If you are looking to developing a website, be it for personal use, creating a blog, or for a store front business, there are a few pieces that you need to put together before you can get your website up and running.
A very important piece of that puzzle is publishing software that you use to create your actual website. Believe it or not, there is free web publishing software available, and over 32% of the entire internet is using this software.
I am going to discuss what WordPress has to offer, why it is free and what it can do for your website development.
Please be sure to read all the way to the end for additional advice.
Why Is WordPress Free
Let’s start with why anything worth using would be free. Let’s face it, it is rare to find anything of value for free anymore. Well, WordPress is free and it is publishing software that is worth using.
WordPress is considered an open source software. That means you have the freedom to use it for free, you can modify it, build upon it and you don’t pay any fees for however you use it.
It was developed by an open source community project, where over 10,000 talented people have made contributions to make it the great software it is today. There is a core team of developers that lead the development but anyone can fix bugs, make suggestions or provide patches for problems.
Because it was developed as an open source community, it can’t be sold. There are no actual owners of the software.
Why I Suggest Using WordPress
Everyone that is developing a website needs some type of software to actually get it published to the internet. WordPress is the software that I recommend to you from a beginner all the way to an expert. I am currently creating this article for you using WordPress, and I have been using WordPress for over a year now.
It is easy to use, and you don’t need to know how to do any coding or background work in order to make it work for you. There is really no learning curve with this software and even if you have no experience creating a website, you will quickly figure out how to use it.
It will easily allow you to add images, add links to other sites, check your spelling and sentence structure, create headings and publish directly to your website.
It is easy to find support if you run into a problem. There are WordPress tutorials created by experts, WordPress forum and WordPress events happening all over the world where you can meet and talk to other WordPress users.
You don’t need the expense of hiring a web designer to help with your design or to make changes to your website. WordPress uses basic formatting tools you are probably already familiar with.
Features Of WordPress
- Full control of your website, free to do anything you want with customization.
- You own your website and all its data. Your website won’t be shut down even if WordPress is no longer offered.
- You can add free or paid plug-ins. Over 54,000 free plug-ins are available. Plug-ins are how you customize your website from how you want it to perform to the look of the site.
- You can use any free or paid WordPress theme that you want.
- Use Google Analytics for tracking your website traffic and how it is performing.
- Make money from your website from selling your own products to promoting other products.
- All SEO Features, this is the search engine optimization which helps you get ranked within search engines.
- E commerce Store
What Costs Are Involved With Building A Website
You can actually get a website up and running with very low costs, especially if you choose to use WordPress for your software, but there are some unavoidable costs that will be necessary to make your website work.
First of all, you will need website hosting. Every website on the internet needs hosting. This is the website’s home on the internet and where all of your data and information is stored.
Web hosting usually costs around $8 per month.
I would recommend using Bluehost for hosting your website. They are one of the top trusted website hosting providers since 2005, and there are over 2 million websites using this platform. It focuses on innovation at all levels.
Bluehost is the official WordPress recommended hosting provider and they have agreed to offer WordPress users a free domain name and 50% off your web hosting cost. You can currently sign up for $3.95 per month through here.
==>Click here to Claim This Exclusive Bluehost Offer<==
This is a special introductory offer and it comes with a 30-day money back guarantee.
- Bluehost offers 24/7 support from trained in-house experts.
- Help center includes guides and video tutorials.
- Free SSL Certificate included.
- Create email address that is directly tied to your domain name for free.
- Can transfer existing domain name to Bluehost.
- 3 levels of hosting packages available.
- Shared – provides everything you need to get started. Great for a new website or blog. $7.99/month, special offer of $3.95 right now.
- VPS – Great for moderate to high traffic. Provides power, control and flexibility to run a server the way you want. $29.99/month, special offer of $19.99/month right now.
- Dedicated – provides improved security and complete customization. For websites with high traffic, giving ultimate security and performance. $119.99/month, special offer of $79.99/month right now.
If you are new and just getting started, the Shared level will work perfectly fine for you. I wouldn’t spend the extra money when just starting out.
You are also going to need a domain name. This is your actual address on the internet. Bluehost is offering a free domain name if you sign up with them, but typically domain names are going to cost between $14 to $16 per year.
Additional Advice
If you are looking to start up a new website, I strongly feel that you can’t go wrong with the free web publishing software that WordPress has available. A word of caution, be careful when signing up with WordPress that you are signing up with the correct WordPress. There is a WordPress.org and a WordPress.com. You want the WordPress.org. This is the WordPress that I have been discussing.
WordPress.com was developed from someone that initially started WordPress.org, but WordPress.com is very different. They do have a free package, but it comes with lots of restrictions, they will advertise on your site, and you can’t earn any income with that package. They do have upgrades, but they get quite costly and still will have many limitations to what you will be able to do.
If you are completely new to starting a website, you might want to take a look at Wealthy Affiliate. They will provide you with training on how to go about developing a website, provide you with 2 free websites, provide WordPress and hosting of your website. You can also join for free. You can take a look at my Wealthy Affiliate Review for additional information. There is so much they offer to help anyone get a website up and running and how to rank in the search engines.
If you have any questions or comments, please leave them below.
Some of the links within this post are affiliate links of which I might receive a small compensation from sales of certain items.
