3 Things You’ll Regret Not Knowing Before Starting a WordPress Blog (2026)
Many of you are using WordPress to create blogs today, right? This guide covers domain, hosting, and theme decisions that many new WordPress bloggers overlook and later regret. Read it carefully. It can save you a meaningful amount of money.
Why Your First WordPress Blog Setup Matters
Many people spend a lot of money when they start a WordPress blog. When I first started WPlaybook, I used hosting companies used by lecturers (Cloudways is a typical example), paid themes, and spent a lot of money, and the monthly maintenance fee was over 50,000 won.
But for most people, despite this huge initial investment, their blogs aren’t getting any traffic. After spending that money, many beginners still see little traffic. They post without a clear strategy, fail to recover costs, and quickly become discouraged.
If you think about it rationally, the result is expected. A blog with only a few early posts rarely builds strong trust. Inconsistent quality and weak structure make visitors leave quickly.
It's normal to not get many views in the early days of your blog.
Therefore, it’s a waste of money to use hosting for high traffic in the early days of your blog. It also takes time to get used to WordPress, so you should consider the first three months or so as a setup period.
What Does a Cost-Effective Setup Mean?
I said today I’d give you the initial setup for creating a WordPress blog that will give you the most bang for your buck, but what do I mean by bang for your buck?
The best WordPress setup for your money is the one that’s powerful enough to get your initial blog up and running without any issues, but it’s also the cheapest way to go. The performance of your blog is one of the factors that determines your Google ranking, but if you go for something too good, you’ll end up wasting money, as I mentioned earlier.
Here’s how I recommend creating a WordPress blog.
Recommended ways to create a WordPress blog
1. buy a domain
The first step is to buy a domain. It’s the most important step, right? Once you buy it, it’s pretty hard to change it. It’s a very, very important step, and I have two comments.
- Do not include a dash (-) for spaces in domain addresses. For example: wp-playbook.com
- Use .com whenever possible.
Below is a list of domains I’ve bought and regretted, and I’m sure you’ll buy a lot of them too, and there will be a lot of trial and error.
The first domain had a dash in it, so I eventually changed it to wplaybook.com, which is what you see today. For the third domain, hangulblogging101.com, the official English romanization of Hangul is Hangeul. For the fourth domain, I bought .online because it was really cheap, but people don’t remember it. Renewal costs are more expensive than .com.
The root of your domain is .com.
Domain purchases are made through Namecheap
There’s no guarantee that you’ll be able to buy the domain you want, because someone else has already taken all the good ones. Search for the domain you want on the Namecheap site.
Once you’ve decided on a domain you like, buy it from Namecheap. I’ve seen a lot of Korean domain sites, but don’t buy a domain from a Korean site. First, it’s expensive, and second, you’ll regret it later.
We’ll cover how to buy a domain on Namecheap in a future post.
Whois vs Namecheap
In Korea, you seem to be using a place called whois, but all the sites that sell domains in Korea are more expensive than foreign domain sites.
The chart above compares the same domain on Whois and Namecheap. In many cases, Namecheap offers lower first-year pricing (around $6 for .com) and more predictable renewal costs.
Namecheap domain purchase cost: $5.98 (first year)
In addition to this, Korean domain sites are too inconvenient when you want to transfer your domain or change your WordPress hosting. On the other hand, namecheap has the advantage that you can move your blog server without taking it down if you change hosting in the future.
Other purchasing methods to avoid
I also do not recommend buying through GoDaddy or directly via hosting-company domain bundles, which are often less cost-efficient. Godaddy is literally expensive, and buying from a hosting company is expensive because they have a middleman margin. Also, hosting companies specialize in hosting, not domains.
2. Choose a hosting provider
It’s easy to think of hosting as taking care of your blog, so choosing a hosting company means choosing a management company that will store and manage your blog data. There are tons of factors to consider when choosing hosting (we’ll cover them later), but for now, when you’re just starting out, the most important things are server specs, which determine your website’s speed, and money.
WordPress Hosting Recommendations for 2026
My current recommendations for WordPress hosting are Hostinger and ChemiCloud. As a side note, I currently host my blog, Wise Stats Life, with Hostinger. ChemiCloud is a strong hosting option right now.
Above is the Google Web Core Vitals result from Wise Stats Life. With a score like this, you should have good visibility on Google and shouldn’t have any problems running.
