Getting Started with WordPress

This chapter will guide you through the process of setting up WordPress and customizing its basic features. You can choose between a couple of options regarding where your WordPress website will live. WordPress is relatively small (less than 10 MB) as well as easy to install and administer.

WordPress is available in easily downloadable formats at https://wordpress.org/download/. WordPress is a free, open-source application and is released under GNU General Public License (GPL) - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GNU_General_Public_License. This means that anyone who produces a modified version of the software released under the GPL is required to maintain the same freedom and that people buying or using the software can also modify and redistribute it. Thus, WordPress and other software released under the GPL are maintained as open source. In this chapter, you will learn how to:

• Create a free blog on WordPress.com
• Install WordPress manually on your web host
• Perform basic setup tasks in the WordPress admin panel (the wp-admin)
• Publish your first content