From the course: WordPress.com Essential Training

Create your WordPress.com account - WordPress Tutorial

From the course: WordPress.com Essential Training

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Create your WordPress.com account

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- [Instructor] Before you can start creating your website, you've got to set up an account on wordpress.com. Now I'm going to click this get started button. You could also click this start your website button. Remember, WordPress changes their design frequently, so don't worry if your screen doesn't look exactly like mine. Somewhere on the homepage, you'll find an invitation to get started. The next step is to enter your email address. Note that if you try to use an email address here that's already associated with a wordpress.com account, you'll be prompted to either use another email address or log into your account and add a new website once you're logged in. One of the cool things about wordpress.com is that you could have multiple websites and manage them all from the same account. I'm going to start with a new email address not currently associated with any wordpress.com account. I'll also enter a username and a password. Note that you could alternately create your wordpress.com account by logging in with Google or Apple. I kind of prefer to keep my accounts separate, so I'll just go with my info here and say create your account. The next step in the account creation process is choosing a domain name. That's the address people will use to find your website. I'm going to type Carriedilswp, and let's see what comes up. Okay, I get some options here. You can go with the free name, which is basically your account name dot wordpress dot com. Or you could take the wordpress.com out of your URL with a custom domain like this, Carriedilswp.com. Keep in mind that even though the domain is free for the first year, you'll pay a modest fee every year thereafter for the domain. The other option is that if you already own a domain, you can use that. Just like license plates, custom domains are always more fun than the generic domains like Carriedilswp.wordpress.com. But that said, free things really speak to me. And if you're creating a blog to share with friends and family, a generic domain with WordPress in the name works just fine. On the other hand, if you're creating a website for your business or personal brand, strongly consider a custom domain. It's much more professional. Keep in mind, though, that does require you to use one of the paid plans. I'm going to select this free domain option, and now it's going to ask me to choose a plan. I'm going to click this little option that says start with a free site. Now from here, wordpress.com tries to point me in the correct direction based on whether I want to dive in to creating content or begin building the site. And if you already have a website somewhere else that you want to import, that's an option you can start with too. Now I want to go straight to building. So I'll select that option. At this point, I get some options to choose a theme, but I'm not quite ready to do that. We're going to do that later in the course. So for now, I'll just say skip it. After that, WordPress goes off to create my site. And when it's done, I land right here in the admin area for my site. Very cool. If you followed along with me at this point, you are now the proud owner of a new wordpress.com website. If you check your email, you'll have received a welcome email along with another one to confirm your email address. Go ahead and do that, and I'll see you in the next lesson.

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