Worpress has simplified the process of building professional looking websites/ blogs with limited programming knowledge.  Not to say that you won’t need to know any programming if you want to do advanced customizations to your website.  After $100 and 20 hours of basic customizations on my Arthemia Premium Wordpress theme, I am now typing my very first post on how to build your own website.

To get started, you will first need to select a unique domain name like www.derrickpark.com and find a web host which meets the Wordpress minimum requirements.  There are hundreds of web hosts at different price ranges and offerings but Wordpress recommends one of the following web hosts for optimum services:

For more web host comparisons, please read Article #2 Best Host for your Buck.

If you don’t require the full flexibility of a web host, you can sign up for a free hosting service through http://wordpress.com.  Derrickpark.com is currently hosted on Dreamhost and enjoys many Wordpress friendly features.  One click Wordpress install allows you to have a full functional admin panel to customize your blog settings.

One of the more difficult decision making process comes when choosing a theme of your liking.    Although Wordpress is installed with few preloaded themes, you might also want to consider selecting from thousands of free themes to suit your needs.  Premium themes have many features that you may not find in free themes without programming knowledge to tweak the codes.  Most importantly, premium theme developers provide theme support.  If you do not have any web development experience, I strongly recommend you purchase a premium theme and receive personalized support when necessary.  Two great premium themes I recommend for beginners are:

For additional comparison on free theme vs. premium theme, please read Article #3 Free Theme vs. Premium Theme

Upon selecting a theme, you are now ready to personalize your website through Wordpress admin panel.  The theme template will have basic layouts to load logos, advertisements, and posts.  There are many Wordpress plugins made available to extend advanced features to your website by uploading a folder file and activating the plugin through the admin panel.  For more information on Wordpress plugins, please read Article #4 Wordpress Plugins Gone Wild.

Maintaining the contents of your website to drive traffic is the most difficult part of blogging.  Although you can install SEO (Search Engine Optimization) plugins to optimize your Wordpress blog for search engines, the quality of your web contents is what will bring visitors back to your site.  As I continue to work on generating increased traffic to my site, stay tuned for future articles on how I increased quality of traffic to derrickpark.com.

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