So, you want to get started making websites or run your own blog? Or you’re just interested in learning more about WordPress. As with most things, the best way to learn is to roll up your sleeves and get to work. Fortunately, there are several free hosting options that will allow you to get started without shelling out one thin dime of your own.
The most prominent company offering“ free WordPress hosting right now is DreamHost.“ They are a established, well known hosting company.“ You can sign up for their free app hosting at: https://panel.dreamhostapps.com/signup/ .
Too keep it free (remember we’re just testing and learning here) pick a name to use with their free DreamHosters.com domain name.“ FOr my example I picked“ “mycooltestsite”:
I then made some changes to the default settings in step 3 – I clicked the “X” next to Drupal to deselect that program and changed the address in WordPress from “blog” to “www” – this is how I normally set up my websites.“ You can certainly feel to leave the settings how they are or make any changes you want to.
Leave step 4 unchecked – we’ll talk more about hosting options in a future post. We’ll keep trying this for free for now.
Enter your information in step 5, and once you’re all done you should come to the payment page – which should show a grand total of $0 due.
DreamHost will email you instructions on how to get into the WebPanel of your new free hosting account, but for now click on the “Continue to our web panel” button.
The next step is to wait 15-20 minutes or so.“ Go grab yourself a bowl of ice cream or a slice of pie to celebrate!
In a little while, you should find a gazillion emails from DreamHost in your email notifying you that your apps are installed and ready to use:
Open the one titled “Success installing wordpress…” and you’ll get the ID and password for your WordPress software:
There may be more information below this about making changes to DNS, but unless you used a custom domain name (not *.dreamhosters.com) you can ignore all of that.
Click on the management link in the email and you’re ready to make your first blog post or web page!
For help on getting up to speed on using WordPress, I recommend First Steps With WordPress for a quick tour of it’s features and functions.