WordPress To Go: How To Build A WordPress Website On Your Own Domain, From Scratch, Even If You Are A Complete Beginner

I had never worked with WordPress before, so when I was told I had to setup a website of my own for blogging and posting my writing projects, I knew I needed help to get started. There are many books available, but I chose this one because it said it was specifically for the complete beginner. I may well need more detailed information in future, but to start out, I wanted the very basic information, presented in a logical order. I did get my website setup and online using this book.Starting with getting your domain and installing WordPress, the instructions are clear and easy to follow. Note that I decided to setup a hosted website on GoDaddy. Different website hosting providers require different steps to install WordPress, but I was able to get through the installation, and it worked the first time, using the instructions in this book. The chapters cover all the basic tasks in great detail, which is what I needed. I learned how to login to my website to perform administrative chores and basic issues when designing a website. Because I had never used WordPress, I didn't know how to create a page for my website or create a blog post, and these tasks were covered, in detail.I needed to upload images for my blog posts and I was able to do this without problems. I didn't know what a static page was, but I learned how to set it up so that my website always shows the same home page. At the time, I was using one of the free WordPress themes just to setup my site, but I was looking for help to choose a theme. The chapter on how to choose and install a theme helped me decide what I was after as I looked at the many themes available. Once I had settled on a theme, I was able to switch my website to use the new theme.Learning to use WordPress requires learning about many things, and I was lost when it came to plugins. I followed the recommendations as to what plugins to install and it all worked for me on the first go. At this point I had my website online and I was adding blog posts and images. The last chapters provided an introduction to search engine optimization, how HTML works and how to expand your WordPress skills further.This book covers the basics of setting up a new WordPress website and assumes no prior experience. It was exactly what I needed at the time. Reading this book got my site online quickly with very little drama. Given that I didn't have any previous experience with WordPress, and how quickly I was able to get my new site online, this book provided exactly what it promised. You can see the results at brianhitchcock.net and brianrhitchcock.com.

I am a pretty effective SEO specialist but not an expert to actually build a website from scratch - something that some of my clients would be interested in. So I looked into different programs (Dreamweaver being one of them) and found that Wordpress is the ideal platform. However, there are almost no good courses on WP out there, and just a few decent books, most of them either convoluted, unnecessarily technical, and / or very expensive. But then I was lucky to find "Wordpress to Go" - and was hooked.It's no exaggeration but I can say with total conviction (and no, I'm not getting any rewards for this) that Sarah's book is the best tutorial I have ever read - probably on any subject, and certainly on a technical one, bar none. The main upside of this book is the totally practical approach the author takes (I guess only women can be that practical!): clear, very easy to understand, and virtually holding the reader's hand as she goes through all the important WP modules and menus step by step, and extremely clearly. Sarah is a programmer and as such a professional but she has a very readable and personal style, almost as she was sitting across the table. Oh, and BTW, all the info is up-to-date, not some rehashed, obsolete stuff.Hosting (Sarah maybe receives a commission from Hostgator but so what? Hostgator is really the best), Setup, Installation, all are explained very well. The entire WP structure, and all its critical functions, are totally easy to read and understand - and to apply, too, because practical examples and useful screenshots are there to help. WP has a lot of widgets and plugins, and the author gives all pros and cons, and gives plenty of good advice. It's fair to say that unless a user is severely untalented, he / she will be able to apply Sarah's book to build decent WP websites within a few days, often even faster.This is a relatively short e-book (only 80 pages or so), and Kindle pages are not big, so something had to give, such as extensive MySQL and php guidance which is lacking, along with a few other, though non-critical pieces. But the author is practical (a woman, remember?), and has managed to superbly balance vital knowledge with bottom line applicability, and pack into this great book almost as much information as books 10 times the length, one tenth of clarity, and 20 times the price.Bottom line: this book is worth a lot; and at under $ 5 this is the steal of the year.

