Using WordPress.com

WordPress.com (https://wordpress.com) is a free service provided by the WordPress developers, where you can register a blog or non-blog website quickly and easily with no hassle. However, because it is a hosted service, your control over some things will be more restricted than it would be if you hosted your own WordPress website. As mentioned earlier, WordPress.com will not let you edit or upload your own themes or plugins. Apart from this, WordPress.com is a great place to maintain your personal site if you don't need to do anything fancy with your theme or the source code of your site in general. To begin, go to https://wordpress.com and click the big Get Started button:

Right away, WordPress will take you through the step-by-step wizard that makes the setup process super easy. First, you get asked about the type of website that you want to build. There are four options here: a website layout based on a list of latest posts, a grid of latest posts, a welcome page for the site, an online store. The selection you make will impact the designs that WordPress.com suggests to you in the next step. Whatever design, theme, you pick in that next step will be installed on your site immediately.

The step after that is all about coming up with a name for your site and an address. You can enter any name that you wish and let WordPress suggest a specific domain name. You can see an example in the following screenshot:

You'll notice that the subdomain--the one built like SOMENAME.wordpress.com--is always free. For all the other options, you'll have to pay extra by signing up to WordPress.com Premium. Speaking of Premium, the next step in the signup process is all about picking whether you want to stay with the free plan or upgrade to a paid one. You can read through the options on that page and make a decision based on what's available, but in most cases, you'll want to stick with Free. Take a look at the following screenshot:

The next step is where you need to enter your email address (triple-check when entering yours; it's where the confirmation email will be sent), username (this is what you will sign in with in the future; by default, it is set to your website name), and password (note that the password measurement tool will notify you whether your password is strong or weak) as shown in the following screenshot:

Congrats! You've just created a blank WordPress.com website. Just one caveat; you will also be prompted to visit your inbox and search for the activation email that has just been sent to you. The email itself is very clear and only requires you to click the big activation button or link.

Right now, your new WordPress.com site is fully installed and visible to the world, and you can begin to publish content and build your audience.