WordPress For Beginners VOLUME Boost WordPressDotCom

Summary

In this video, viewers will learn how to create a basic free WordPress.com website from scratch. The process involves setting up an account, selecting a theme, creating and organizing pages, and tweaking some basic settings. The tutorial is designed for beginners, offering step-by-step instructions on how to navigate WordPress.com's interface, manage site content, and customize the appearance with free themes. By the end, users will have a functional site including a homepage, blog, and contact page, all without spending a dime.

Highlights

• Create a free WordPress.com account from the start! 🚀
• Choose a temporary theme—you can always change it later. 💡
• Use tabs for better navigation between site view and admin. 🔄
• Set up essential pages like Home, Blog, and Contact. 📄
• Customize your site's theme and menu. 🎛️
• Manage content visibility with sharing and comment settings. 👀
• Add multimedia content like videos and galleries to enrich posts. 🎥
• Understand the importance of categories and tags for blogs. 🔖

Key Takeaways

• Set up your free WordPress.com site in a few simple steps! 🛠️
• Choose any theme you like—switch it later if needed. 🎨
• Manage site content with ease via the admin area. 🖱️
• Customize your menu to fit your site's needs. 📂
• Engage viewers with well-placed images and text. 📸
• Add blog posts to keep your audience updated! 📝
• Control comments and sharing through settings. ⚙️
• Enjoy the flexibility of a versatile content management system. 🌐

Overview

Creating a WordPress.com website doesn't have to be complicated. This beginner's guide walks you through the process, starting with account creation on WordPress.com. You'll learn how to navigate the site, choose a basic theme, and begin the foundational steps of website construction. It's a seamless journey from zero to fully functional website completions, all without spending a penny.

Once your account is set up, the video takes you through customizing your site. From adding fundamental pages—home, blog, and contact—to engaging your audience with content and visual media, each phase is broken down into easy-to-follow instructions. Switching themes and creating menus are explored in detail, allowing you to fully tailor the appearance and navigation of your site at any time.

Additional topics include mastering the admin area, from organizing your posts to utilizing WordPress's rich text and media options. You'll also discover how to manage comments and sharing settings to suit your preferences. By the end, you'll be capable of managing a website that has depth and appeal, making it a perfect starting point for any new blogger or small business owner.

Chapters

• 00:00 - 01:00: Introduction to Creating a Free WordPress Website In this chapter, the process of creating a free WordPress website is introduced. The video guide covers the creation of a simple website with a homepage, blog page, and contact page. The walkthrough begins with setting up an account on WordPress.com.
• 01:00 - 02:30: Signing Up and Selecting a Theme The chapter guides readers through the initial steps of setting up a website. It begins with clicking the 'get started' button and selecting options from available boxes, emphasizing that these initial choices are temporary and can be altered later. When it comes to choosing a theme, the chapter suggests picking any theme initially as it can be changed later. The chapter also covers the importance of selecting a domain name, using 'Bookmen 2017' as an example for what the website will be called.
• 02:30 - 04:00: Account Setup and Confirmation The chapter titled 'Account Setup and Confirmation' describes the process of setting up an account using a free plan. Key steps include selecting the free plan, entering an email address, confirming the username, creating a password, and finally, setting up the account.
• 04:00 - 05:00: Navigating WordPress Admin Area This chapter walks through the initial steps after setting up a WordPress account, including checking your email to confirm the account. After confirmation, it guides you through logging in to WordPress, showing the homepage interface that appears post-login, and points out the top bar for editing.
• 05:00 - 09:00: Creating Pages: Home, Blog, and Contact The chapter discusses the process of creating pages such as Home, Blog, and Contact on a website. It starts by explaining the user interface where you can switch between viewing others' blogs and managing your own site. In the user's admin area, there's an option to preview the newly created website and its initial content.
• 09:00 - 12:00: Changing Theme and Creating Menu In this chapter, the focus is on changing the WordPress theme and creating a menu. The process involves understanding the sample content provided by WordPress, which is intended to give users an idea of the site's appearance. While this sample content, including pages created by default, will be deleted later, it plays a crucial role initially. Users are guided on how to toggle between viewing their site and accessing the admin area, with tips on maximizing the view for a better experience.
• 12:00 - 19:00: Customizing Settings and Sharing Options The chapter titled "Customizing Settings and Sharing Options" appears to focus on the practical application of managing and previewing a website through the use of browser tabs. The narrator describes their personal setup for website customization, utilizing a dual-tab approach. One tab is dedicated to the admin area for editing and customizing the website, while the other tab is used for viewing the full public version of the site. The suggestion is to keep both views accessible simultaneously to streamline the process of making changes and immediately viewing results. By setting up the workspace in this manner, users can efficiently switch between the backend and frontend of their website, facilitating a smoother customization workflow.
• 19:00 - 24:00: Editing Contact Page and Adding Contact Form In this chapter, the focus is on setting up a website. The process involves creating pages first, then switching themes, setting up the menu, and tweaking a few settings. After these steps, content is added to the pages followed by the creation of a few blog posts. The chapter begins by exploring the 'Pages' section in the admin area to see what is available on the website.
• 24:00 - 30:00: Creating Home Page Content with Images and Text The chapter discusses the process of customizing a website by removing default pages such as the 'about' and 'contact' pages, which came pre-installed with the site. The focus is on crafting a homepage by creating new pages tailored to specific content requirements, emphasizing the integration of images and text to enhance the homepage's appeal and functionality.
• 30:00 - 35:00: Establishing Static Homepage and Blog Page The chapter focuses on creating a static homepage and blog page for a website. The process begins with publishing the homepage, which is then confirmed to be created. Following this, a blog page is added in a similar fashion, and its successful creation is verified. Lastly, a contact page is mentioned as the next addition, though not completed within this chapter.
• 35:00 - 42:00: Writing and Categorizing Blog Posts The chapter discusses the process of setting up a website, focusing on the steps necessary to finalize the blog structure, such as altering themes and configuring page menus to ensure accessibility and ease of navigation. The narrative underscores the importance of these elements in tailoring the site's appearance and functionality, stressing how different themes may necessitate distinct menu arrangements.
• 42:00 - 47:00: Finalizing Blog Page and Conclusion In this chapter, the focus is on the blog page's design, particularly on selecting an appropriate theme. The narrator discusses the current theme in use, which they find unsatisfactory. They guide the reader through accessing the theme section in the admin area where a variety of themes, both free and paid, are available. The narrator expresses a preference for a simple theme named 'Illustrator' (notably spelt without an 'R' at the end) and demonstrates how to select it, emphasizing ease of use in theme customization.

