In the last post I talked about what WordPress is and about the two different versions of it.
If you have missed that video then click on the link above to go back and read it.
In this post I am going to introduce you to the basic things that you need to create a website using the open source version of WordPress.
You can find and download that version of WordPress at WordPress.org.
There are three things that you need to build a WordPress website.
Let’s take a closer look at these three steps so that you can really understand how this works.
1) The WordPress Software
The first step is getting the software.
You can do this by going to WordPress.org and hitting the download WordPress button.
You will then have a free copy of the software that you are free to use and modify as you see fit.
The other and the much easier way to get the WordPress software installed is to have it installed by your hosting company.
That comes up to the step number two in creating a WordPress website and that is getting website hosting or a place to build your website.
WordPress is a software that is designed to run on a computer server.
A server is a computer that is specifically designed to share websites and other services to multiple users at the same time.
Servers have the specialised software installed and usually specialized hardware configurations to be able to serve up your website quickly to many people all at the same time.
2) Web Hosting
The easiest way to setup a WordPress website is to get a hosting company.
These companies offer preconfigured computers all set up and ready to run websites on.
Most popular hosting companies will also have an easy way to install WordPress for you.
So let’s take a closer look at hosting companies and what the most popular types of website hosting are.
There are three main different types of website hosting:
Shared Hosting
It is usually the lowest cost hosting available and it is a great way to inexpensively get started building a website.
With shared hosting your site lives on the same server with a bunch of other websites.
Usually your website will have its own folder on the server’s hard drive that only you will have access to.
And of course when it is shared to the web that people on the web will have access to.
Your site will share all of the same server resources with all of the other websites on that same server.
Resources are things like the server computer’s memory and processing power.
With this kind of setup, the performance of your website will depend a lot on how many other websites are on the same shared server and how many resources the other websites are taking up.
Virtual Private Server Hosting
The second type of hosting is VPS.
This type of hosting uses the same server physical hardware but the server resources are divided up in a more precise way.
Each website on a VPS will have its own installation of the operating system that the server runs on and it is called a virtual machine.
So a website on a VPS will look like it has its very own server computer, even though the physical hardware will be shared with multiple different websites.
Having a virtual machine setup allows for a more precise division of the server resources like memory and processing power.
And with most VPS setups you can add or remove memory to your virtual server as you need on the fly.
Using a VPS is a great way to get more consistent resources for your website.
WordPress Managed Hosting
The last main type of hosting for WordPress is managed hosting.
This type of hosting is usually a Virtual Private Server that is set up and configured specifically to run WordPress websites.
WordPress managed hosting will also usually include special extra features to make it easier to run and manage a WordPress website.
Things like daily backups for your site, malware and hacker monitoring as well as caching services to help your website get delivered to your viewers faster.
So those are the three main types of website hosting you have to choose from.
If you want to learn more about choosing a hosting company for your WordPress website, I have posts where I take a look at different options and help you choose which one is right for your project.
Now, there is one other way of building a WordPress website and it is not a method that I recommend for beginners because there are more steps involved to get your website live on the internet.
It can be a good option if you want to work on your site offline on your own personal computer.
Just to be clear, if you use this method, your website will not be able to be viewed on the internet.
You will still need to move your website from your computer to a website hosting service before it will be live on the internet.
Moving your site adds more steps and there are more things that can possibly go wrong which is why I do not recommend it if you are new to building online businesses.
So for this method, you need a special software to create a virtual server on your own computer.
This makes your computer look like a website server so that you can install and work with WordPress right on your own machine.
There are a few different options for software that you can use and I have a couple of tutorials to learn how to do this.
So now that we know where we can build our own website, we are all set and ready to get started, right?
Well, not quite, as I have said before WordPress is not complete on its own.
3) A Theme
You need to add a theme to WordPress so that you can create web pages that your viewers will see.
The theme is probably the most important part of building a WordPress website.
Choosing the right one can give you a really easy time creating your web pages and choosing the wrong theme can mean a lot of frustration when building a site.
In the next post we are going to take a look at the different types of WordPress themes.