subject: How To Create A Website With Wordpress [print this page] Learning how to create a website with WordPress is an essential skill for any web developer or designer to have- WordPress is one of the most popular open-source website platforms around and it is the backbone of the web presence of many individuals and businesses. The ability to create fully functional and professional websites without the need to have a working knowledge of any programming language or complicated networking applications is very attractive to beginners, but the flexibility and complexity makes it just as useful for experts.
Installation
Installing WordPress is streamlined and simple compared with most other web applications, but it can still be daunting for newcomers. Keep in mind that you will need your own host server and domain name in order to have a live installation of WordPress, if that's not an investment you are willing to make you can try out the free version at WordPress.com (WordPress.org runs the self-hosted version).
The backend interface of almost all hosting servers will make installation a snap, if you use Cpanel, H-sphere, or a similar backend, chances are you have QuickInstall, Fantastico, or another automatic installation module available. If you do, simply find WordPress within the menu and hit install, it's that simple. It will even create the mySQL database for you.
If for some reason this process isn't available to you, follow WordPress' official installation guide on their website and upload the WordPress package via FTP to your site. After that, just visit your installation directory with a web browser and follow the onscreen instructions. You will need to create a mySQL database yourself, you can do this via your hosting backend. Make sure you remember the username and password, you'll need it during installation.
Setting up Your Site
There's a lot more than just installation when learning how to create a website, now we just have a blank template on our hands. The next steps depend entirely on what type of site you want to make, WordPress is capable of pretty much anything including blogs, e-commerce, forums, anything you can imagine.
The first step is to find a suitable theme for your site, you can do this right from the WordPress backend (that you can access by going to yoursite.com/wp-admin) under the themes menu. Make sure you pick one that was made by a reputable developer- shoddy theme coding could make your site insecure and buggy.
But your design duties aren't over just because you picked out a theme, now you'll need to manage your widgets and populate your sidebars as well. You can do this by displaying related social media information, RSS feeds, a blogroll, or anything else of interest to your visitors. You might also want to get a nice logo for your site instead of just sticking with plain text for your title.
After that it's just a matter of populating your site with content, which is usually articles and blog posts but can be pictures and videos too. Content is king, this is the most important part and will ultimately determine the success of your site.
These were the basics of setting up a site with WordPress, but it gets a lot more complex than this- there are entire books on the subject. It's best to learn as you go, so just keep working at it and you'll be a WordPress pro in no time.
