WordPress 101 for C3G

There are so many guidelines and instructions out on the web for setting up WordPress sites – this is very simply the order of topics I would cover for a total newbie who needs to setup a WordPress site.

I haven’t written many notes or instructions, since so much content is out there. Mostly, I linked to one or two existing websites – not saying these are necessarily the best, but I reviewed them to make sure they covered the basics I wanted to cover in the workshop.  

I am also writing this from the perspective of someone who needs a very simple website to promote themselves while they are in job transition. As such, I am making some assumptions and choices that don’t provide the full depth of what WP can do – instead keeping it simple for someone who just wants a web presence while they are in transition.  WP can do so much more than what  we will cover here, and if you want something more (like setting up for your freelance businesses, e-commerce, or anything else) let’s talk options separately.

Agenda

Domain Registration and Hosting

 

Purchasing your domain (reserving your website name on the internet) and purchasing hosting services (the service where your website lives on the internet) are two separate items. However, it is very useful to purchase both from the same company – as they will connect your domain name to your hosting service automatically. When you purchase them separately, you have to manually configure this connection as an extra step (which can be confusing.)

 

  • Domains, Hosting, and DNS

https://www.wpbeginner.com/beginners-guide/whats-the-difference-between-domain-name-and-web-hosting-explained/

  • Selecting your domain name and seeing if it’s available

https://www.godaddy.com/garage/how-to-select-a-domain-name-for-your-consulting-business/

 

  • Purchase your Domain and Hosting service

Here is a link for a pretty good discount on Godaddy Hosting with a free domain:

https://www.godaddy.com/offers/wordpress-hosting?rp_affiliates=affiliates&isc=cjcwph1

Installing WP

 

WordPress is an application that is installed within a directory on your webserver host. It’s possible to have more than one copy of WP installed, in different directories (If you host allows it.) 

This let’s you build and test your website in a directory that is not your primary live directory. Another option you may hear about is called a “staging server” – but the basic hosting package doesn’t have that.

Godaddy:

https://www.godaddy.com/help/install-wordpress-on-a-web-or-classic-hosting-account-834

Other hosts may use a different Control Panel, but the instructions should be similar.

 

 

WP Overview

 

Here are some pretty good overall resources:

https://www.wpbeginner.com/guides/

https://firstsiteguide.com/wordpress-basics/

https://www.godaddy.com/garage/how-to-build-a-wordpress-website-for-the-first-time/

 

Logging in to WP Admin

http://yourdomain.com/wp-admin

Username and Password

Menu and Dashboard Overview

 

Which comes first – the Theme or the Content?

 

Of course, you need to have some idea of the content you want for your website. But when you get to the specifics of exactly what  content gets placed in exactly which section – as a beginner, you have a choice.

 

  1. Select the theme, and customize your content to meet the framework of the theme.
  2. Develop all your content, and then find a theme that matches the content as closely as possible. This means that you will probably need to do more editing and customization in WordPress, which is more difficult and time consuming.

 

As a beginner – I recommend you try to leverage the structure of the pre-built themes as much as possible.

 

Themes –

 

Many themes are already available right from within the WP Admin tool. However, there are countless others that you can find out on the web (both free and paid themes) that can make your website look and behave in absolutely any fashion you want.

 

For the time being, we will work with themes that are available directly within the admin tool. If you want to explore beyond – it’s fairly easy to upload a new theme, and most theme sites will provide directions.

 

Notes about Themes:

 

  • The preview usually won’t show what it really looks like due to missing plug ins and content.
  • Many themes require plug-ins and customization to work – the better themes have a wizard to automatically set this up for you.
  • You are not limited to themes inside WP – there are MANY theme sites on the web.
  • Many of the free themes are promos for paid themes
  • Different themes have different ways of editing the pages. In order of difficulty (and flexibility)
    • Default WP Editor
    • Customizer
    • In-line Editors
  • Most themes leverage plug-ins to make web pages do more than you can do with the default editor.
  • When you install multiple themes, you start to get plug-in conflicts. At the beginning while you are experimenting – you may need to completely disable or delete old themes, pages, and plug-ins that are created by the wizards in order to see what a new theme would look like.

 

 

Here are a few links to themes

https://www.wpbeginner.com/showcase/37-simple-wordpress-themes-you-should-try/

https://www.godaddy.com/wordpress-themes  – Godaddy

  1. Block Editor – Guttenberg
    1. Twenty Twenty
    2. Twenty Nineteen
    3. .

 

  1. Customizer Themes
    1. Hestia
    2. Featuredlite
    3. Single Page Scroll
    4. Fascinate

Look for something like this in the description:  The theme is fully based on customizer so that you can create your site with live preview.

 

  1. Custom Editors/Theme Frameworks – usually with lots of pre-made pages and sample content.

 

These Themes use an inline editor that you can select.