custom templates. You don’t need to be a skilled web designer because all of the page components are already pre-designed to look good together.
You can build your site by dragging-and-dropping blocks into place and then adding your own text and graphics.
The Gym Edge theme includes all of the features recommended at the beginning of this guide as well.
And if you don’t like the way the Gym Edge theme looks, that’s no problem. You can find some great alternatives in this collection of the best fitness WordPress themes.
Once you install the theme, you’ll have everything you need. Then it’s simply a matter of creating your pages and entering your site info to complete your site.
Start crafting your gym site
When building a WordPress website for the first time, there’s a lot to learn.
The main roadblock is simply knowing where to start, and I hope this guide outlined the steps clearly enough for you to understand what you need to do.
To review the steps, they are:
- Get a domain name
- Signup for hosting (Nexcess)
- Choose a gym WordPress theme (Gym Edge)
- Customize your site
If you want step-by-step instructions on creating a WP site, check out this guide next:
How to Create a WordPress Website Today →
It has much more detail about the steps required to build your site and includes a 17-part video course that gets very in-depth.
If you enjoyed this post, make sure to share it with someone else before you go. Thanks for reading!
