Wordpress - it's free!
Whether you are considering building a website from scratch or using a web designer to do the job for you, a long a daunting road lies ahead of you.
There is a very steep learning curve in building a website – the WYSIWYG (What You See Is What You Get) software won’t even come close to establishing a build that is capable of impressing the search engines/customers or deliver all of the technologies that you’d hope for on a modern website. Hiring a designer will cost an arm and leg – at least for a high quality – half decent one, so what other option do you have?
WordPress – free & easy!
I used to be a blog-a-phobe until about 2 years ago. I was lecturing in Web 2.0 at my local University and the syllabus required I conducted a talk on the subject of blogging – WordPress being at the centre of all inquiries. I had to do my research, so I downloaded WordPress and installed it on my server. I was amazed! Incredible easy to use and very search engine friendly. I started to wonder why I had spent so much time putting together personal, pet-project sites, when it excellent results could be achieved in a matter of minutes with WordPress’ amazing interface and WYSIWYG editor. Extremely intuitive.
Not just a blog – anything you want it to be
After looking through the available plugins, widgets and themes, I realised that WordPress was so much more than just a blog platform. In fact, it could be used as a commonal garden website, without even the hint of it being a blog.
There are so many features, functions and uses, it could be used to deliver, sell and express just about anything. It can even be used as a blog!
The only extra consideration is the look and feel. There are thousands of free templates or ‘themes’ to choose from, but best of all, you can modify the appearance of your chosen theme as much as you like. You can change the graphics, layout, font size, colouring, the list goes on. If you’re not a designer, it is at this point you could hire somebody to merely tweak the look and feel of your WordPress site to bring it up to your requirements. The hard part of the build is already done once you have installed WordPress.
Installing WordPress
If you haven’t already got an account with a host, you can get a decent package from 1and1, UKHost4u, Easy Limited, Namesco, 123-Reg, UK2.net including web-space and a domain name. You don’t need anything too expensive, just make sure that the package allows for PHP and MySQL – very important!
Once you have a server set up and you have installed FTP software such as FileZilla to access it, you are ready to download WordPress and install it.
It will be delivered in .zip form. Unzip it and copy the files over to your server. Now access your web site’s domain in a web-browser. Follow the on-screen instructions. Now go and make a hot drink because now the fun starts! You have installed your WordPress site and all that needs to be done now is for you to add your own content and tweak the look and feel. Good luck!