These are some of the factors to consider when choosing WordPress hosting. You’re probably thinking, “What the heck?” but for now, just know that there’s a lot to think about.
- Cost: Most important
- Which system is your server? LiteSpeed vs. Nginx vs. Apache
- CPU/RAM specs: number of CPUs or amount of RAM
- Storage specs: SATA vs NVMe
- Database specification: MySQL vs. MariaDB
- How Object cache works: Memcached vs Redis
- Data center location: Where is your blog stored?
- CDN availability and type: Cloudflare vs. QUIC.cloud
- Cache plugin compatibility: Use Litespeed cache (free) or not
- Customer service: the ability to fix things when something goes wrong with your blog
Here’s a comparison table for both hosting companies
| element | Hostinger Cloud Startup | ChemiCloud WP Turbo |
|---|---|---|
| Cost (per year) | 7.99/month (with cash back) | 6.95/month (with WPlaybook discount) |
| CPU/RAM Specifications | 2 CPU / 3 GB | 3 CPU / 3 GB |
| Storage | 200 GB NVMe | 40 GB NVMe |
| DB | MariaDB | MariaDB |
| UI usability | Intuitive More adaptable than cPanel | Linux-based Adaptation time required (That’s why Installing the WPlaybook video series) |
| Object cache | Memcached | Redis |
| Data Center/ CDN | 9 / QUIC.cloud (Singapore) | 11 / QUIC.cloud (Singapore) |
| Cache plugin | LiteSpeed Cache | LiteSpeed Cache |
| Customer Service (personal opinion) | Friendly. 4.6 / 5 | Friendly. 4.9 / 5 |
While hosted language has the advantage of an easy-to-use UI, hosted WordPress doesn’t require much attention once you’ve installed it, which is why we’ve created the we’ve created a series of detailed WordPress installation videosWordPress installation with ChemiCloud hosting video series in as much detail as possible.
- Update 4/24/2024: WPlaybook and ChemiCloud have now partnered to offer additional discount coupons. It’s much cheaper to use ChemiCloud.
Hosting purchase cost: $6.95 per month for a one-year contract, $4.95 per month for a three-year contract.
Choose a hosting contract length that suits your situation (time and money). However, make sure you choose Turbo as your plan type! This is because it’s the best value for money of the three plans (Starter, Pro, and Turbo), and you have additional options for performance upgrades.
I used to tell you to buy a 1-year hosting plan, but as of 3/20/24, I’ve changed my mind. This decision is based on feedback from 60+ WPlaybook community members running their blogs on ChemiCloud.
Hosting Services to Avoid 1 – Cloudways
Most people who use WordPress in South Korea choose to host with Cloudways because they earn a lot of commissions, which isn’t a bad thing, but here’s why I don’t recommend them for WordPress beginners.
- The UI and features are more unfriendly than I expected.
- There are more hidden costs than you think (for example, repeated setup/rework costs)
- Not a great price/performance ratio.
For Vultr on Cloudways, the ability to have a host server in South Korea was attractive. The South Korea server is no longer available.
So when I launched my WPlaybook blog, I was torn between Cloudways and Rocket, and after testing with the same conditions on both hosting, I chose Rocket.
I recommend Rocket Hosting as a premium hosting provider to choose after your blog has grown to some extent.
Hosting Services to Avoid 2 – Cafe24
We recommend avoiding South Korean WordPress hosting companies as much as possible. Among them Cafe24 hosting is one of them. Here’s why
- Costs a lot of extra money. Sounds like a bargain, right? Well, you’ll have to pay extra if it doesn’t work out.
- Server capacity is too small. For startups, the capacity provided by the buildup plan will overflow when you back up your own blog.
- Performance is too bad. Cheap is cheap, try entering your own Cafe24 blog into keycdn, a site that measures hosting performance. It takes over 1 second… (That’s worse than Tistory.
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- The migration process is inconvenient. WPlaybook already has people who have moved to ChemiCloud from Cafe24, and it’
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In many ways, when you first start with WordPress, hosting that’s cheap and then turns out to be a pain in the ass that makes you suffer. If I knew someone who did, I’d pack a lunch and chase them around.
We also recommend avoiding foreign hosts like Bluehost, SiteGround, HostGator, and DreamHost.
