Self-guided content 
Bite size sections 
Around 2h 35m plus activities 
Beginner 
Back to topWelcome! We’re glad you’re here!
Is this your first time building a website? Are you returning to WordPress after a break? Are you looking for a basic understanding of how things work?
You’re in the right place!
This free, self-paced, Create Your Site course will give bloggers, business owners, and creators from every niche a solid foundation of how to make a WordPress.com website.
In this course, you’ll discover:
- Creating a WordPress.com account (if you don’t already have one)
- Creating a new site (we encourage using a practice site)
- Configuring basic General Settings
- Activating the WordPress.com Appleton theme
- Setting up 4 pages: Home, Blog, About, Contact
- Editing Templates and Template Parts
- Creating a menu
- And more!
At the end of the course, you’ll know how to create a complete 4-page website, with directions on what your next steps are.
This course won’t be covering:
- Alternate ways to achieve various outcomes
- Advanced features such as CSS, plugins, or custom themes
- Adjacent topics such as newsletters, email lists, SEO
- Expansive details on every feature and option
This is a beginner’s course to get you started with the basics.
This free course will benefit creators at any stage of their website journey, but was designed especially with beginners in mind. By the end of this course, you’ll have the knowledge and specific action items to Create Your Site with WordPress.com, and you’ll know what your next steps are.
How to do this course
We designed this course to be completed in one of two ways:
- You can use our exercises as general guidelines for building your own custom site. (Keeping in mind that your final site will look different to our example practice site.)
- Or you can complete the exercises as written to recreate our practice site – for practice! This allows you to learn, experiment and play around, before designing and publishing your custom site. (You can then refer back to the lessons for guidance on your custom site.)
Click, click, click! The lessons throughout this course include a variety of features to help deepen your experience with the materials. Be sure to click away as you work through the lessons to discover additional treasures!
Upgrades are optional. If you’re building your custom site right away, you may choose to upgrade your plan to gain access to additional features, but it’s not required. You can recreate our practice site with no paid upgrades.
If this is your first time building a website, we recommend starting with a practice site. You’ll want to name it accordingly, so it’s easy to distinguish from other sites in your WordPress.com account’s Site List later. We’ll be providing specific instructions that will give you exactly what you need to complete the site. You can then use the course as a guide to create your custom site once you have a better understanding of how it all works.
For each lesson, we’ve included a video demonstration showing the specific steps, a bullet point list of each step, and some detailed explanations. It’s entirely up to you what order you complete the materials in each lesson based on your preferred learning style, which is why we’ve provided the different formats.
How to make a WordPress.com website:
The following video shows you a high-level overview of the full process from start to finish of what you’ll achieve by taking this course. You don’t need to try to “figure out” how to do these steps from this overview video. All the steps, and more, are broken down in each subsequent lesson for you.
Before diving into our courses be sure to review the information covered within our Resources Hub to set yourself up for the most success with achieving your goals! The Resources Hub includes the pages listed below, plus a glossary, frequently asked questions (FAQs), and more!
Important:
- Most links will open in the same tab you’re on, unless they are for something external (such as YouTube or Zoom). You can choose to open any link in a new tab by right clicking on it, or press “command+click” on Mac and “control+click” on Windows.
- Images are not clickable. To open a larger version of an image, right click and open it in a new tab.
On this page you’ll find guidance on tips on using the site, obtaining help, setting up a new account or site, and establishing realistic expectations.
Three primary branches define WordPress: WordPress VIP↗︎, the official managed host tailored for enterprise businesses; WordPress.org↗︎, the resource center for open-source software used for self-hosted sites (though it offers the software for free, it doesn’t provide hosting); and WordPress.com, the official managed host for WordPress sites.
This little corner of the WordPress.com Learn site is where you can find information and documentation on using the Education Community Forum. This is our community, and we hope to see folks asking questions and sharing ideas.
The biggest thing we ask is that all visitors treat each other and our staff with respect. Pretend you are sitting across from another user or staff member. Be polite! Rude or insensitive behavior will not be tolerated. For more information, please see our Code of Conduct section.
WordPress is a dynamic, open source software that loves to keep us all on our toes with updates. These updates can bring changes to how things look and work, and from time to time there might be some differences you come across in our lessons. But fear not! We’re fully committed to keeping updated.
In the page linked below we include information of anything you might encounter in our courses that differs from what you’ll see in your current site. Once we have updated the course materials, the information will be removed.
In case you spot any discrepancies or have questions, as our students and valued partners, we encourage you to reach out to us in our Education Community Forum. Your feedback is essential in helping us stay in sync with the latest developments. We’ll do our best to address any concerns promptly, providing guidance or updates as needed. Together, we’re on a mission to ensure your learning experience is smooth and enjoyable! Thank you for understanding and collaborating with us on this exciting journey.
We’d love to learn more about you!
We offer a survey at the beginning and end of each course. By completing this survey at the start of the course, you help us to understand what your expectations are of the courses we’re providing. By completing the survey at the end of the course, you help us to understand if we have met those expectations and what areas we can improve on.
Please complete the optional survey below or share your thoughts, questions, or suggestions with us in the Education Community Forum.