WordPress For Beginners VOLUME Boost WordPressDotCom Transcription

• 00:00 - 00:30 in this video we'll make a free wordpress.com website it's gonna look a lot like this one here it's gonna have three pages a home page blog page and a contact page nice and simple it's going to be free we'll do it from start to finish right now so let's get started by heading over to wordpress.com to create our account and we're just gonna click
• 00:30 - 01:00 the get started button now we're just gonna select any one of these boxes here the first one because we're gonna change a lot of this later now as far as a theme goes there's lots of themes to choose from but again we're gonna change that later so just select the first one so with the main name this is what you want your website called so in our case we're gonna select our Bookmen 2017 so
• 01:00 - 01:30 what's available it's free so let's just select now we're gonna select the free plan now we need to enter our email address to create the account of course the username is what we already entered now a password create my account so it's
• 01:30 - 02:00 just setting up our account and it says they've sent an email for us to confirm so let's go and get that email and confirm our account and confirm now now it's taking me back to WordPress and I'm just gonna login so this is the screen that comes up right after you login it's the wordpress.com homepage so it's got a bar at the top where you can edit your
• 02:00 - 02:30 profile you can also switch between the reader which is really just other people's blogs that you can search and read or my site so when you click your site this is where you have your admin area on the left so if we want to take a look at what our brand new website looks like we just click right here it'll show us our site now there's some content that
• 02:30 - 03:00 WordPress gives you it's just sample content just to show you what it's going to look like we'll erase all that later they also create a couple pages for us that we'll take care of later so one thing to note when you're toggling between your website and the admin area there's a couple ways to do it if you close this right here the site view you can see how you get again you click right here to get it what I like to do is enlarge the view so you have a full
• 03:00 - 03:30 view of your website so what I normally do is have two tabs open right now we have three so I'm going to close the center tab so now I have the tab open that's the full view of my website and the other tab I like to have the admin area so I'm going to close this little box so now my left tab is the admin area the right tab or the second tab is the full view of my website so let's go back to the admin area now what we need to do
• 03:30 - 04:00 to set up our website is we're gonna create the pages and then we're gonna switch themes and then we're going to set the menu up and then we have a couple of settings to change and then all we have to do is add the content to our pages and we'll create a couple blog posts and that's it so let's start with our pages so you'll see on the admin area you have a section for pages and let's see what pages we already have on our website you can see
• 04:00 - 04:30 that our site came with an about page contact page and a blog post area so let's just delete a couple of these pages that they gave us the about page we'll send it to the trash the contact page will send to the trash trash now let's create the pages that we really want so we'll go to pages add we want a home age so we'll just type home here we
• 04:30 - 05:00 won't put anything else on the page and we'll publish it now let's go back here to our pages menu and you can see that our home page was created now let's add our blog page just type blog again we'll publish it and we'll go back and see what pages we have now we have our blog and our home page so let's go to pages and add our contact page and click
• 05:00 - 05:30 publish let's go back and look at our pages okay now we have the three pages that we want our site to have now we need to change our theme and create our menu so we can create our menu first but different themes have different menus so let's change our theme first so now we're in the admin area look at our site
• 05:30 - 06:00 here for a second this is the theme that we have right now that we're using we don't want this theme but I just thought I'd take a look at what it looks like let's go back to the admin area so to change the theme you just click on themes this is real easy there's lots of themes to choose from see some cost money some are free if you just select free and it sorts just the free themes I really like a simple theme called illustrator now it's spelt a little strange see illustrator there's no R at the end here so let's just click that
• 06:00 - 06:30 theme and here's what our website could look like with the illustrator theme let's activate this design and you can always go back you can change themes anytime you want and we'll visit our site so now this is what our site will look like with the illustrator theme so but now it's time to do the menu again because most themes handle menus differently see we have three pages but
