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Create your website with WordPress.com
WordPress.com lets you easily create your own website or blog and write about the things that interest you. It is a blog web hosting service provider owned by Automattic and powered by the open source WordPress software. The best part: Its FREE!
WordPress.com is a great choice for bloggers, photographers, artists, doctors — almost anyone. You don’t have to download any software, pay for hosting, or manage a web server. You can instead focus on creating wonderful content, and let them handle the rest! They provide a large number of themes and built-in plugin functionality so you won’t need to upload your own – though you can, if you want to push it forward.
Where to start?
First, find inspiration scrolling through the many themes WordPress.com offers. Each template has a demo that you can try so you can get an idea of what your website would look like and function.
After selecting the ideal template, you can create the home page and can modify the menus, add pages or take some out, add blog post and more. Under Appearance you can modify the colors, fonts, title sizes, add widgets (for example: social media icons or a search bar or another menu on the sidebar) and more. They have themes that focus specially in photography portfolios, restaurants, e-shops, travelers- blog, etc., which makes it easier to choose a design.
Each template is going to give you access to different options so it’s important to take some time to choose the one that suits the best for your business.Where can I get Help?
WordPress software has a large community with extensive forums about almost every topic. You can find information about how to use plugins, which plugins are the best for certain situations, advantages of having different themes, how to use them, and so many more topics.
They also get help from WordPress technicians who are very efficient for specific issues that could present along the way. And not only you can get information at their website, but because WordPress became so popular, you can find many resources online and video tutorials that can assist you along with your WordPress site.
All in all, if you are having trouble with your Theme template just type the name and you will find all the information you need.
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Create your website with WordPress.org
WordPress.org is more directed to Techies who prefer to maintain full control of their code. A big difference with WordPress.com is that here you need to get your own hosting company (usually around $50 per year), download the software and installed it on a web server for it to work. Plus, of course, know some coding. You will need to do research and install your own plugins and themes. You’re also responsible for performing routine updates and backing up your content, but the only rules you’re bound by are your own.
The bright side of WordPress.org is that there are no limits. WordPress.com can be pretty limited when styling your theme. If you just want to have a website built quickly with cool effects on it and that looks professional, wordpress.com is the way to go. If you are the one who like to dig in more in the styling of each page and have knowledge of HTML and CSS wordpress.org is the best option. You can modify absolutely everything. The sky is not even your limit! You can choose between thousands and thousands of plugin plus modify the HTML, CSS, JS, and PHP files by hand.
Same as WordPress.com, WordPress.org also has thousands of themes to choose from. Not only in their website but you can find many people making their own theme templates and selling them for a reasonable price. Again each theme comes with its own documentation and you can modify any part of it through HTML, CSS and PHP. You can also add plugins to your theme to add different features; such as Publicize – you don’t need to become a social media guru to keep up with social media – this plugin does it for you! Super simple and there are many other plugins that can help in many other ways.
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Create you’re your website building a Theme Template from scratch
The third option is building your site from scratch using WordPress. Basically you will need to follow the next steps to start:
- The first step is to download the software and install it locally (same as wordpress.org) using a local server and MAMP for later uploading it to a FTP server for the site to be live.
- Second, you need to create a sub-folder in the wp-content/themes directory in your WordPress folder with the name of your Theme.
- Add more pages according to your needs:
- header.php – This file will contain the code for the header section of the theme;
- index.php – This is the main file for the theme. It will contain the code for the Main Area and will specify where the other files will be included;
- sidebar.php – This file will contain the information about the sidebar;
- footer.php – This file will handle your footer;
- style.css – This file will handle the styling of your new theme;</li
To edit this files you can use languages like Bootstrap, Foundation, Skeleton or custom CSS. You can find online courses for each language as help in the wordpress.org forum and support page.
Conclusion
The biggest advantage is that Google loves WordPress sites. Because they are updated more frequently, and the content tends to be structured well, you can get a WordPress site ranking very quickly compared to a static website, unless you buy SEO services or you are a Pro at search engine optimization. And, having a website optimized is one of the most important keys for your business to grow and be successful.