Build Your Own Website Using WordPress
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by: Guest
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The thought of building your own website sounds really daunting to a lot of people. I\'m over 50 with no computer training whatsoever, and it sounded really scary to me!
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The thought of building your own website sounds really daunting to a lot of people. I'm over 50 with no computer training whatsoever, and it sounded really scary to me! Yet, a part of me really wanted to do it. I knew that I wanted to work online, for all of the advantages that has of working my own hours, not having to travel, being able to connect with people all over the world from my remote corner in the West of Ireland.
I tried all the usual things that people try - having a webmaster, using Frontpage, having a free blog etc. None of them created the type of site that I wanted, and I found it very frustrating to be trying to explain what I wanted to others, and having to wait for them to make even a small change.
Early last year, I started hearing more and more people taking about WordPress.org and all the plug-ins and different things it could do. At the time, I didn't even know what a plug-in was!! So it added to my confusion. As these things tend to happen, I started hearing the name pop up more and more, and I began to notice that a lot of the sites I liked and was adding to my swipe file, were WordPress sites.
The first thing I did was to find someone on Elance to put up a simple site for me. This was great, but had the same communication difficulties as having a webmaster. However having the site, made me really appreciate how good WordPress is. I even discovered quite easily what widgets and plug-ins are - I'll explain below what they are, so you can be a few steps ahead if you decide to set up your own site.
Plug-ins are like mini-programmes that developers make which allows you to add the features that YOU want to your site. Most of them are free, and are very easy to ad from with your site. You can get plug-ins for nearly everything - to link your site to Facebook and Twitter, to link to other sites, to be able to add audio and video easily. It makes life very easy.
Widgets are the things that you can add to your sidebars - like categories, page lists, opt-in boxes, recommended books etc. You add your content by just typing things in - you don't need to know any code. It's easy to add images, audio and video to your site - you just upload.
These are the first steps you need to take to set up your site:
- Choose a domain name that suits your purpose. If you search with Google, you'll find a few companies that sell domains. You should only pay around $8- 10 a year for your domain.
- The first thing that you will need to do is to get a hosting account - choose one with 24 hour support, a Cpanel and one that uses Simple Scripts, as this is easiest for Wordpress. There are several companies to choose from and you will get everything you need for multiple sites for around $7 a month.
- Go to to the cpanel of your hosting site and upload Wordpress to you domain.
- Now you are ready to start playing with Wordpress.
- Go into your admin area and find the Themes section - you can easily change themes until you find a look that you like.
- You have a choice in the admin between posts and pages - choose Posts if you are writing on your Blog, or pages if you are putting up a page on your site. You can easily have both on the same site. So you blog and website are at the same place.
- Go to the Widgets area to see what you want to put in your sidebars - you just drag things across to the area you want it to be in.
- Visit the Plug-ins section and see what's there to help you do what you want to do.
As I'm writing this - I am amazed at myself. I am saying things are easy, which this time last year would have had me in a state of panic to even think about them! I love being able to just make small changes to the layout or content of my site whenever I want to. I know how many other people out there- especially us who didn't grow up with computers and the internet - would love to be able to have an easy to manage website, so I hope that this will help you to get started.
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