WordPress Crash Course

First you will need to decide on what type of website you want.  What will you use the site for?

• To promote your business
• To sell your products or services
• To sell other peoples products or services
• For non-profit such as a church or charitable organization
• Just for fun or as a hobby

If your new site will not be just for fun and you are serious about it then those free sites where everything is provided for you are not recommended.

Next you’ll need to decide if you want to make your website yourself or you want to hire someone else to do it.  Even if you plan to hire someone I suggest that you learn, at least, the basics of doing it yourself.

This will assure that if you need to make a quick change or update to your site that you are able to do so.  Also, if you hire someone you’ll want to know what you are talking about.  You want to be sure that you get the type of site that you really want and that you the designer doesn’t take advantage of you.

To build a real website or blog you’ll need three things to start with and they are…

1)  A domain name

2)  A hosting account

3)  Website building software

It also takes a little bit of money to start a real website.  The domain name will cost you about $12 per year.  The hosting account will cost around $10 per month and website building software usually goes from $100 to $400, but the software that I’m going to tell you about is actually FREE!  This is not to be confused with the “everything is included free website solutions”.  The problem with those is that you don’t actually own the site.  They can place unwanted ads on your site and if they don’t like what you put on your site or it’s used for any type of commercial purposes they can take your site down without notice.

The most difficult part of building your first website is learning how to use the website building software.  Many people think it’s overwhelming to start a website or that it takes weeks or months to learn how to do it.  The truth is, it’s now easier than ever to make your first website and anyone can learn how to do it very quickly.  That is if you do it “the easy way”.  The easy way to make a website is by using a piece of software called WordPress.  See my post What is WordPress.

It’s also important to choose the right domain name, the right type of hosting and the right type of WordPress software (hint, there are two types).  If you would like free access to 7 short video tutorials that will show you exactly how to have your first website online in less than two hours just add your name and email address to the form in the top, right sidebar.