3. Choose a WordPress theme
Choosing a WordPress theme is very important. If you choose the wrong theme and don’t have a responsive homepage, your PageSpeed Insights (PSI) score will suffer on mobile and PC. Think of your PSI score as your ranking in Google search results. It’s very important because a lower ranking means less money.
WordPress Featured Themes 1 – Kadence
- Pro 1: Lightweight and relatively easy to use, even for beginners
The Kadence theme is not very popular in Korea, but it’s really popular, stable, and great for beginners. (I’m a big fan of the Kadence theme.) The WPlaybook site you are viewing is built with Kadence.
For me, Cadence is one of the easiest to use, most comfortable, feature-packed, and lightweight WordPress themes out there among many WordPress themes.
- Pro 2: The functionality is crazy when you master it.
I highly recommend it if you’re new to WordPress. Once you get familiar with the Cadence theme, you’ll be able to visualize what all the websites are doing in your head, and you’ll be able to look at a website and copy the design and implement it, even if you don’t know any code. I also think it’s really easy to grow with it as you grow your blog and expand your branding and expand your functionality.
This is the website of Ain Hospital, which I made 100% with the Cadence theme. It’s currently being used in a real business, and customers are happy with it. Personally, if I could use the Cadence theme perfectly, I think it would be enough to make a living.
- Pro 3: You can fine-tune your AdSense ad placements
If you look at the ALL100 AdSense site, the site with the best placement of AdSense ads, using the Cadence theme built by WPlaybook, which we’ll talk about later, you’ll see that the placement of AdSense ads is very tight, with no white space. At the same time, their PSI score remains near perfect.
Blogs with optimally placed AdSense ads earn significantly more than blogs without them.
- Fatal flaw: expensive
The basic theme, Gutenberg blocks, and starter template are free. However, for more advanced features (such as using Hooks to create different sidebars for different pages, or font customization), you’ll need to purchase a paid version.
As I said before, because it’s so comfortable and advanced features can be implemented with just a few clicks, the Kadence theme is expensive. It’s close to $149 for a year. For reference, I own a lifetime license for the Kadence theme ($799).
So, if I tell you how to get the most bang for your buck, am I telling you to buy a $150 theme every year! No, it doesn’t.
We've created a free Kadence theme for blogs just for you.
WPlaybook’s ALL100 is a blog-specific theme with the most essential pages you need to run a blog: Home, Blog, and About pages, a list of posts, and the Author block for each post. You won’t have any trouble running your blog, and it’s also optimized for future AdSense setup.
Don’t bother with a paid theme, use Cadence. The current WPlaybook Initial Setup series is a really detailed tutorial on how to get a perfect Google Page Score using my hosting of choice and the ALL100 theme. Follow along and you’ll be off to a great start with an ALL 100 PSI score!
WordPress Featured Themes 2 – GeneratePress
The GeneratePress theme(GP) is probably the most famous theme for WordPress in Korea. The features or advantages of the GP theme are first, fast, second, and third. The old WPlaybook homepage was also made with GP.
GP themes cost $44 for a year, or $224 for lifetime theme licenses. However, GeneratePress requires a separate purchase of the Gutenberg block GenerateBlocks, which are Gutenberg blocks, must be purchased separately for GeneratePress. GenerateBlocks costs $30 per year for 1 site and $52 for more than 1 site.
GeneratePress and GenerateBlocks cost $74 per year.
However, I wouldn’t recommend the GP theme to anyone new to WordPress, as the UI isn’t friendly enough for beginners, and implementing features that Kadence can do with a few clicks requires custom code to put into your webpage.
Also, the faster the theme, the less coding you have to do, which means you have to set up each column in detail. For example, in Kadence, when you add a paragraph block, the margins are automatically filled in on PC, tablet, and mobile, while in GP, you have to check the page on PC, tablet, and mobile and set the margins manually. At this point, you’re not running a blog, you’re just learning how to make a WordPress website.
Nevertheless, you know your way around the web (CSS, HTML, PHP, Grid concepts, etc.) and want to create lightweight and fast web pages, we recommend using the GP theme is recommended.
Closing thoughts
If you’re new to WordPress blogging, here are some of the things you’ll regret not knowing before you start building a successful WordPress blog. Here are the highlights.
- Buy a domain: NameCheap
- Hosting services: chemicloud recommended (beginners)
- WordPress Themes: Kadence Theme Recommendation – Also Consider WPlaybook Initialization!
So, armed with all this knowledge, let’s get started with creating a WordPress blog!
