Build a Travel Affiliate WordPress Site, Template Included

Choosing a domain name for a travel booking website can be a crucial decision as it can impact the website's visibility, credibility, and brand recognition. In this lecture, I will guide you on how to make the right choice for your travel site.

In this lecture, I will show you how to check the availability and buy your selected domain.

Every website needs hosting to store the required files and display it online. There are a number of different hosting options available and these include Shared Hosting, WordPress Hosting, Dedicated Hosting, and Reseller Hosting. In this lecture, I will briefly run through each of these and explain what the differences are.

In this lecture, I will run through the different hosting options provided by NameCheap - a particular supplier of hosting - and how to purchase a plan with them.

In this lecture, I discuss alternative reliable providers of hosting.

Once you have purchased your domain and your hosting you will need to make sure that the nameservers for the domain are correctly pointing to your hosting. In this lecture, you will learn about setting your domain nameservers.

In this lecture, I will explain what SSL certificates are and why you need one. I also cover how your SSL is applied to your site.

In this lecture, you will learn how to set up a business email that matches your domain in your hosting cPanel.

If you choose a different hosting provider, you may not have access to cPanel, so in this lecture I advise what you can do if you are unable to set up your email in cPanel.

In this lecture, you will learn about the value of having a business email that matches your domain.

This lecture will introduce you to Softaculous, which you will use to install an instance of WordPress on your domain.  

In case you are unable to use Softaculous or similar software with your hosting provider, this lecture will guide you through how to install WordPress manually.

This lecture instructs you to download the zip file located in the resources section called traveltemplate.zip, save it to your device and extract the contents.

In this lecture, I discuss the easiest method for importing the template.

In this lecture, I will help you troubleshoot any issues importing the theme template.

This lecture instructs you on how you can learn about the manual method for importing the theme template. You will need the course resources downloaded earlier in the course for this.

In this lecture, I will introduce you to the affiliate network that you will be using to connect travel suppliers to your site and obtain travel deals to advertise. You will learn a bit more about how earning a commission works, and I will walk you through the steps for signing up to the affiliate network.

In this lecture, I will show you which programs to sign up to in order to obtain your affiliate widgets, and how to do it.

In this lecture, you will learn how to set up the search form for the header of your home page.

In this lecture, you will learn how to set up the search form for the header of your Hotels page.

In this lecture, you will learn how to set up the search form for the header of your Cars page.

In this lecture, you will learn how to set up the search form for the header of your Bike Rental page.

In this lecture, you will learn how to set up the button for the header of your SIM Cards page.

In this lecture, you will learn how to set up the enquiry form for the header of your Compensation page.

In this lecture, I demonstrate how to set up the widget for the Top Airline Deals sections across your website.

In this lecture, I demonstrate how to set up the widget for the Top Destinations sections across your website.

In this lecture, I demonstrate how to set up the widget for the Popular Hotels sections across your website.

In this lecture, I will walk you through the steps for setting up your travel affiliate plugin on WordPress.

In this lecture, I will walk you through how you can add different payment methods to your travel affiliate account so that you can receive payment for commissions you generate.

In this lecture, I run through the WordPress settings and show you what you can change through the WordPress admin panel.

In this lecture, you will learn about the WordPress theme that I have chosen to use as a base for your template, and how you can adjust its basic settings.

In this lecture, you will learn what WordPress plugins are and why you should use them. I also highlight some popular plugins that are not used in your template and therefore won't be discussed in more detail in the following lectures, but are worth knowing about for future reference.

You will have already been introduced to this plugin earlier in the course, when you imported the site template. Here I discuss how this can also be used as a backup plugin to store versions of your site that you can revert to if anything goes wrong.

In this lecture, I cover why an anti-spam plugin is essential, and run through a couple of different options.

Learn how your blog posts are displayed around the site using shortcodes.

As such, in order to remain compliant with current regulations, it is important to notify your users that cookies are used on the site, and the way this is done is with a cookie popup. I run through setting up a plugin that ensures that your site is compliant with local and worldwide regulations on the topic.

Good customer service means having a way for your customers to contact you. There are many ways to add a contact form to your site. Here I will go through how to set this up with our recommended plugin.

This plugin provides you with a user-friendly visual editor that will help you to design your site without any coding knowledge. I run through this briefly in this lecture but will return to it in more detail later in the course.

Capturing email addresses and sending out regular newsletters is a very important part of the promotion of your site. In this lecture, I discuss some of the top plugins available for this and run through the settings for my recommended plugin.

In this lecture, I briefly introduce you to some plugins that extend the capabilities of your basic theme.

I make a brief reference to your travel affiliate plugin, however this is covered in more detail earlier in the course.

It’s really important to protect your site from malicious attacks and ensure it doesn’t get hacked. In this lecture, I run through a solution that can be used out of the box to give your site this protection and give you peace of mind.

You should use a WordPress caching plugin on your WordPress website to improve its loading speed and performance. In this lecture, I will discuss this in more detail and introduce you to the plugin that I have included with the template.

SEO is vital for optimizing your site for search engine results so that it can be found by potential clients. There are many plugins that provide you with intelligent assistance with this. I highlight a few and run through the settings for the plugin that we have included with your template.

In this lecture, I cover this page builder plugin in more detail and run through some of its main settings.

In this lecture, I walk you through an example of how to use your page builder to add a new travel widget provided by your travel affiliate.

In this lecture, I discuss why adding unique content to a website is important and how you can further your reach with your blog content.

This lecture provides you with step-by-step guidance on how to add a new blog post.

If you set up a white label, the user will view search results on a page on your website with your own branding. In this lecture, I run through some considerations to note before you decide whether or not to add this.

In this lecture, I will show you how to set up the white label on a subdomain of your site.

In this lecture, I highlight some other affiliate networks that you can apply to in order to access even more travel affiliate opportunities.

Congratulations, you have now successfully completed your course on how to build a travel affiliate WordPress site and you are ready for business. In this lecture, I run through some of the key learning points of the course.