Building Your Own Website
You’ve read in many places on the Internet that it’s important to build your own website. Whether it be for personal or business use, people tell you to get your own website. But you don’t know how it’s done. You don’t know anything about building websites, and you don’t want to invest thousands of dollars on a professional coder to help build your website.
What Is WordPress?
WordPress is an extremely powerful software for building websites. Unlike free website builders which abound on the Internet, WordPress gives you maximum control over your website. You get to control how you want your website to look. You can choose from thousands of themes to change your website’s appearance.
You can install plugins to extend the core functionality of WordPress. Basically, it means you can choose to do whatever you want to do with your website! That’s how powerful this software is. And best of all? It’s 100% free!
Gone are the days when you’d have to learn HTML and CSS just to build a simple website. WordPress allows you to save thousands of dollars in professional web developers’ fees.
The Two Versions Of WordPress
There are two versions of WordPress: WordPress.com and WordPress.org. WordPress.org is the home of the free, open-source software which you must install on your web hosting server (a.k.a. self-hosted WordPress). This is the version of WordPress I will be covering in depth in this course.
WordPress.com works just like a website builder, and the learning curve is practically non-existent. You simply create a WordPress.com account, and voila, you’re ready to write and publish your first post.
10 Reasons to Use WordPress to Build Your Website
There are plenty of advantages and benefits of using WordPress to build your website. Here are ten of the biggest reasons why:
1. WordPress is free and open source
You don’t need to spend money to use WordPress. Rather, you just need to shell out a few dollars to buy your custom domain name and a web hosting plan to host your website files on. That’s it! Some web hosting providers even bundle a free domain for new customers, so that means you technically only need to pay for hosting!
2. You don’t need to learn how to code
Knowing a bit of HTML and CSS won’t hurt, but it’s not a requirement for WordPress. The software gets easier to use with every update they roll out, making life easy for website owners and developers alike. There’s no harm, however, in knowing how to code – you can transform your website’s look to something uniquely your own!
3. It’s fairly easy to use
Your WordPress backend is where all the website magic happens. It’s where you add new pages, new blog posts, change themes, install plugins, change the appearance of your site, and so much more. Once you get to know how the admin backend is organized, you’ll be able to master it like the back of your hand, allowing you to build beautiful websites in a matter of hours!
4. You can build any kind of website you want
Whether you’re building a personal blog, an affiliate website, a news website, a forum, an eCommerce site, or a business website, WordPress can help you out. Themes and plugins help you change your website’s appearance in just a few clicks. Don’t be afraid to try out new themes, you can always go back to your old look if you find your new theme doesn’t suit your brand!
5. Your website is 100% yours
You can use your WordPress website to build a multi-million dollar business, and the guys at WordPress won’t come knocking at your door asking you to pay up for using their awesome software! As long as you’re current on your domain and hosting fees, and you don’t violate any of your web host’s terms and conditions, your website will be up and running.
6. It doesn’t take much to maintain your WordPress site
All you have to do really is log in to your WordPress admin every few weeks or so. With a quick glance at your WordPress dashboard, you can see immediately if your version of WordPress needs to be updated, or any of your plugins and themes. Hit the Update button, and your WordPress site is up to date!
7. It’s easy to update your website yourself
With WordPress, you can easily add new blog posts or add new pages to your website. You simply log in to your WordPress admin and create your post. If you know how to write on Microsoft Word, then you’ll know how to write on WordPress. Of course, writing the content is another matter entirely. But that’s the beauty of owning your website, you can publish any type of content you want.
8. Say goodbye to comment spam
Allowing people to comment on your website helps you engage with your audience, which in turn helps build your community. But there are quite a few software that spammers use to spam comments on websites. You’ll know it’s spam because it’s not relevant to the topic, and it’s got links to dodgy-looking domain names.
With non-WordPress sites, managing spam comments can be quite difficult. But not with WordPress though. You can install an anti-spam plugin like Akismet, and it will take care of most, if not all, of your spam comments.
9. WordPress websites are optimized for SEO
WordPress is SEO-friendly right out of the box. It gives easy access to search engines to crawl your website’s pages, posts, and other content. With the addition of third-party SEO plugins like Yoast, you’ll be able to craft content that satisfies a search engine’s stringent requirements to help rank your website!
10. It’s easy to make a WordPress website mobile responsive
Having a mobile responsive website is extremely important nowadays. With the ever-increasing popularity of mobile devices, people are looking at websites from their mobile phones, tablets, and other mobile devices.
People still use desktops and laptops, but for the most part, people use mobile devices to search for information while they’re on the go. With WordPress, you can either install a mobile responsive theme or use a plugin to make it responsive!
11. There’s a plugin for literally anything you can think of!
Well, not really. But with over 54,000 plugins, you’ll be hard-pressed not to find something that fits your needs. And if there’s really no suitable plugin for you, you can always hire a developer to create one from scratch! You can use it for your own website, or if you’ve got the entrepreneurial spirit, you can sell it to other WordPress users!
12. The global WordPress community is superb
If you need help with your WordPress website, you can ask for help in online forums and groups. Getting answers isn’t hard as the community is generally happy to help newbies and beginners out. In addition, there are thousands of tutorials on YouTube and blogs so you can get your questions answered quickly.