Creating a website is essential for modern businesses, and useful for your personal brand. WordPress, a content management system (CMS), can help you build your own website without having any programming skills.
This would save you the money you’d spend on hiring a web developer and allow you to customize the website however you want. Plus, you don’t need to be an experienced developer to create your own WordPress website, cultivating just a few skills will help you improve your website’s interface, design, and make your website more professional. In this article, we cover some of those skills and the best WordPress Bootcamps where you can learn them.
Coding
There’s a common question people often ask when thinking about building their own website: “Do I need to learn how to code to create a WordPress website?” The answer is: it depends.
If you’re going to use WordPress with premade plugins and themes, you don’t need to know how to code at all. There are thousands of WordPress themes with different colors and layouts to choose from. But if you have a creative mind and you want to create and customize your own designs, then yes, you should learn how to code. WordPress itself is built on PHP, and it’s themes use HTML and CSS. Knowing how to use PHP, HTML, and CSS will allow you to create your own themes and plugins.
PHP
PHP is a scripting language that is used to develop static websites. However, it can also be used for creating dynamic websites. Knowing how to use PHP will not only help you create a WordPress website, it is also a free tool, so if you ever need to create something with PHP it won’t be as expensive as working with other tools. However, you need to install PHP in order to be able to interpret PHP scripts.
HTML
HTML is a markup language that is used to create websites. It is used on most of the websites worldwide on the internet. To make websites more dynamic and add more movement, people tend to use JavaScript or CSS. HTML could be the lowest level of front-end development.
CSS
While HTML is like the foundation of the website, CSS is used for the external choices of it. To put it in simple words, HTML is the structure of a web document and with CSS you can determine the colors, the fonts, the layouts, and the overall looks you want for your website. Having some knowledge of CSS will help you create amazing templates for your WordPress website.
Web Design
Now, let’s say you know how to code and you want to create your own theme. Do you know how to customize it to make it look good? If you don’t have design skills maybe this isn’t going to work for you. The appearance of your website is crucial to make it attractive to users. According to some statistics at WebFX 92% of the first impressions that people have of your website come from web design. This can give you an idea of how important it is.
If you’d like to take this path and customize your website from scratch but you feel that you have no design skills, there are great Web Design Bootcamps out there such as the ones from Thinkful or General Assembly.
UI and UX
UX and UI design skills are crucial for any digital product. Knowing UX and UI fundamentals will help you create a seamless experience for your users and they can make the most of their time at your website. To understand this better, let’s look at ISO 9241-210’s concept of user experience: “a person’s perceptions and responses that result from the use or anticipated use of a product, system or service.” This means the study of the behavior of users when interacting with the product, how they feel, what they enjoy, and what they don’t. UI, on the other hand, studies the interaction of users with the platform; everything related to commands like buttons, touchscreens, voice commands, and others.
Regardless of if you’re a programmer or not, this should be something to consider because it’ll help you improve traffic and create a meaningful experience for your users. If you’d like to learn this skill there are schools like Thinkful or General Assembly that have outcomes-oriented courses in UX and UI design.
How to create your own WordPress website
Starting a WordPress website shouldn’t be hard regardless of your developer skills. In fact, many users say they created one in a matter of minutes. But it’s important for you to decide what purpose your site will have. If you’re not going to build plugins or themes, you can create your first WordPress website with just a few simple steps. Here we’ll share a brief guide for starting your own WordPress website without the need for programming skills.
Pick a domain name
Choosing a domain is one of the most important steps to consider when you’re building your WordPress website. If you choose the right one, it’ll help you be more visible to your specific audience and create brand engagement. A catchy and attractive name will help users remember your site and identify your brand. It’ll also depend on your niche; if your brand is something related to clothing and fashion your domain should reflect that. Once you decide on a name, it’s time for you to buy your domain and choose your hosting provider. There are sites where you can buy both, you just need to find the one that suits your needs.
Install WordPress & choose your theme
Using some hosting services you won’t need to install WordPress because it’ll be automatically installed once you pay the subscription. But in other cases, you’ll need to install it yourself. The next step would be to select your theme. The first ones you’ll see are the generic ones, but if you don’t like those you can subscribe to a premium account to have access to more.
Pick your WordPress plugins
Now that everything is set up, it’s important that you get familiarized with the back-end of your website. Get to know your dashboard, how it works, and find out which plugins work best for you. There will be some fundamental plugins you should install such as Yoast or SEMRush for your SEO strategies. These two can help you optimize your page to get a higher position in Google searches.
Customize website
This could be the most exciting part of building your WordPress website. In this step, it is time to play around with fonts, colors, and layouts. You can add social media buttons, contact sections and many other features to represent your company. Once you do this, you can add pictures and content. Have fun with it!
Conclusion
To create your WordPress website you don’t need to be an expert at web development or have a great experience at building any other type of website. However, having some coding skills can help you customize themes without limitations or create your own plugins.