Creating a professional website is an important step 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 people working at home, getting a website up and running is an additional service that can be sold to your existing clients. 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.
What Does WordPress Do Besides Blogging?
Many people have heard of WordPress but do not understand its 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.
READ MORE :
- Protect Your Home With a Home Security System
- Building WordPress Websites With Artisteer
- Keeping Up With the News Via Google Reader
- Journal Writing Fun for You and Your Child
- Wall Street Can Sell Bets on Your Life
Let’s look at – in simple terms – how WordPress works once 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 information in the database 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. In the nine years since the platform was launched, this advanced functionality has been used in many exciting ways.
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 that 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 set-up.
Installing WordPress Made Easy
Depending on your budget, expertise, and use of a web hosting service, there are a few different ways to get started with WordPress.
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. During the sign-up process, you can also pay for a custom domain name (the address of your website).
Alternatively, if you already have a web hosting plan that supports PHP and MySQL, you can install WordPress on your server. To do this, visit WordPress.org and download 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 set-up – usually at yourdomain.com/wp-admin. On the left-hand side, you will see the WordPress dashboard, a control panel that lets you work with your website, and a range of different menu items. 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 is as easy as clicking the ‘Install Now’ button.
In addition to these free WordPress themes available from within your control panel, many websites offer a great selection of themes – some of which are free and some of which are ‘premium’ themes that incur a charge. Free music is a good choice if you are starting with WordPress. 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 music, you will customize it to suit your specific requirements conveniently. You can do this using the widget.
Using Widgets
Many people choose WordPress because there are so many professional-looking themes available. However, it can be useful to tweak a chosen theme to make it more individual.
When a developer creates a theme, he will name specific layout areas you can customize. For example, you may be able to change the menu at the top of your layout, 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 the different areas of your theme that you can customize. On the left, you will see a range of included widgets that you can drag and drop into the relevant section.
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 the most important thing of all – your content.
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 created with the content of your post. Your post is added to a single page that collects together each post. 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. Simultaneously, your blog post will be added to the central page at yourdomain.com/blog, allowing your 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 – is this something that will 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 included in your control panel and start working on your content right now.
Once you’ve started, be sure to read our next article on making the most of your WordPress installation to create a website that stands out from the crowd.
