uses WordPress as a CMS to publish a full website. This site includes a static front page of information that acts as a portal into the rest of the site, where you find a blog, a portfolio of work, a contact form, an order form, and various static pages used to tell my visitors more about the business. The static pages include services, FAQ, Terms of Service, Privacy Policy, and more.
Check out Figure 2-5 for a look at the front page of my business site at WebDevStudios and notice how it’s quite different from my personal blog site, shown in Figure 2-4.
Figure 2-5: My business website uses WordPress as a CMS.
Using WordPress as a CMS means that you’re using it to create not just a blog but an entire website full of sections and features that offer a different experience for your visitors.
Moving On to the Business of Publishing
Before getting started with publishing, you need to take a long look at your big plans for your website. A word of advice: Organize your plan of attack before you start. Have a good idea of what types of information you want to publish, how you want to present and organize that information, and what types of services and interaction you want to provide your audience.
Ask this question out loud: “What am I going to blog about?” or “Am I going to have a blog on my website at all?” Go ahead – ask it. Do you have an answer? Maybe you do, and maybe not – either way, it’s all right. There’s no clear set of ground rules you must follow. Having an idea of what you expect to write about in your blog makes planning your attack a little easier. You may want to write about your personal life. Maybe you plan to share only some of your photography and provide very little commentary to go along with it. Or maybe you’re a business owner and want to blog about your services and the current news within your industry.
Having an idea of your subject matter helps you determine how you want to deliver that information. My design blog, for example, is where I write about web design projects, client case studies, and news related to design and blogging. You won’t find pictures of my cats there, but you will find those pictures on my personal blog. I keep the two blogs separate, in much the same way as most people like to keep a distinct line of separation between their personal and professional lives, no matter what industry they work in.
When you have your topic and plan of delivery in mind, you can move forward and adjust your blog settings to work with your plan.
Part II
Setting Up WordPress
In this part…
✔ Discover everything you need to know about the WordPress software version found on https://wordpress.org.
✔ Set up your website base camp by registering a domain and getting set up with a web-hosting provider.
✔ Install WordPress on your own hosted server and begin configuring the settings and options to personalize your site the way you want it.
✔ Establish your own publishing routine by discovering and using the tools that WordPress provides.
Chapter 3
Setting Up Blogging Base Camp
In This Chapter
▶ Finding and buying a domain name
▶ Finding web hosting
▶ Brushing up on FTP
▶ Installing WordPress
Before you can start using WordPress, you have to set up your base camp. Doing so involves more than simply downloading and installing the WordPress software. You also need to establish your domain (your website address) and your web-hosting service (the place that houses your website). Although you initially download your WordPress software onto your hard drive, your web host is where you install it.
Obtaining a web server and installing software on it are much more involved projects than simply obtaining an account with the hosted version of WordPress that’s available at WordPress.com (covered in Chapter 1). You need to consider many factors in this undertaking, as well as cope with a learning curve, because setting up your website through a hosting service involves using some technologies that you may not feel comfortable with at first.
This chapter takes you through the basics of those technologies, and by the last page of this chapter, you’ll have WordPress successfully installed on a web server with your own domain name.
Establishing Your Domain
You’ve read all the hype. You’ve heard all the rumors. You’ve seen the flashy websites on the web powered by WordPress. But where do you start?
The first steps toward installing and setting up a WordPress website are deciding on a domain name and then purchasing the registration of that name through a domain registrar. A domain name is the unique web address that you type in a web browser’s address bar to visit a website. Some examples of domain names are WordPress.org and Google.com.
When registering a domain name, be aware of the extension that you want. The .com, .net, .org, .info, .me, .us, or .biz extension that you see tacked onto the end of any domain name is the top-level domain extension. When you register your domain name, you’re asked to choose the extension you want for your domain (as long as it’s available, that is).
A word to the wise here: Just because you have registered your domain as a .com doesn’t mean that someone else doesn’t, or can’t, own the very same domain name with a .net. So if you register MyDogHasFleas.com, and it becomes a hugely popular site among readers with dogs that have fleas, someone else can come along and register MyDogHasFleas.net and run a similar site to yours in the hope of riding the coattails of your website’s popularity and readership.
You can register your domain name with all available extensions if you want to avert this problem. My own website, for example, has the domain name lisasabin-wilson.com; however, I also own lisasabin-wilson.net.
Domain names: Do you own or rent?
When you “buy” a domain name, you don’t really own it. Rather, you’re purchasing the right to use that domain name for the period of time specified in your order. You can register a domain name
