More dog breeders than ever want to get their website, just to blog about their dogs and future litters, but also to showcase their titles and update their followers.

But how can dog breeders get a professional-looking website without much money and time to invest? Well, we’ve got you covered!

1. Hosting and Domain Name

First things first.

Every website must be hosted, there are several web hosting services more or less expensive depending on a lot of factors such as quality, support, features, backups, etc.

The best host for most websites is Bluehost: less than $5 a month and trusted by millions of websites. Check below if your website’s ideal domain name is still available. If so, you can reserve it right now for cheap so you can use it whenever you are ready.

Is your kennel domain name still available?

2. Install WordPress

Manage your kennel website without any coding!

Once you have a host, you need to create the website itself (ie. the pages!) and I am pretty sure you do not know how to code so this is where WordPress comes into play.

It is what will create and run your website without you typing a single line of code whatsoever! Oh and… WordPress is 100% free! And used by millions of website (and some of the biggest, like Breeding Business!)

Better, you can set it up using Bluehost’s 1-click installation process.

See our illustrated guide to install WordPress on Bluehost.

3. Get Breedr for WordPress

Turn your site into a dog breeder website!

WordPress is the backbone of a website, and it allows for themes and plugins to be installed to adapt it to whatever website you want to showcase to the world. Breedr for WordPress is a WordPress plugin that we develop and maintain ourselves here, it allows you to run a breeder website out of the box!

Create dog profiles, log their health checks, awards, and even add video and photo galleries. Breedr for WordPress automatically generates the pages, the pedigree of each dog, and even your dogs’ past, present and future litters. It works with all WordPress themes!

This step is optional. You can do everything manually, it’s a lot of extra work but it’s obviously cost-effective, ha! See a live demo of Breedr for WordPress.

4. Add Content To Your Website

Content is King!

Your dog breeder website is now up and running, you just have to put some content on it. Add the basic pages: about us, contact us, our history, frequently asked questions, etc.

Finally, as you now have Breedr for WordPress, you should add all your dogs and litters on it. Lucky you, the pages for your dogs and litters will be created and updated automatically, so will all the beautiful pedigrees charts.

In addition, you should also add pages to give more information about the breed you work with. Do not copy and paste other websites, give your opinion on your breed and its future with your own words. Don’t try to be academic in your writing, it will bore your readers!

Once you have some quality articles and content posted on your website, don’t make these 7 worst mistakes commonly found on kennel websites.

5. Themify Your Website

Make it look sexy!

Once your website is literally ready to be visited, you should make it look beautiful. The content being here, it will help you understand what theme(s) will suit your pages the best.

There are free themes available on the web, but there are also premium paying themes (around $50) that you can also get. The latter usually come loaded with extra features and customisation settings.

We highly recommend the free theme Cerauno by the creators of WordPress. However, because it is free, it won’t be updated much so we’ve built our own WP-Breeding theme that comes with Breedr for WordPress.

Otherwise, look at our article with 10+ Amazing WordPress Themes For Dog Breeders.

6. Add Plugins

Add features to your dog breeder website!

Most WordPress websites have a few extra free plugins to make them run better or to help you manage them easily. You do not have to add these but if you want to, take a look at:

  • Jetpack — adds powerful features including customization, traffic stats, social sharing, content management, and performance tools
  • Contact Form 7 — allows you to intuitively add customizable contact forms
  • Google XML Sitemaps — generates a special file (XML sitemap) that help search engines better index your dog breeder website

There are thousands of plugins, most are free but some are paying (like Breedr for WordPress), for you to browse once you get familiar with your website. You can also visit the official WordPress’s Plugin Repository.