You've been putting this off for long enough. Let's make a website, let's make it right now -- and let's use all that is great about WordPress, while avoiding all its nudges into spending money. We have nothing against spending money, we'd rather you spent it getting the best value for yourself. Perhaps we're wrong and unfair, but feel as if WordPress is always crossing its fingers and hoping you won't notice how it cajoles you into options you don't need.
Let's be clear right away that there are alternatives to WordPress, and that they have benefits. You could create a site from scratch, you could hire someone to do it, you could use a service like Blogger, or any number of online website creation tools. Conceivably, you could even use Apple's old iWeb, if you can find it, and if it will still run on your Mac. We can see reasons to recommend any of these options, apart from iWeb, yet still we're going down the WordPress route.
We're doing it for three reasons: the first is that actually what we want you to do is to create a throwaway website, something you'll set up now and forget tomorrow -- having learned how to do it, what to watch out for, and having got an idea of what you really want. WordPress is a good training ground, because it is like a Lego website builder where you plug the bricks together to see what you can build.
Then there is also the fact that if WordPress isn't exactly as easy to use as advertised, it is still pretty easy, and the problem areas tend to be similar. For instance, you'll typically get tripped up over the number of options there are to do something, rather than why you would want to do it. That does change, and WordPress does get more complicated, but for today, it's true. Lastly, we mean it about a throwaway website, but WordPress is good enough that are likely -- no, make that very likely -- to end up with a site that you will keep and use.
This Pointers was tested on OS X El Capitan running on a late 2012 iMac, but if your computer can't do it, your computer is rubbish. This really needs nothing more than an Internet connection, a good browser and maybe a strong mug of tea.
Which WordPress is which?
There are three flavors of WordPress -- told you that you get tripped up over the number of options -- but for us, for today, for now,
go to wordpress.com. It's a service that will get you a website up and live on the Internet quickly.
There are reasons to go to the other flavors, but wordpress.com lets you concentrate on the things you need for this idea of a throwaway site, a training exercise bootcamp -- one that you'll learn in before going on to make your proper, official, businesslike one later. So you can skip now to "Website or Blog?" below, but -- so you know -- the other flavors of WordPress involve doing more work yourself. With wordpress.org, you get all the tools, and have to find a host to physically hold your site. With self-hosted WordPress, you already have an Internet provider with space for your new site, and together you use WordPress's software.
We'd like to say that we think the WordPress company is generous in how it allows, supports, and even encourages that last option. WordPress's software is very good and comprehensive, but the company only makes money if you use it via its own service -- and not always then. We're about to use WordPress's own service, but won't be paying a penny.
Website or blog?
The short answer is yes. Or perhaps it's "and." These days your website is your blog, and your blog is your website. Have them both, and have them both in the same place. We could get into reasons why, and maybe that's something
we could all discuss on the MacNN Forums, but for now you need to know that WordPress will offer to create a website or a blog and the answer is "website."
One thing: this is the front screen of WordPress.com as it was at time of writing, but we've seen it change around periodically. Sometimes it'll be the same, but with a single Create Blog button, sometimes it's got two buttons side by side. Whichever you see, the option you want is to Create a Website, and if there isn't a bright blue button for it dead center, there will always be a smaller button further down below. This is something to know about WordPress: there's always another button somewhere else, and sometimes that's the one you need.
Steps
Click on Create Website, and you go to the first of either four or five steps. It should be five, and it should begin with a rather good and simple question about what you want your site to look like.
Choose the middle one for us, "A welcome page for my site," as that'll give us more options to tell you about in the rest of the steps. We don't understand why WordPress sometimes seems to skip this first step -- it could well be our mistake somehow, but what happens is that we see either "Step 1 of 5" or "Step 1 of 4," so we're not sure where we could be getting it wrong.
Still, however many steps there are, WordPress does describe each of theme thoroughly and well -- most of the time. The next screen isn't necessarily their best effort, though, as it says: "Choose a theme. You can always switch to a different theme later." Again, sometimes it's subtly different, and says instead: "No need to overthink it" first.
The unstated issue is that a theme is how your website looks; from the number of images on a page, to the size of text, to the number of columns, to the colors of the fonts. Everything your reader can see when they come to your website, bar the words you write, is part of a theme.
WordPress is right to say that about how you can change later, because this is a actually a rather remarkable feature. Say there's a theme called "Yuck," and in it you wrote 10,000 website articles and blog posts with bright red headlines and a lurid green background before coming to your senses. Go to WordPress's Themes section, choose something like "Oh, That's Better," and now your site is a tasteful, minimalist work of art. Here's the thing, though: your website looks like that. All of it. Not just articles you write from now on, but every piece of work you ever did. Themes transform absolutely everything, and they do it apparently instantly.