• 06:30 - 07:00 only one page shows on our menu for this theme so we want to have again the left tab is the admin area so let's get back to the admin area Yeah right here by clicking my site so now in the admin area we still have the pages that we always had if we click it there's the three pages so let's go menus and let's create our menu so let's here it is right here it only has a homepage on it so let's add some menu items so we want to add a menu item
• 07:00 - 07:30 below and right here here's the pages that we have so let's choose home as one menu item add item let's add another menu item below we'll choose blog add item we'll add another menu item below we'll choose contact add item
• 07:30 - 08:00 now here are the three pages that we created on our menu this old one here the old home that's the one they gave us we're just going to delete that so we see the trash can here delete it now that we've done that delete item now we're gonna click see so now let's go and take a look at our site and see if the menu is proper so we're gonna toggle to the second tab now one thing you
• 08:00 - 08:30 always have to do when you toggle back and forth from the admin bar to your website we have not refreshed the screen yet so we have to refresh the screen to see what our site looks like now so every time you toggle to the site just click this little refresh button so this is what our website looks like now and we have the three pages that we created on the menu that we created and here they are right here now the next thing I'm going to do before we add content is
• 08:30 - 09:00 out-of-the-box WordPress has share this and likes on every page and and I don't like the way it's set up here so let's fix this in our settings area of the admin we can also switch see our site title we don't have our proper site title or tagline so let's set that stuff up so we go to the admin area so let's go down to
• 09:00 - 09:30 settings so in the settings area there's a bunch of tabs at the top that you can switch between and most of this stuff it looks like a lot you hardly ever use it once you set your site up you never have to touch it again there's only a few things to change so the site title let's make our site title read Bookman our tagline let's get started everything
• 09:30 - 10:00 else is good here what I could do is our time zone we're in the minus five time zones so let's just save our settings you always have to remember to click Save Settings there's a bunch of save settings boxes all over the place the next tab we're gonna look at is the discussion tab and that's the one that has the sharing and comment well the common areas so right here default article settings these three checkboxes I just unchecked them that
• 10:00 - 10:30 way there's no comments activated if you ever want to allow comments on your website you can just recheck those and then we'll save the settings so let's just now that we've done that and we've saved it let's just take a look at our site so again we went to the second tab nothing has changed because we haven't refreshed it yet so let's click the refresh button so on the blog post if we had a blog post you would notice that there's no comments because that's all we really did and we also added our site
• 10:30 - 11:00 title and tagline right here so now we're gonna take care of the share this and the like button so to fix this share this and the like button we're gonna head back to our admin and we're gonna go to the sharing section and we can see there's a sharing button tab here and again you only have to do this once so under the sharing button tab you can see that we have all these
• 11:00 - 11:30 buttons that we're showing up so we're going to edit the sharing buttons so right now the ones that are clicked are visible the ones that are not collect art so I don't want Google+ to show up I don't want press this I just want Twitter and Facebook for the sharing buttons I only want to show the sharing buttons on posts so blog posts not on
• 11:30 - 12:00 pages so I've checked that reblog and like I don't want this reblog and like button so I'm just going to uncheck that so now what our sharing is gonna look like it's just the two buttons that I use Twitter and Facebook so if you actually use Pinterest or one of the other ones go ahead and add that so we've fixed all that up let's save the changes now let's toggle back to our website and see if it worked again we
• 12:00 - 12:30 haven't refreshed yet so let's refresh okay so now that we have our theme set our pages made our menu correct now we can add some content to our pages so it's an actual website so let's start with the now let's start with the contact page we're on that so we could hit edit right here to edit the contact page but I just like to do it the same way I just go to the admin bar I'll go back to the page section and I'll select
• 12:30 - 13:00 contact page this way this way I've got the page and I can toggle back and forth real easy just type a sentence so a simple sentence contact us by email at and there's our email address or use the contact form below so we're gonna hit enter to have the contact form below now WordPress gives us a contact form
• 13:00 - 13:30 it's easy to use we just collect this right here where it says insert contact and there's a contact form so we just there's the contact form that's already created you can edit these fields but we want the person's name email and comment and we don't want them to have to type in a website so let's just trash this field and insert the contact form so that's how it looks name email comment with the submit button real nice now one more thing to do is we've given
