The following steps should be completed prior to class on 9/5:
- Go to Reclaim Hosting.
- Click where it says “Sign Up”.
- Click on “Personal”.
- Register a domain.
- NOTE: this is the public address of your website, so you want to think about it and pick something that will be clear, easy to find and remember, and professional-sounding. Also, as a default the site offers “.com” as the top-level domain, but you can click on the drop-down menu to register a different top-level domain, like “.org” or “.info”.
- Click “Checkout” and pay for your new website via credit card or PayPal. The cost should be $30.
- NOTE: You will create a password for Reclaim Hosting when you go to check out Don’t forget your password!
The following steps we will begin in class on 9/5, and you can continue to work on them until the assignment is due on 9/9:
- Go to Reclaim Hosting.
- Click on the upper right where it says “Client Area Login”.
- Log in with your email and the password you created when you paid for the site. This takes you to your Client Area.
- Click on “cPanel”.
- Under where it says “Applications”, click on “WordPress”.
- On the right, click where it says “+ install this application”.
- Read through the installation information, but you shouldn’t have to change anything. Note: the installer will automatically generate log in information for your WordPress administrative page — BE SURE TO SAVE THIS. After you’ve done that, scroll to the bottom and click on “+ Install” at the bottom right.
- Once WordPress is installed on your site, you can click on the link to your site’s administrative page, which is your site’s URL with “/wp-admin/” after it. This will take you to your WordPress dashboard.
- Go to “Appearance” –> “Theme” to select a theme for your site.
- Go to “Pages” and “Add New” to create a new page.
- You need to create four pages: “Home”, “Blog”, “Gallery”, “Paper”
- Go to “Appearance” –> “Customize” –> “Homepage settings” and set your homepage to “Home” and your posts page to “Blog”
- Go to “Appearance” –> “Customize” –> “Menus” to create a menu that will allow visitors to navigate to the four pages you’ve created
- After you’ve done all that, continue to experiment with customizing the design and layout of the site, keeping in mind the design principles we discussed when we read Anne Francis Wysocki’s “The Multiple Media of Texts” last week.
- In a new browser tab, go to Wikimedia Commons and search for an image that is related to the topic you might want to research.
- In your WordPress dashboard, click on “Media” and upload the image that you downloaded from Wikimedia Commons.
- Click on “Pages” and click on your homepage, and make that image your featured image.
- Write a short welcome message on your home page.
- Click on “Posts” –> “Add New” and write your first blog post.
Once you’ve done all that, email me a link to your site: bmatzke@ccsu.edu
To earn full credit, your site must have four pages (Home, Blog, Gallery, Paper) and a menu listing those pages, it must have a featured image and welcome message on the home page, and it must have a blog post on the blog page.
One more note: If you are interested in doing any special customized design, you can do that by installing Plugins on your WordPress dashboard. We’ll be talking more about that in the future, but don’t hesitate to experiment. If you have ideas for features you’d like your site to include, you’re encouraged to run ideas by me or Google “How to ___________ in WordPress” — you’re likely to encounter instructions for how to do all kinds of cool things. The site WPBeginner has a lot of useful guides for how to do things in WordPress.