So themes are supremely important, since they control the look of absolutely everything on your site, but you can change them later, and moreover, we're just making a throwaway site. So either pick the first theme that looks good to you, or randomly click that mouse. You could skip this stage, but all that's doing is abdicating the decision: when we just tried skipping it now, WordPress set us up with something called the Ryu Theme. We'd rather you started with something you'd at least seen a glimpse of.
Master of your own domain
You may well know this, but let us tell you again so that we can take it apart into bits that WordPress asks you about. Right now, you're reading MacNN.com, and the first part of that address is the domain name of
MacNN. The .com notionally says what type of website it is, in theory meaning a business, but these days anything goes, and the MacNN part is the domain belonging to
MacNN.
The domain is up to you: so long as you can find a name that isn't already in use, you can choose anything you like. Only it costs money to get these domains; you rent them via Internet service providers, and here's WordPress saying you can have one for free. It's true, except that it isn't: if
MacNN was just starting out, and wanted a free domain name, it would have to accept macnn.wordpress.com. WordPress will drop that ".wordpress" bit if you pay an annual fee of $18.
You can also have already obtained a domain from somewhere else, in which case you can use it on your new WordPress website if you pay $13 per year. These figures (and the UK ones you see in the images) are all for the .com type of address; you can now get .me, .tv or others, you just end up paying more.
This is one thing that gives us pause. If this were to be your or our proper, official website, then we just couldn't let it have "wordpress" in the middle of the name. So you'd think we would pay that $18/year, and we might if there weren't that other self-hosted option. With that, you take the WordPress software to somewhere else, such as the place you got the domain name from, and thereby don't need to pay the WordPress company anything extra.
As this is a throwaway website, though, accept the .wordpress.com for now. Most likely, you'll try out this website building lark, and then go through it again, knowing what you want and what you liked, so you'll never need this throwaway one again. At worst, you'll have created somebrillianttitle.wordpress.com, and later when you want to do somebrillianttitle.com, then you can still do it. You're not locking yourself out of somebrillianttitle. Plus, if you accept the .wordpress.com bit, then your new domain is free.
Free is good, at least when you're experimenting like this. One thing: type a name you want in the top box, but don't press space or return. Just wait. WordPress will search, and tell you whether anyone on the service already has that name. If they do, find another one.
Notice, too, that you have already told WordPress that you want the free version, but it's going to try again: it will once more offer you various paid versions. Just click select on the line that says Free.
Enough already
Okay, notice how you already told WordPress that you wanted the free version yet it tried again -- and now it's trying to wear you down. For the third time, and in a subtly different way, it's giving you the chance to spend money. It's tried you on a vertical list of options, now it's trying a horizontal one, but as ever there is a free one if you just look for it.
If you feel WordPress must really want your money for a reason, be assured that no opportunity will be missed to offer you the chance again later. In the meantime, select that free plan, and you'll be taken to what is officially the last step. It's a very familiar-looking signup page that asks for a username, password, and email address. You'll need to verify that email address by responding to a message you get sent, but otherwise the reason this looks so familiar is that you've done it a hundred times before.
You're done
That was the last step, except WordPress now offers you several more steps. It tells you straight, though, that you can skip them all and for now, we would. The steps it offers is in a grid of them topped with Customizing your Site -- which is useful, but can wait. Under that, you get one for selecting a theme, though you've already done this, so you are unlikely to nip in here again just yet. Then there's the completely unexpected option to pay money, though this time cash is not actually mentioned. Instead it says "Add features with a plan." For "a plan" read "giving us money."
Again and always, there is nothing wrong with paying, and our only reason for avoiding it now -- apart from how WordPress asks in so many ways that we can't resist resisting -- is that you did this Pointers specifically to see how this works. Now you know almost everything, you can start making decisions about what's important to you.
We do say you can start to do this, and we also do say you know almost everything. You get to know the rest, and you get to really be in a position to judge whether it's worth $18 to get rid of the "wordpress" part of the name by trying out your new site. Ignore all these potential new steps, and instead look up and to the top right, where there is the icon of a stubby pencil. Click on that, and start writing your website's first page.
One last thought: a person's average speaking speed is three words per second, so if we phoned you up and read this Pointers to you, it'd take about 12 minutes. We have been through this a few times with a few websites, but typically it now takes us under two minutes to actually create a site. From typing the address wordpress.com in Safari, to having a site live on the Internet and with something short like "Hello world" written in it, is about two minutes.
We're not saying that in order to race you; more to say that while we have gone on a bit, you can do this remarkably easily and quickly. So go on, create a new website for the new year.
-- William Gallagher (
@WGallagher)
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