Wordpress

Build Your Own Website Easily With WordPress

Creating a professional website is important if you work from home or are trying to get that elusive first project. As a home for your business, your website can showcase your skills, provide details of your experience, and give potential clients and customers a convenient way to get in touch.

What’s more, creating or working with a website is a useful skill. For many working at home, getting a website up and running is an additional service that can be sold to your existing clients.

WordPress

You don’t need to spend a fortune getting a website developed for you. You can do it yourself, even if you have never had any experience. Thankfully, there is a secret – WordPress. WordPress is a free system that streamlines and simplifies the process of web development and, as you will find out, can still be flexible enough for just about any website imaginable.

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What Does WordPress Do Besides Blogging?

Many people have heard of WordPress but do not understand the system’s full capabilities. Most people think that WordPress is a platform for blogging when, in fact, it is far more than that.

Today, WordPress has grown into what would be called a content management system, or CMS. A CMS is a tool to store all the information required for your website and present it to your visitors professionally and organizationally. Other content management systems include Joomla and Drupal, but the reality is that WordPress is the easiest to understand, the easiest to work with, and the most easily adaptable.

Let’s look at – in simple terms – how exactly WordPress works once it is installed:

You access a convenient WYSIWYG (What You See Is What You Get) interface to work with all of your website’s content securely.

You can create new web pages in a variety of formats.

The content that you create is stored in a database.

You can use the same interface to edit your content in the database.

When visitors access your website, the database’s information is presented in a website layout. You can change this layout anytime; your content will automatically adopt the right look.

In technical terms, WordPress is fairly advanced. This advanced functionality has been used in many exciting ways in the nine years since the platform was launched.

Why Should You Use WordPress?

You may be wondering why people choose WordPress as their CMS. The answer is that WordPress can make just about anything tha you want to do easier, quicker, and more convenient!

Press agency Reuters uses WordPress to keep journalists up to date with the latest news as it happens. Music streaming service Spotify powers its entire website with WordPress.

WordPress makes creating, editing, and organizing your content simple and, as a result, less time-consuming. That gives you more time to focus on other areas of your business. WordPress also allows you to get a professional design to make your website look great – often free.

The best way to see how WordPress streamlines setting up your website is to try it for yourself. WordPress is easy to install on your web hosting, or if you sign up on the WordPress website, you can explore its features without setup.

Installing WordPress Made Easy

There are a few different ways to get started with WordPress, depending on your budget, your expertise, and whether you use a web hosting service.

If you are trying out WordPress and do not have your web hosting, visit signup.wordpress.com and sign up for a free account. You will be guided through the entire process of creating your WordPress site, which will be stored on the WordPress servers for you. Paying for a custom domain name (your website’s address) is also possible during sign-up.

Alternatively, you can install WordPress on your server if you already have a web hosting plan supporting PHP and MySQL. This can be done by visiting WordPress.org and downloading the necessary files. The website also offers a convenient guide to installing WordPress in 5 minutes.

Finally, see if your web hosting provider offers an automatic script installer like Softaculous. If so, you can log in from your web hosting control panel and install WordPress in just a few clicks.

Finding A Great Theme

Once WordPress is up and running, you must log in with the details you chose during setup – usually at yourdomain.com/wp-admin. You will see the WordPress dashboard, a control panel that lets you work with your website, and a range of menu items on the left-hand side. A good start is selecting a theme under the Appearance menu.

Using the ‘Install Themes’ tab at the top of your screen, you can explore an extensive database of layouts and designs for your website. From conventional business layouts to distinctive and unusual looks, there are currently 1,607 themes available. After finding one you like, installing it is as easy as clicking the ‘Install Now’ button.

As well as these free WordPress themes available from within your control panel, many websites offer a great selection of free articles, some of which are ‘premium’ themes that incur a charge. If you are starting with WordPress, free music is a good choice. Of course, paying for a premium theme guarantees high quality, good performance, and continued support from the theme developers.

For professional WordPress themes, check out these websites:

  • ThemeForest
  • WooThemes
  • GetYourThemes

Once you have installed your theme, you can customize it to suit your specific requirements conveniently. You can do this using the widget.

Using Widgets

Many people choose WordPress because it has so many professional-looking themes. However, it can be useful to tweak your chosen theme to make it more individual.

When a developer creates a theme, he will name specific areas of the layout that you can customize. For example, you may be able to change the menu at the top of your design, a sidebar that runs down the side of every page, or the footer.

Under the Appearance menu on your WordPress control panel, select the Widgets option. On the right, you will see a list of your theme’s different areas that you can customize. A range of included widgets can drag and drop into the relevant section on the left.

Standard WordPress widgets include Links to other websites, an automatic list of your Pages, and a calendar of when Posts have been published. You can also install other Widgets free of charge in Plugins.

Use Widgets to personalize your theme. Once you are happy, it is time to start thinking about your content’s most important thing.

Pages And Posts

A common obstacle for people new to WordPress is the distinction between two similar types of content – Pages and Posts. Whenever you want to publish something on your website, you must decide whether it is a Page or a Post and select the appropriate option.

Originally, WordPress only offered the ability to create short-term Blog Posts. Posts are time-specific content items; when made, they have the current time and date attached to them. Creating a new Post causes two things to happen:

An individual web page is made with the content of your post.

Your post is added to a single page that collects each post together.

This is perhaps clearer as an example – let’s imagine you have a blog section on your website at yourdomain.com/blog. When you publish a new blog post, a single page will be created – for example, this could be yourdomain.com/blog/my-post-name. But simultaneously, your blog post will be added to the central page at yourdomain.com/blog, allowing visitors to see all of your most recent posts in one convenient place.

Posts are also added to your website’s RSS feed – more on that in our next article on advanced WordPress tips. On the other hand, pages are static items that do not have a date attached to them. They are the pages of your website that offer general information about your business.

If you’re still unsure, ask yourself this question before creating your content – will this stand-alone (a Page) or part of a section of the website that I will regularly update (a Post)?

Explore And Learn On The Fly

You now understand the concepts of WordPress, including what it can do, common terminology, and why you should be using WordPress to build your site. So start exploring!

The great thing about WordPress is that it is intuitive and easy to use. Anything you create can be deleted or edited easily, so the best advice is to check the menu options in your control panel and start working on your content right now.

Once you’ve started, read our next article on making the most of your WordPress installation to create an outstanding website.

About author

I work for WideInfo and I love writing on my blog every day with huge new information to help my readers. Fashion is my hobby and eating food is my life. Social Media is my blood to connect my family and friends.
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