It’s true—you can start a new website by just pointing, clicking, and typing your text. You don’t need programming or custom layout designs—everything you need is included in free website software called WordPress.
What Is WordPress?
WordPress is a Content Management System (CMS) used to manage text, pictures, and videos on tens of millions of websites around the word, making it the most popular content management system in existence.
WordPress lets you enter your website text in a simple online form that looks like Microsoft Word. After you type and format your text by pointing and clicking, WordPress automatically inserts all the necessary HTML tags and website programming so that your page looks attractive and professional.
Why would software that does all of that be free? Because programmers hate doing the same thing over and over again—like inserting an HTML tag for every new paragraph—so they wrote WordPress to do all of the boring parts of creating a website. Programmers are lazy, so they gave away WordPress for free in the hopes that other programmers would add new features—and they did, making WordPress today the best content management software for the Web.
How To Use WordPress
Getting started with WordPress is easy. First you need a website that supports WordPress. (Almost all top hosting services offer one-click WordPress installation.) Then you need to create an initial WordPress account by entering your username (email address) and password.
After logging in the first time, you can create your first webpage immediately, or you can spend a few minutes customizing your theme. You don’t need any special training to do either of these things—you don’t even need to read the manual. Everything in WordPress is obvious.
After you create your first page, you can create your second page. If you want to change your layout, you can do that at anytime. All previously written pages are automatically updated to use the new layout, so everything is as simple as pointing and clicking.
If you let people comment on your pages like a blog, you can approve or reject comments using another obvious point and click interface.
Extending WordPress
WordPress gives you a complete content management system out of the (imaginary) box, but you can add more features later. There are hundreds of free themes that will personalize your blog appearance for you. Many of these themes were designed by the Web’s top graphic artists, so they’re both classy and cool.
More advanced WordPress features can be installed as plugins. For example, I use a plugin that helps me write articles that attract extra traffic from search engines. Other plugins help you customize all aspects of WordPress without forcing you to learn programming or deal with nasty HTML or CSS internals.
Conclusion
WordPress puts website design into a point and click interface that’s as easy to use as Microsoft Solitaire, giving everyone the opportunity to start a professional-quality website in as little as 15 minutes.
If you are interested in building a WordPress website from scratch and learning a new skill, grab this free report about building a website.