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If you took the approach of reading through all the materials of Module 1 before taking any action, now’s the time to take action!
Armed with a solid understanding of the signup flow, choosing a domain, hosting plan, and theme, you’re ready to take that first step.
Go ahead and choose which signup flow suits you best and refer back to the lessons in this module for guidance as you proceed.
We may have been a bit repetitive about this, but if you’re a beginner creating your first site, we unquestionably recommend using the Design your own↗︎ signup flow and to work through our Quick Launch course for this initial setup process.
Not only is it the fastest and easiest way to set up a new site, you can change the theme at any time if desired. You can also create as many free sites on your account as you want. There is no limit to the number of sites you create. Each paid plan is only valid for one site, but you can have multiple free sites, and you can have multiple sites each with a different hosting plan. So you can even use the Quick Launch course to create a free practice site, then go through one of the other signup flows to explore other options.
If you do decide to create multiple sites, make sure you give them each a unique name so that you can easily tell them apart. You may also want to hold off on registering a custom domain until you decide which site you’re going to use as your actual site. However, if you’d like to register your custom domain to ensure you have it secured, that’s no problem either. You can register a Domain Only↗︎ and then move it to a site later.
But whichever route you choose to take, the basic steps will be similar:
- Create a WordPress.com account
- Or login to your existing account and add a new site
- Choose a domain
- Choose a plan
- Pick a Design
You’ll be farther along than that if you go through the Quick Launch course, but the rest of this course will still be the next steps on your website creation journey.
Once you’ve been through the initial signup process, one of the first things you’ll want to learn about your theme is how the Homepage is handled. There are a few different possibilities for your homepage and for this we recommend going through our Homepage and Posts Page lesson in the Getting Started course. We also touch on this topic in the Creating Pages lesson of this course.
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