I found the book to be comforting while attempting to understand and implement a Word Press web site. I followed along as outlined in the book and was able to get on-line with a 2 page web site with a couple of hours. I also used the recommended hosting company Hostgator, which turned out to be an excellent choice. Their tech support people were quite helpful in filling in the blanks when I ventured outside the basics as presented in the book.A couple of points worth noting, the book mentions a discount on the hosting fees using the book as a reference but they offered anyone a discount just to sign up for a 1 yr minimum...nothing additional. Word Press is a simple tool for blogging ( which is what it's original use ). Web site construction is quite different. I've built 6 prior sites using Front Page which was a good tool in it's day. Word Press takes CSS (cascading style sheets) to a much higher level but not without some trial & error. Everything considered, for a small investment, you can download this book ( I used an iPad ) and immediately get a basic site up and running.the author should consider a series of follow-on books that build on the concepts in this one. There is a huge amount of Word Press documentation available for free but making use of this information without some basic help is the challenge.bill Kiesewetter

With this book in hand, I finally tackled a job I'd been putting off for months - converting my old hand-built website to a WordPress.org site. It involved changing hosts, since my previous provider didn't offer a WordPress installation, and frankly that intimidated me more than a little. Following Ms McHarry's advice (and some other on-line checking), I signed up with Hostgator. After an initial hiccup or two, easily resolved via their customer service, they completely transferred my site from my old provider to Hostgator. The WP installation was very easy and straightforward to do myself.This book provides an excellent basic overview of how WP works and how to set up your site with pages and posts, categories, widgets, plug-ins, comment moderation, etc. I appreciated her suggestions for plug-ins to add and how to set them up. Overall, I found the book well-written, and appropriately targeted for her stated audience - beginners with basic familiarity with web site structure and usage. It by no means answered every question I had (particularly about making WP pages top level in your domain, or how to convert existing .htm pages to WP). But it gave me a very good foundation to start with, which made it much easier to understand the more detailed on-line WP help or other internet sources.The one slight nit-pick is that she advises you to disable Jetpack early on (I assume to make the tutorial easier to follow), and then never says anything more about this plugin. In fact, I found Jetpack to be immensely useful once I did activate it. Among its many features is an easy-to-add set of social media link buttons. Given the importance of social media these days, I'm a little surprised this was missing from the book, but perhaps it's been added to later editions than the one I purchased.All in all, if you are just getting started on WP, your $5 (Kindle version) will be well-spent on this nice, easy tutorial guide!

This book is a good introduction to WordPress. Very clear and easy to follow. Though, it only gets 3 stars, simply based on it is more of a "primer". It leaves the reader with too many questions within a CMS that is much more capable than what this manuscript shows. Other books are much more well rounded on the subject and detailed. I commend the author and would like to see her produce a more in depth guide in the future as her style will appeal to the less technical and less knowledgeable. The material is up-to-date with the current line of WordPress.

This book is a must read if you are brand new to Wordpress and have no idea where to begin. Given her background as a programmer, Sarah does a great job of walking you through everything, from setting up your hosting account, to installing WordPress on your domain, to adding pages, posts, changing themes, SEO etc. I originally bought this book because I wanted to do a makeover for my family's Christmas Tree farm website. I had some basic html knowledge but I was looking for a platform that offered WYSISYG features and that wasn't going to involve extensive coding ( that stuff gives me a headache). The Wordpress platform suited my needs and at no point did I feel lost in going through the book. I am a visual person and the fact that she created a separate website ( keeping chickens.net ) as the sample website for her readers to view was a godsend for me.Now I will mention that there are a lot more things she could have included and perhaps elaborated on some of the more desirable features of Wordpress such as plugins, social media etc - but the point of this book is to get the basic idea of how to create a website on your own domain. If you want to take it further, she does a wonderful job in providing her readers with additional resources for Wordpress themes, plugins and mentions what she personally uses and recommends. Also she introduces her readers to an excellent hosting company, Hostgator. While going through her book I actually had to contact Hostgator because I was transferring my domain from another company, and that in itself was like pulling teeth - not fun and many hours spent on the phone. However, Hostgator's customer service is impeccable. They did a really great job of answering my questions and addressing my needs, especially after explaining to them that I was not an experienced web developer.What really blew me away was the author herself. I have gone to Sarah's website, wordpress2go.com, reviewed her resources and recommendations and personally contacted her with additional questions. She was very prompt in her responses and did a wonderful job answering my questions. There are so many different books on Wordpress, but this is the one to get if you want to get a basic, not too technical but very clear idea about how to use this wonderful platform to create websites. Even better that when you contact the author herself she responds in a timely manner.

