The Beauty Of WordPress

The beauty of WordPress is you can set up whatever type of website you wish.  Wordpress Plugins and Themes are there ‘just for you’ to make it your own.  There are free and paid options and you can mostly get what you want for free.

 

WP plugins are what makes everything work, from the security of your site to the fun part.  You don’t need to know any code as everything is supplied within the plugin or theme.

 

What I mostly do is add the theme first which  is so easy to do.  The theme needs to be in a zip file and you can upload this to the basic WP installation and let the set up do the rest.  This is all done through the dashboard under Appearance option, you can preview how the theme will look and if happy with the result, complete the upload.

 

I do have a program where I can design my own themes, unfortunately it is not being updated now but it still works for what I want to do.  I did learn to read the CSS code that the platform is built on and that has been handy if I want to change a few things on another theme from the WordPress vaults, mainly colours.

 

Now the way the sites work is with WP plugins.  These are made available through some great work by very generous programmers who allow us to download and install their plugin for no charge.  Of course you can donate to their research or recommend  them to others if you find a plugin useful, recommendations and reviews can really help those who are building the plugins.

 

There used to be only a couple of plugins come with the original install, now there are several and I must admit I haven’t delved too deeply into these, I have the ones I prefer to add to my sites, I will provide another section on what these are and how and why I use them.

 

You can use WordPress as a straight Blog.  Lots of people do this and can build up a following by blogging about something that interests you and others too.

You can use WordPress as a straight Website.  Lots of people do this too.  You can organise the platform this way too.

You can use WordPress as both a Blog and Website combined.  Lots and lots of people do this too.  Doing things this way you are adding new content  on a regular basis by blogging.

And…you can use WordPress as an eCommerce site and sell products.  There are many options to do this with the eCommerce themes and plugins available and many, many people do this too.

You can use WordPress as a Forum too, the plugins are there for this too.  Many people like forums to interact with like minded people or to provide special information on various topics too.  These are sites that need to be monitored at all times to prevent the not so nice people getting access.

 

So there are just a few options available  to you and all can be achieved with the relevant plugins and themes to make a great website.  I’ll go over these in more detail so check back often.