Course: Self-Hosting a Website with Wordpress

Designing Self-Hosted
Websites with Wordpress

Many of today's websites are powered by Wordpress, a blogging tool and content management system that also lets you create static pages, shopping carts, and anything else you need to build a website. The beauty is that once the site is live, your client can make their own changes and you can move on to building more websites for new clients.

This course assumes that you have a working knowledge of html. If not, there's no time like the present. Here's a link to the W3 html tutorial:
http://www.w3schools.com/html

Please respond to this poll:
http://www.polleverywhere.com/free_text_polls/LTU4NTQ2MDI1Nw
10 points

Ms. D's blog post about this intro unit.

Get Ready...

1. Computer requirements to take this class: You need a relatively new (three years old or less) Mac or PC computer.

2. Download and install Mamp (for Macs) or Wamp (for Windows) to set up your computer as a server so you can have a copy of your website on your hard drive as well as the one that's live on the net. The movie below gets you most of the way there:
http://www.lullabot.com/videos/install-local-web-server-mac-osx

3. If you are using a pc, watch this video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=He3AFcGjUmw

4. You will need to buy a domain name (for example demillodesign.com) and web hosting in order for you site to be live on the internet. Before you choose a web host, watch this movie and make sure your web host can meet these Wordpress requirements: Video Link

I use GoDaddy, but would not recommend them because their site is too busy and all they do is try to sell you more. Go to this link if you need help finding a compatible web host: http://wordpress.org/hosting

5. You will need an html editor in order to edit css and php files. You can use Notepad on a Windows pc or download TextWrangler for free to use on a Mac.

6. You will need an ftp (file transfer protocol) software installed on your computer in order to upload your site to the internet. Filezilla is free and works with Wordpress. You can download it at http://filezilla-project.org. You can also use CyberDuck of you own a mac.

7. Download Firebug. It's free and it will allow you to examine the structure of the website your are building.