I'm new to wordpress and didn't even know the difference between wordpress.com and wordpress.org. Now I do.I've read other books on word press website building that claim to be "easy and fast", always good catch words, but which ultimately were neither easy nor fast.Sarah's book does EXACTLY what it says it will do: Build a website, on your own domain, from scratch, as a beginner. This is a link to the website that I built with Sarah's instructions: [...] And I'm still making changes because I'm getting more and more confident in my abilities to move around plug-ins and themes, words I didn't understand before.It is clear to me that Sarah is or has been either a trained teacher or a natural teacher because she was able to get into what I call (and perhaps others do too) "beginner's mind". Meaning that even with all of her knowledge she is able to think like a true beginner (someone with NO EXPERIENCE)and makes no assumptions about what you know.Every step is spelled out and explained. I've enlisted another friend into this website building arena. We are seriously thinking of creating a community of small business owners who can build their own websites using this book as our reference. I return to this book again and again for more information.Thank you Sarah. Well done!

This book was an excellent resource for me. I wanted to pull my old website for my consulting business from Yahoo/Aabaco's terrible hosting service and move to a new provider -- and modernize my website in the process. Wordpress seemed the way to go, and this book gave me the roadmap to getting the new site up and going quickly.Why only four stars? This book lacks something very, very basic: an index! It's extremely difficult to find topics in it other than by reading the book A to Z. For example, in my new site I wanted to disable commenting on all pages. I knew there were steps on how to do that in the book... somewhere. I should have been able to go to the index and look up "commenting." Alternatively, if a PDF of the book came with purchase, I could just CTRL+F my way through finding what I need.I'd seriously spend another ~$10 on the next edition of this book if it came with an index or PDF -- the info is THAT good, it's just hard to find...

This book is well written and gives just the critical info needed by a beginner. My only regret is that I finished reading the book. Lots of illustrations, I would recommend this book to anyone wanting to launch their first WP website.

I find this book best ever referred so far.This has cleared almost all of my doubts in first reading, Thanks

Fantastic read - just get it and read it - better than good.

Muchísimas gracias Sarah por escribir este manual gracias al que he podido desarrollar mi primer website WordPress en menos de 4 días. Muy aconsejable para todo aquel que pretenda tener su primera experiencia con WordPress.Magnífico trabajo Sarah. Me gustaría poder leer un segundo manual que profundizara más en los secretos de wordPress.

I need to build a website and was looking at £500-1000 for a professionally made one even though what I want is fairly simple. Got this thinking I'd just see if it made it simple to build your own and it's a GREAT read. Really simple clear instructions, has given me huge confidence, am going to have a good go at doing it myself! I'll report back in due course but I can tell just from the way it is written that it will be as easy as it can be made to be!Quick update: it's even better than I thought, the hosts she recommends are brilliant and the software (with her guidance) is really easy to use. If I'd had all my images and text ready to use I'd have had a good attractive website up and running in under 3 hrs. I'm having fun tinkering and I'll come back and leave a link when it looks presentable! So far I've spent about £70 for this guide, the hosting package for 2 years, the domain name and some professional images I needed. Really, really good guide!Update: [...] if anyone wants to have a look (I write historical novels so its my own person website). I think overall I paid £100 (images, hosting, the book itself, domain name etc) and I'm pleased with it. There are fancier ones you can build as well of course (and look out for ones tailored to special requirements like photographers) but it really is quite easy to use. If you get stuck, enter Wordpress, your theme and the problem into a search engine and there are lots of forums where people explain how to do something (easily!).So overall, very impressed. Yes if you wanted something fancier of course you could have it built but this is a cheap and easy to use option for those wanting a simple site - and you feel pretty good for building your own site!