Hey guys im in a very confused state of mind at the moment and need some help with Word Press and generally starting a website. My parents have had a business for 20 years and have finally decided to get a website!
As im studying IT and Business i said id get it done for them. Rather than design it from scratch i used a template which i bought from themeforest.net (awesome template!) and yesterday a friend mentioned in passing using word press as a CMS which i had never heard of before, and he left before i could ask any questions.
SO basically i have a site working on my computer and i have no idea how to get it live as a .com or .com.au, so far as i can see wordpress is a blog with .wordpress.com which isnt what im looking for.
Thanks in advance
Simon
It seems like you have two questions here:
Q1. I have a site working on my computer (locally hosted) and I have no idea how to get it live as a .com or .com.au?
You will need to get a domain name (www.something.com or .com.au) and a Web Hosting Provider where you can upload your site to. Some Web Hosting Providers provide the service of registering a domain name for you, so that you don’t have to do it on your own. Take a look at the following links for more info:
http://www.hostcompare.com/guide/guidetohosting.html
http://www.hostcompare.com/
However, since you are still learning this hosting thing, you may want to learn by using some free hosts and perfect your site by making the appropriate changes (if and where necessary) to make your site fully working on the web. For that period you can use the free sub-domain provided by the free host and when you’ve got it all worked out, you may then either upgrade your plan to premium or migrate to a premium host and buy a domain name as well. Search google for free hosting sites, there are lots of them to choose from.
Q2. A friend mentioned in passing using word press as a CMS which I had never heard of before?
Depending on your needs a CMS could be helpful. It allows you to easily update your sites content online and most CMSs come with additional components such as PayPal integration and the such that can be easily added to the site. WordPress is one example of a CMS. Note that if you do want to use WordPress or any other CMS you will need to make sure that:
If the site you have only contains a small number of static pages, then a CMS might be overkill. This doesn’t mean that you can’t migrate your site to a CMS in the future if needed.
Hope this helps.
You’ll want to sign up with a web hosting provider (site5, dreamhost etc) and register a domain name. Once that’s setup you can use the control panels from the hosts to install WordPress, plop in your theme and add content. It’s often a one click affair to get WordPress installed, just be mindful of security updates as new versions come out.
WordPress.com can host blogs, but if you want to install it on you own hosting server you can download the blog platform from wordpress.org and install it on your own server.
The only thing you have to be sure of is if the template you downloaded is for wordpress or not.
There is a difference between http://wordpress.com and http://wordpress.org In your case I think you might want to use http://wordpress.org It is a great free and open source CMS Most web hosts come with the facility of installing WP using stuff like Fantastico.