• 13:30 - 14:00 people the email address but it'd be real nice if this was a link that way they could click on it so let's just click link here we're gonna insert a link now WordPress knows that's an email address so it's already filled it out for us so anytime you have a link to an email address you always just put mail to : right in front of the email address and that's what opens it up so that's already done let's add the link so here's the contact page I believe it's done let's just take a look so let's
• 14:00 - 14:30 update it okay it says it's something let's go over to our website refresh it we can hit the refresh button or we can just hit the contact page menu item so here's the contact form it's got a link for our email address and the form below it now let's work on the home page so here's the home page now with nothing in it so let's go to our admin area we'll go back we'll go to pages and we'll
• 14:30 - 15:00 select our home page so here's our home page and if we want to add some content to that we do it the same way we did in our contact page so for the home page we're gonna put an image at the top the one thing to know see how there's only one roll of buttons in the editor if you hit this toggle you get the second row of buttons and you might use some of these so I generally always leave it with two rows so let's start with adding the image so we just
• 15:00 - 15:30 insert now our media library came with two images in it when they when they gave us the theme so we're gonna add some media so we just click add new and on my desktop I have a bunch of pictures that I've already sorted and I'm gonna potentially use on this website so I'm just gonna highlight all of them at once and just insert them into the media library now they're here and I can choose whatever image I want when I'm
• 15:30 - 16:00 working on my website you can also do them one at a time so they're all uploaded now I don't want all these to go on the one page so I'm just gonna uncheck them so the only one that I have checked is this one right here so I'm gonna use this image on my homepage right at the top and there it is now here's where you can have some text on your website so having a website can be easy and free learn how today now to
• 16:00 - 16:30 make this text look proper on a home page of a website what I'm going to do is I'm gonna make the text larger so I'm gonna highlight this text and up on my editor right now that text is paragraph style text it's just what you would use in a normal paragraph I'm going to make it heading 1 the largest text available through this theme so I'm also going to break this up into two sentences and I'm
• 16:30 - 17:00 going to Center a line right here Center align this text so it'll look great on our website I'm going to drop it down a little farther [Music] so I've got some more text typed here so now I'm gonna make this look a little better so you can have awesome features
• 17:00 - 17:30 like I'm going to Center align that I'm gonna make it bigger but not as big as the first heading I'm gonna make it h3 these three right here I'm going to Center align those and I'm going to leave those at paragraph size now I'm gonna drop down a little more and you can put anything you want on this homepage but I'm gonna add the three pictures in a row that I showed you at the beginning so I'm just gonna click this insert content so if I select three
• 17:30 - 18:00 images one two three and insert them I can insert them as a tiled mosaic as a thumbnail grid what I want to use is as circles so I'm gonna insert them into my website so there they are right there now why don't we just update this page and see how it looks so it's updated
• 18:00 - 18:30 let's go to the second tab and refresh our page we'll click on the home and we'll see how what our home page looks like so there it is we have our image here's the h1 text here's the h3 text and here's the paragraph text and the three images that we have in circular form so that's looking pretty good so we'll leave that for now so our home page is done our contact page is done now it's our blog page we have to work on but before we do that we have to do
• 18:30 - 19:00 one more thing here in the admin area so we'll go back to the full admin we have to tell WordPress that we want our website to have a static homepage and we want our blog page to be the blog page so let's do that now so we'll go to customize and this is the customizer right here so we want to go under static front page so we want our front page to be a static
• 19:00 - 19:30 page so we just highlight that and we want our front page to be the home page we want our Post's Page that's where a blog post go to be our blog page and then we just click Save and publish and then we'll close this so now let's just take a look at our website so now it knows that our home page is our our home page of our website and you can tell because see the URL here there's no
• 19:30 - 20:00 slash home the fact that it's a home page means it's the upper level page of this website whereas the contact page see its slash contact the blog page is slash blog now it knows that see it's given us first blog post because we don't have a blog post yet this first blog post is the base content that they gave us with our website so we'll get rid of this so let's go back to our
