At Southwest Cyberport, we’re wild about WordPress. And what’s not to love? As mentioned in our latest newsletter, WordPress dominates the web. It is possibly the most widely-used publishing platform on the planet, powering over 76 million blogs and over a quarter of the top websites. It’s incredibly flexible, too; with uncounted visual themes and functional plug-ins, WordPress sites can look just about however one wants, and do just about whatever one needs. Now is a great time to try it, as we’re offering an introductory class this week.
And did we mention WordPress is free?
Best of all, the basic software – along with thousands of themes, plug-ins, and widgets – are indeed free and open-source. However, there is a huge community of developers, many of whom have published fine commercial themes and add-ons for modest fees. And along with that devoted cadre of programmers constantly improving their products comes a world-wide fandom of enthusiastic users. All this assures a popular web-publishing tool that anybody can use. Technically-oriented people can tweak their installation with just a small suite of basic tools that WordPress relies upon – HTML, the language of the web, styled by CSS; with PHP, a simple script that can process entered data to generate or change HTML; and Javascript, another simple script that runs moving graphics and other display functions.
That’s basically it. These are cleverly combined into interactive modules which control all aspects of a page, Every time a visitor clicks on a link to WordPress content, it starts a loop on the server that reloads and changes content as requested. So each page is custom-generated and fresh, but it all happens automatically behind the screen.
Not just for geeks and techies
All this technical stuff could be quite daunting to newcomers, but you don’t have to understand how WordPress works to use or administer it. Content and behavior is governed through a behind-the-scenes dashboard that ordinary visitors never see, secured by a password-enabled login. There, the administrator (or approved assistants) can quickly alter the looks; add new posts, text and media; add/delete tools in the form of various helpful widgets and plug-ins, govern what users can do, manage comments, search categories, and so on.
But WordPress is so user-friendly, the rest of us can easily download and install themes that look and work great right out of the can. So it really is for everybody. It is one of the best options for anyone who wants to set up a blog, galleries, news site, forum, or to sell their own wares online. To use it, all you need is a great idea, a domain name, a web-publishing host, and some content to post reflecting your concept..
Southwest Cyberport can supply both the necessary name and the hosting services. Unique domain names – the addresses of websites (like swcp.com – in over 650 top-level domains (those endings like “.com”, meaning commercial, or .”tv” meaning the tiny country of Tuvalu, but used by myriad television stations) are available. Prices range from $20/year (for .com) on up (.tv is only $45/yr but some exclusive names are vastly more expensive). Most come with discounts for multiple years and some have restrictions (only lawyers can buy .law, for example). See our Domain Pricing page for all the options.
You can check out what domain names are currently available with our free Domain Name Availability search tool. Also, we offer WHOis privacy to conceal basic ownership information for $5/year/domain. SWCP has worked hard to make the entire domain registration process – including renewals and transfers, as effortless and secure as possible, so that our users do not get victimized by shady registrars and other cons. And if some scammer contacts you to try to sell you a dubious product – like a cheap domain registration that would cost you lots more to have hosted – you can always check it out with our Tech Support.
Our Basic Web-hosting package has been specifically designed to fit the needs of WordPress publishers. It’s only $15/month, and comes with a generous amount of storage space (1GB), up to 6 email addresses (so you, and your assistants or techs can keep your site correspondence separate). Of course, it’s fully equipped to run a WordPress site with PHP enabled and a MySQL database to hold all the content online.
We offer a one-click free installation, and even will allow free test sites, so that you can develop, set-up, and tweak your site before presenting it to the world. While WordPress automatically updates installations with minor security tweaks, it does not do that for larger updates, such as to the newest version due to the possibility of conflicts with plug-ins. All of these can by done by the site administrator from the dashboard. But SWCP offers a WordPress Monitoring and Update service that can keep the site and all plug-ins up-to-date for only $16/month. We also monitor how the site functions so that if an update causes problems, or the site gets hacked, SWCP can restore it for free.
Join the community!
With WordPress, you’re not stuck with reading the fine manual to learn how to use it, or interacting on some geeky forum to get answers. We hold actual, live, face-to-face meetings and classes at our Ideas and Coffee coworking space, conveniently located across the hall from our main offices at 5021 Indian School Rd. NE. There’s at least one meet-up a week dedicated to WordPress for all levels of users – from those just starting out to experienced experts – and times when you can come and talk about your latest projects, too. See the Albuquerque Coworking Event Calendar for a full listing
In fact, there’s never been a better time to get started. This Friday, Ideas and Coffee hosts Getting Started with WordPress, from 11:30 to 1:30. It’s a great way to see WordPress in action, get your questions answered and even try it out. Hopefully, this summer will see more such classes and the return of WordCamp, a mini-convention/workshop for WordPress users.
With WordPress, you can own your corner of the web with your own website. And SWCP will be proud to help you do it, too.
