How to Create a Website wants to offer a free tutorial on how to create a free blog with WordPress.com.
WordPress allows you to make your very own free subdomain through their website and offers you the same tools as the software version of WordPress.
If you plan on having a purchased hosting company or your own .com website, we suggest you use a free WordPress blog to get familiar with how WP is ran.
Let’s Make Sure we are on the Free Blog WordPress
First things first, make sure you are on WordPress.com and not on WordPress.org. WordPress.com is the Free Blogging software offered by them and WordPress.org is the main webpage for the software platform. Since we installed the software WordPress to our website, we use the .org one to help get support. Since you are making a free blog, go to the .com one.
Look at the top of your browser and you should see this:
“WordPress.com” – You can click right here just to be sure.
Now that we are absolutely positive that you are on the correct website, let’s get started in creating an account.
Sign Up and Start Publishing Now (Get Started)
Right on the front page of the website they have an option to “Get Started”. Click on get started and you will begin your account creation process.
Please look at the image below:
Once you click on “Get Started” you will be brought to a page that allows you to enter in all of your information. Make sure you use real information and a real email address you can access because you will be sent a confirmation email in order to have a free blog.
Fill Out Email Address, Username, Password, and Blog Address
You will need to fill out all of your information on this page. Your Email Address, Your Username of choice, your password (Make sure it’s a good password that no one can figure out easily), and your blog subdomain. Keep your username and blog address similar unless you want to create multiple free websites with WordPress.
Fill in the information like so:
For the tutorial purpose, we used the email “tutorial@howtocreateawebsiteonline.com”, our username is “tutorial2013” which was auto generated by WordPress.com, and our blog address for this instance is “howtocreateawebsiteonline.wordpress.com” which is a free url.
IMPORTANT: They are going to try and get you to buy hosting through them, we suggest you do not do that. This is a tutorial for a free blog with WordPress, not one you are going to pay for. However, if you are interested in buying your own website, please check out our step by step guide on how to purchase a .com name.
Click on “Create Blog”
Confirm Your Account with the Email Address Provided
Now you need to confirm the information you entered is correct information. They want to make sure people aren’t using other peoples names or fake email accounts. This is a good thign that they offer considering it’s a form of identity protection and helps keep spammers away from your email address.
Check your email to complete registration:
Log in to your email account that you used to create the account. If you didn’t receive an email, click on “Didn’t get your email yet?” like the image above. If you need help creating an email address, please click here.
Open the email from WordPress.com, it should look like this:
Click on “Activate Blog” and it will open a new tab in your browser or a new window. Now your website is created but their are still some steps left, let’s go to the next step.
Setting Up Your Free WordPress Blog
The first screen you will see after activation is asking you to follow some of your interests.
Interests Include:
- Art
- Books
- Business
- Cars
- Crafts
- Culture
- Entertainment
- Family
- Fashion
- Food
- Humor
- Nature
- Photography
- Sports
- Technology
- Travel
For this tutorial we decided to pick “Business” and “Food”
Please Click on the Image to make it larger
Now click on “Next Step –>” and it will bring you to the next step.
Follow Your Friends:
You can connect to Twitter, Facebook, or Google and connect with your friends. For now, we just clicked on “Next Step”
Step 3 – Set up your Free Blog:
We are at the final step, setting up your free blog with WordPress.com! Check out the image below:
Fill out the above information however you want and click on Next Step which will bring you to the “Themes” page. This is where you will select a template for your blog which is what it will look like. Don’t worry, you can always change what your theme will look like in the future so for now just pick something related.
Make sure you select a free theme. Since this is a free blog, you do not want to have to spend money on your theme. Plus, you can edit your theme in the .css file and make it however you want anyway. After you click on Next Step, you can actually “Customize Your Theme” at this exact point. For now, we will leave our theme the same but feel free to mess around a bit to your liking.
The Final Step – Create Your First Blog Post
Now the fun begins! You get to create your first blog post on your very own free blog website. If you have nothing to say at the moment, you can just click “Finish” and you will be done.
Click on “Text” and start typing…
Once you click on “Text” and you will see a window to type in the title and the body of your post.
Click on “Publish Post” and you are done! Thank you for visiting How to Create a Website Online! Please feel free to browse around and get more website help.