Creating a Free Website in WordPress

Creating a free website in WordPress can be done in two ways:

• Using WordPress itself for the domain and creating a website
  
• Register a Domain and use WordPress plugin to create a website
  

Though both options provide free hosting, the second option requires a domain name for your company, which is not free.

Let’s check both of these methods in detail:

• Using WordPress for the domain and Creating a website:
  
  • Sign up and activate in WordPress: The first step is to sign up at https://wordpress.com/ . Click on the Get Started Button as shown below:
    

    
    

    Signup by with your email address, create password, and also create a website address – which will act as your domain name for your site. Since you are using the WordPress platform to create a website, your site name will be suffixed with wordpress.com. For instance, if the site name is taskburst, then your domain name will be taskburst.wordpress.com.
    

    After entering the required info, you will receive a confirmation email to activate your website.
    

    • Website Setup: On completion of activation, you will be asked for few details such as a blog title, tagline, and language. Then, choose a suitable WordPress theme and customize it if required. WordPress provides several free themes for you to choose from. You can also use http://theme.wordpress.com/themes/sort/free/ to choose a free theme.
      
    • Connect: After clicking on Next, you can choose to connect with your Facebook or Twitter accounts. You can also skip this step and proceed ahead to configure WordPress. Click on Finish to complete your free website creation.
      
    • Check the website: Open the browser and type in the newly created website URL. For instance – https://taskburst.wordpress.com. You should now see your website
      
    • Change Appearance: On the left panel of WordPress dashboard, you can see multiple options to create and modify your website content along with the look and feel. You can add site pages or blog posts to fill in the content of your site.
      

    
    

    • Available WordPress Options: WordPress allows you to customize your website and also track metrics, such as page views, user locations, etc. The different options available on the left panel of your WordPress account are:
      
      • Site Pages – For managing and creating new pages to your website.
        
      • Blog Posts – Allows to edit, delete, add, and manage new blog post.
        
      • Media – Manages media files such as images and videos to your site.
        
      • Comments – Allows you to approve, delete and reply to comments.
        
      • Themes – Allows for addition and management themes for your website.
        
      • Configure – This feature handles sharing of your blogposts. You can share with people directly, or via social networking sites such as Facebook, Twitter, Google+, and LinkedIn. Here you also have options to add plugins. There are a whole host of plugins you can use for your site to provide functionality for almost anything you can imagine. From contact forms to landing page generation to SEO, plugins can provide you with almost everything you need to create exactly the site you want. Not all plugins are free though.
        
      • Settings – This allows to configure and manage your website in terms of discussion settings, traffic, and blog writing settings.
        

  Next we will look into creating free website using a personalized domain.
  

• Register a Domain and Using the WordPress Plugin to Create a Website:
  

  When using a separate domain, we need to first consider two key questions – Where do you register your domain name and which hosting provider do you use?
  

  Domain names can be registered through a whole host of companies; google domains, 1and1.com, and networksolutions.com, to name a few.
  

  The hosting platform you choose will provide end-end web hosting for your WordPress site. Some of the Paid Web Hosting platforms include – iPage.com, BlueHost.com, InMotionHosting.com, A2Hosting.com, GoDaddy.com.
  

  Free hosting providers include –
  

  • 000webhost.com
    
  • x10Hosting.com
    
  • Freehostia.com
    
  • FreeHostingNoAds.com –
    
  • UniverseHosting.com
    
  • Wordplus.com
    
  • Byethost.com
    
  • Biz.nf
    
  • AwardSpace.com
    
  • 100WebSpace.com
    

  Most of these free hosting platforms include one click WordPress installation. The installation details differ between the different web hosting platforms. Once WordPress is installed, you can proceed with your website theme selection, customization and content creation in a similar way as explained earlier.
  

  Need help with your WordPress website? We’d love to help you.