Before you start.
If you are thinking about starting you own website there are many things you must do.
- Decide what it is you want to do with the site.
The first thing you should do is to decide what it is you want to do with the site. That will be a major factor in picking which site you will use to build or host your web.
If you have decided on WordPress as your web software you must clearly understand that WordPress is just that. It is the software that runs your website. In order to run that software, you must have your own site to run WordPress on.
2. Decide how much time you want to spend maintaining the site as opposed to time spent creating the content with WordPress. These are two very different things.
The next thing you will need to do is to decide how much control you want over the site.
I had four very basic requirements.
The site must be free, at least initially
It must have a site search
I must be able to back it up offsite
I must have control over all of the site contents.
—– Cost of Website —-
There are many hidden costs. You will need to buy a domain, or pay for it after the first year, 20 – 40 yr. If you want your domain secure (and at some point you will) that will be an extra $50 a year. Then there will be additional costs for plugins for the site. No matter what you want to do that involves more than very basis editing you will need a plugin to do. Most plugins have a free option, but you will find that aging, unless you want the very basic plugin features (and you usually do) it will cost you. Because I do not want to spend any more than I absolutely have to I will got to great lengths to avoid extra costs.
One of your top considerations should be the support and help available for the site. Email support is not good. Waiting for a day when you are starting out is a long time. However, live chat is usually an additional charge, or not available at all. One big advantage of using WordPress is that there is almost unlimited support for WordPress on the internet for free. Remember that WordPress support is for the WordPress software, not the same as support for the site you are using to host WordPress.
It is critical to understand the difference between WordPress.org and WordPress.com
Watch Here .
I would strongly urge anyone w/o a lot of internet development experience to use a free site to determine if you really want to set up a website
Despite all of the drawbacks, the WordPress.com free site is a great place to get your feet wet. It is free. It is a secure domain. It is very easy to just join and get going. I have a test site there for comparing it against other sites. For the reasons mentioned in the video, I did not choose it as my ‘real’ site. But it was the first WordPress site I set up and was instrumental in my final choice of WordPress as my underlying software. See Web Sites/ Hosts for more information.
If you google ‘WordPress Beginner’ you can get many, many videos on getting started with WordPress. However, many are geared to what you do after you have set up your website or are videos by a site vendor telling you how easy it is to set up their site. The videos by website vendors will tell you how simple it is to use their site, but leave out all of the hidden costs you will have to actually get a usable site.
One last warning about WordPress. If you decide on WordPress as your site software you will have to learn some basic CSS and HTML. If you are not willing to do this then think twice before choosing WordPress.
Additional References:
WordPress Starter Site – How the WordPress Beginner site was set up. Remember that this was set up by people who know what they wanted and with the technical background to accomplish it. Make sure that before you get too involved you know what you want, and what you capabilities are.
Getting Started Tutorial for WordPress
This tutorial recommends you do not use a free site. I would strongly urge anyone w/o a lot of internet development experience to use a free site to determine if you really want to set up a website. Once you get into it you may find it a lot more difficult than you expected.
If you still think this is for you the see WordPress – Getting Started