• 20:00 - 20:30 admin area so now let's just do a blog post and we'll see if it shows up on the blog page and we'll see how it looks so blog post will select see this first blog post that they gave us we don't want that so let's trash it move to trash now let's add a blog post so blog posts add so we're gonna add since this website is about creating websites let's just add our very first blog post how to
• 20:30 - 21:00 create a WordPress website how to create a WordPress website that's the title of our blog post now we can add some text in this video we'll create a simple WordPress website and then we'll hit enter so what we can do is put a video on this blog post and we just happen to have one so we'll just leave this blog post up right now we'll open another tab
• 21:00 - 21:30 and we're gonna go to YouTube and we're gonna grab one of the videos that I've done on how to make a website this is one thing that you might do if you have a blog post you could share anything texts songs video so let's just grab this video right here and what we'll do is we'll copy and paste the URL so we just right click copy now let's go back to our first tab and simply paste it right
• 21:30 - 22:00 click paste and WordPress knows it's a YouTube video and it already opens up a video player and puts it in the post for us so this post is pretty well done as far as title and content goes but what the blog post is a couple other things that you really should do so right here on the Left categories and tags normally you would have two or three categories for your blog posts for this website we
• 22:00 - 22:30 might have one category could be websites another category could be images so let's make our category called websites because that's what this blog post is about so right here we're gonna add a new category and we're gonna call it websites so it's that easy so this is the one that's checked we don't want it to be categorized under uncharacterized that's the one they gave us so we'll just leave that same thing with tags tags are great because as you
• 22:30 - 23:00 get more blog posts people can find the ones they're looking for by clicking on a tag and any posts that are tagged with that tag will come up in an archive page so let's just make some tags so this tag we're gonna make called WordPress because it's a WordPress website and you can add several tags to each blog post so basically we have our content we have
• 23:00 - 23:30 our category and tags and that's all we have to do now let's just publish this post so it's published let's go to our second tab and let's look at the blog post so we'll go to our blog page and here's our first blog post how to create a WordPress website here's the text we added and here's the video so if we click the button it'll play let's add a second blog post so we'll go back to the admin
• 23:30 - 24:00 top-level will go to blog posts and you can see the one we already have right here if you wanted to edit it you can just click on the edit button let's add a second one now this one let's call it images for your website we'll add some content here ever wonder where to get great free images for your website well let's give a source for
• 24:00 - 24:30 free images so first let's put some images so they look great so we'll just insert some content so let's add let's do a little gallery here of three images so I've selected the three of them continue it's a tiled mosaic right now I like the look of that so let's just insert it into our page hit the spacebar after it makes some room and then we'll let people know where they can get some free images for their website and a good place to go is
• 24:30 - 25:00 photo pin so I'm gonna put a link to photo pin right here so let's let's open up this third tab that we used and we're gonna go to photo pin oh so I have it bookmarked here so here it is photo pin let's just copy and paste it on the link so I highlighted it I'm going to link and I'm gonna paste the URL add a link
• 25:00 - 25:30 so photo pen is a great place to get free images let's before we publish this post let's go to categories so let's add another category called images because we're probably going to do several blog posts about images at it now again we uncheck this uncatted Uncategorized one and tags so let's add some tags images
• 25:30 - 26:00 let's add a tag called photo pin because we may make a couple posts about photo pin so this blog post is done so let's publish it and let's take a look at it so we'll go to our website well click the blog tab and there's the blog post we just did images for your website now
• 26:00 - 26:30 the new ones always go to the top there's the nice tiled mosaic and then the one that we did just before is below it now so as you create new blog posts they'll just stack one on top of each other so there's our website our home page has some content we have a a working blog and we have a contact page so that's really all there is to creating a simple free wordpress website so if you liked the video why not
• 26:30 - 27:00 subscribe to the YouTube channel and you'll catch all the future videos we're gonna add some features to this website thanks for watching