When you strip it down, building a website usually starts with three basic choices: a domain name, a server, and the site software itself. Everything else grows from those decisions.
A good domain name should come first. Whether the site is meant to support a personal identity or a company brand, the name should stay as close to that purpose as possible. Once the site goes live, the domain becomes the single entry point people remember, visit, and share, so it carries far more weight than it may seem at the beginning.
After that comes hosting. The website files and database need a place to live, and in most cases a cloud server is the better option. From the standpoint of everyday use and later optimization, it tends to be more flexible and practical than traditional shared hosting. That said, not everyone wants to spend time managing a cloud server. If that feels like too much trouble, shared hosting is still a workable choice—as long as you pay attention to the configuration and make sure it matches the requirements of the software you plan to run.
Then there is the website platform itself. For someone who has spent more than a decade working with WordPress, it is hard to want anything else. That is partly preference, but it also comes from familiarity. Long-term use brings a much better understanding of how WordPress works, how themes and plugins are developed, and how to make use of a mature set of tools. With well-developed themes and plugins already in hand, building a site and getting it running becomes much more efficient.
That does not mean everyone has to choose WordPress. The more important point is to choose a system you actually know, understand, and like using. That is usually where the best results come from. Some people remain committed to other platforms no matter how many times they are told how capable WordPress is. A friend of mine, for example, has always preferred zblog. Even after rebuilding his site countless times, he stuck with it for a long while—though recently he finally started experimenting with WordPress too.
Once the domain, server, and software are ready, most of the preparation work is already done. The actual setup process is fairly direct: point the domain to the server, bind the domain on the server side, upload the site program, install it or import the program and database, choose a suitable theme or build a custom template, and then add the plugins or features the site needs. At that stage, the website is basically built.
But there are two parts of website creation that matter just as much as the technical setup, if not more. One is positioning. Before building anything, it helps to be clear about why the site should exist in the first place. What is it supposed to do? What kind of result are you hoping for? How much time and energy can you realistically invest? And how long can you keep going with it?
Those questions are easy to ignore when the focus is only on launching something quickly, but they are often what decide whether the project has any lasting value. Building a website without a clear purpose is possible, but it rarely means much on its own.