Absolute beginner trying to get my head around Wordpress...

[Sharkattack]

Can anyone explain the process in laymans terms? I'm a bit confused about the nuts and bolts of it.

I'm not sure what all the different components are. Wordpress itself is a program that I download right? Then I upload it onto a host right? Then what, do I have some kind of user interface that I can use to build the site? Do I need a theme? What do I do with plug-ins?

As you can see, I'm not even on the first step of the ladder yet. Most of the other discussions on here go immediately over my head!

Hopefully someone else is just as clueless as I am but is too embarrassed to post so help us out please

 

[Byker28i]

Exactly that. Download, install onto your site and then you get an admin login to create posts, change the default theme etc.
Plenty of guides on how to start about on the web.

For what it's worth I did mine in about 15-20 mins having never done anything like it before.

 

[omens]

Never used wordpress but heard it's easier to use than Joomla with which I have some experience. I'd advise a dummies guide that teaches you the basics of wordpress. Once you build up a dummy site, you'll have learnt things which you can apply to your own site.

 

[Deleted sulking member 63079]

If you want to play for free, you could sign up to a wordpress.com blog to see if it's for you. It's not as customisable as self-hosted, but would let you get to grips with how it works, before fully committing.

Mine's wordpress powered, and my host offers a "1 click install" of wordpress.

 

[f1charlie]

I also fancy dabbling with Wordpress but haven't yet got past the setting up stage. You can use the self-hosted version of Wordpress at 5Quidhost for free with limited web space just to get a feel for it, but you do need to have a domain name set up first.

 

[momoka]

Can anyone explain the process in laymans terms? I'm a bit confused about the nuts and bolts of it.

I'm not sure what all the different components are. Wordpress itself is a program that I download right? Then I upload it onto a host right? Then what, do I have some kind of user interface that I can use to build the site? Do I need a theme? What do I do with plug-ins?

As you can see, I'm not even on the first step of the ladder yet. Most of the other discussions on here go immediately over my head!

Hopefully someone else is just as clueless as I am but is too embarrassed to post so help us out please

I think you have basic idea in you head already. Like others have said, Wordpress.com offers free accounts where they host a site for you and your basic starting URL would look like this yoursite.wordpress.com. This is a good way to play about with and see if you like it.

If you like, you could then use wordpress.org to download WP, again for free, and host somewhere using your own domain. I think this is the best way in the future if you plan on having a site for a while with your own branding. If you look for a host that offers 1-crick install of Wordpress that may be easy for you.

The basic WP comes with a few themes already and these are easily customisable to a extent. If you want to try others there are lots of good free themes available to download and install. There are some good ones that you pay for as well and maybe only around $40-60. Some themes are more involved than others to customise.

As well as themes ther are lots of plug-ins available that can help the function and look of your site.

To create posts and pages and links etc it is easy to do from the admin area and you could have posts and pages up very quickly from when you start. To fully use WP to its best it helps if you understand it and search engine optimisation a bit better if you want people to find it, if you don't then I don't think that matters too much.

 

[Thrash]

I find WordPress best for making any kind of website nowadays, you can do so much with it using various themes and plugins, I think its brilliant! I personally found it much easier and better than Joomla and Drupal which ive never looked back at.
The only thing I do find annoying is how different themes have their own ways of working and if you write content then change it, you can end up having to edit a load of stuff to get it all back to a proper site again but thats more to do with the different ways of making a theme, its not such a big deal, just a bit of a pain.

Its definitely worth trying out and just messing around with it!