How to launch a basic website on WordPress
WordPress.com (https://wordpress.com) is a free service provided by the WordPress developers, where you can register a blog or non-blog website easily and quickly with no hassle. However, because it is a hosted service, your control over some things will be more limited than it would be if you hosted your own WordPress website.
To get started, go to https://wordpress.com and enter your new site address – the address of the site that you’d like to have created. Then, click the loud blue-and-white “Create Website” button. You will be taken to the signup page.
In the following screenshot, I’ve entered:
- my email address (please triple-check when entering yours; it’s where the confirmation email will be sent),
- my username (this is what I’ll sign in with),
- a password (note that the password measurement tool will tell you if your password is strong or weak; there’s also a Generate strong password link available next to the field),
- and finally my blog address (WordPress.com also allows you to register a custom domain in place of the standard .wordpress.com subdomain).
After providing this information, you can click on the “Create Blog” button at the bottom of the screen. Now, at this point, WordPress will try to sell you on one of their premium packages (WordPress.com Premium and WordPress.com Business). Some of the additional functionalities inside the premium packages include a free .com, .net, .org, or .me domain, advanced customization capabilities, access to a range of premium themes, the possibility to store videos directly on your WordPress.com account, additional disk space (the free account offers 3 GB), and direct email support or live chat support.
For now, we’re going to stick with the basic, free account.
You’ll be redirected to the final settings page, where you will be able to set some additional details about your new blog. Things like the blog title, tagline, and default language.
After that, you will have the chance to do the one thing that’s usually the most exciting part about building a new blog – pick a new theme.
There are some free and paid themes available. Additionally, after clicking on a specific theme, you’ll have some limited possibilities to customize it. Nothing too fancy, though. For more in-depth tuning up, one of the WordPress.com premium packages is required.
The theme I’m going to go with here is called “Eighties”:
Of course, you can choose whatever theme seems interesting to you. What’s important, the theme can be changed later on, so you’re not stuck with it.
To complete the sign-up process, all you have to do is keep going through the individual steps and clicking “Next Step”.
After you’re done with that, your site is basically operational and you can begin publishing content on it.
However, before you can do so, you need to confirm your email address first. During sign-up, WordPress sent you a confirmation email. All you need to do now is just open it, and click the confirmation link inside.
At this point, you can proceed to the next chapter of the course.