I have run WordPress.com sites for a while. They are free and they are run on WordPress’s own servers. The quid pro quo for that free service is that users are not allowed to run their own ads, or run the sites as commercial enterprises.
WordPress also offers its package as a bundle of files. They are free and all you have to do is download them, tweak them and upload them to a commercial web host – like the one hosting this host in fact – and then you as the user are free to do what you like, within the confines of what the software package can accommodate.
And the biggest ‘gift’ WordPress has given me is a gentle hand-hold into the mysteries of tweaking php and css and learning about mySQL and cpanel.
That leads to the positive feelings I have for the WordPress framework.
But nothing stays the same, and I find myself wanting to break away from the mould completely and work on a something that has none of WordPress’s layout restrictions.
For example, there is a free product called Textpattern that promises a more free-form skeleton, but at the expense of having to learn more to get a usable site.
Then there is the problem of trying to squeeze the WordPress skeleton into an e-commerce mould – ZenCart it isn’t.
I guess the lure of cheap domain names and web hosting will encourage more and more people to try the wordpress.org package, and as they find themselves wanting to tweak things the way they want, without bumping into restrictions inbuilt into the design, so will they discover the limitations of the WordPress package.
WordPress is owned by Automattic and I think maybe Automattic’s model will continue to be attractive only if it develops WordPress to allow more flexibility.
Meanwhile it is the quickest, neatest, best-working package out there that I have found.
HOW WORDPRESS WORKS
So, down to details: WordPress comes in two flavors. One kind is hosted on WordPress’s own servers. The other kind is where you download WordPress’s files and upload them to your own server. For the vast majority of people that means uploading them to a commercial web host. WordPress’s files contain the functionality of the site and also a couple of themes. There are a lot of themes out there, and a lot of them are free if you don’t like the basic offerings.
Themes are like different costumes that a person might wear. Some costumes are colorful; some have pockets where you can put things, etc. In the same way, not all themes make use of everything that the WordPress files have to offer, and it is interesting trying on different themes to see what they can do.
The makers of WordPress are giving you all its functionality for free and you are free to tweak it and alter it and do pretty much what you want with it. If you have expertise in CSS, you can change the appearance in other ways than just to swap themes.
For me, having WordPress hosted on a commercial host means I am free of the ‘no-commercial-use’ restriction on wordpress.com sites.
Both kinds of WordPress are essentially the same thing, which is that they are based around content management systems. That means a software system that has a ‘front-end’ that the viewer sees and which is laid out with all the bits in the correct place, and a ‘back-end’ where you, the ‘owner’, can input information without having to go into the guts of your program and write code. That going-behind-the-scenes via a content management system is what a blogger does every time he/she writes a post, whether he/she is aware of it or not.
So if you want WordPress on your own site, the first thing to do is to go to wordpress.org which is a sister site to wordpress.com. Once there, read up about things and then press the DOWNLOAD button to download a folder that contains the WordPress files and images to your desktop.
As I said, WordPress offers these for free, for which you say thank you.
The folder of files and images is not very big, so it’s not a lengthy job to download them.
Open the WordPress folder and look around. You won’t break anything if you don’t change anything.
Now you need:
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An html editor (I use TACO AVAILABLE HERE because it works; because I am on a Mac and it works with Macs, and because it is free.
A web host – in other words, a commercial web hosting company that will sell you a bit of space on their servers. Space on a shared server is fine and you can get something for a few dollar a month. Not all hosts are the same so it is good to know that some are set up to make activating a wordpress blog easy. WordPress. org has a few recommendations HERE .
A domain name – go to a registrar such as godaddy.com or another reputable one – and buy your domain. Some hosts offer a free domain name as part of their package.
Now you need to log in to your web host and navigate to your database and make a specific database to handle your WordPress site. That’s because the way WordPress works is that it stores information in a database and collects it to present as a post when the visitor clicks around the site.
Now open your html editor and open the file that is going to tell WordPress where the database is and how to get into it. It is a config file and the wordpress.org install page explains just how to fill in the necessary information.
Then upload the WordPress files to your chosen web host and follow the instructions on the WordPress install page, and bingo! you are now the proud owner of a site that has all the functionality of WordPress.
And if all that sounded way too difficult, well it sounded that way to me just a short while ago, but it gets easier – much easier – with practice.
Enjoy!
{ 2 comments… read them below or add one }
I strongly recommend that you turn the No Follow off in your comment section.
I’ll watch Google Webmaster Tools, and if the links don’t show up after a couple of weeks — I won’t go back to that blog again.
Another suggestion: you should have a Top Commentator widget installed.
Do Follow and Top Commentator will ensure that you have a successful blog with lots of readers!
I don’t know how many readers know what a ‘no follow’ value is, so for those readers:
A ‘no- follow’ value is an instruction to search engines such as Google or Yahoo not to attach any ranking value to the link website that the commenter has indicated is theirs in their comment.
Many commenters do not have a website, so the issue is of no relevance at all to them.
But for those who have a website they want to promote and to whom no-follow does have applicability:
‘No follow’ is the in-built standard in Wordpress blogs (and this is a Wordpress blog) and that alone ought to indicate that out-of-the-box it is preferred to ‘do follow’ and for many reasons, not least of which is the attraction of spammers to do-follow links.
I would guess that many bloggers never give a thought to the no-follow value.
As it happens I am looking into Wordpress plug-ins that can turn no-follow on and off on a case by case basis. There are a lot of these plugs-ins, and I am not sure yet which is best. As and when I implement one, I will be in the minority of bloggers.
But let’s think about what your comment indicates. It seems to me it says quite clearly that unless you get some payback that’s good for your site then you are not interested – and specifically, you are not interested in what my blog post says – not a great reason for applying do-follow to your post.