WordPress To Go: How To Build A WordPress Website On Your Own Domain, From Scratch, Even If You Are A Complete Beginner Paperback – 7 May 2013

I need to build a website and was looking at £500-1000 for a professionally made one even though what I want is fairly simple. Got this thinking I'd just see if it made it simple to build your own and it's a GREAT read. Really simple clear instructions, has given me huge confidence, am going to have a good go at doing it myself! I'll report back in due course but I can tell just from the way it is written that it will be as easy as it can be made to be!Quick update: it's even better than I thought, the hosts she recommends are brilliant and the software (with her guidance) is really easy to use. If I'd had all my images and text ready to use I'd have had a good attractive website up and running in under 3 hrs. I'm having fun tinkering and I'll come back and leave a link when it looks presentable! So far I've spent about £70 for this guide, the hosting package for 2 years, the domain name and some professional images I needed. Really, really good guide!Update: [...] if anyone wants to have a look (I write historical novels so its my own person website). I think overall I paid £100 (images, hosting, the book itself, domain name etc) and I'm pleased with it. There are fancier ones you can build as well of course (and look out for ones tailored to special requirements like photographers) but it really is quite easy to use. If you get stuck, enter Wordpress, your theme and the problem into a search engine and there are lots of forums where people explain how to do something (easily!).So overall, very impressed. Yes if you wanted something fancier of course you could have it built but this is a cheap and easy to use option for those wanting a simple site - and you feel pretty good for building your own site!

I'm not especially technically minded but this book is so easy to read and understand and takes you through step by step how to build and personalise a website using wordpress. It uses a specific wordpress template - twentyfourteen. You really don't need to know anything, just some common sense and this book. I built a site using this template and that gave me confidence to do it again using a different template. If you are looking to build a basic website with multiple pages and navigation and don't know how to start, this book will enable you to do that. I went slowly through the steps and it look me less than two hours.

I got introduced to wordpress by an adventure when I was looking into ways of building my own website without using a web designer. I started to build the site, but it was looking like that of an amateur, as I could not use/edit most of the dashboard functions. This then made me to look for a wordpress book on Amazon. I bought the first book "24-hour Wordpress Trainer" but this book did not really helped me with the way I would have wanted my site to look. I then went back to Amazon to look for other wordpress books, and them came across "Wordpress To Go" by Sarah McHarry. I decided to give the book a go, based on the reviews of people who have bought this book. As soon as I opened the book, I knew outright that this book will help me a great deal in achieving my dream of building at least a good wordpress site. I was not disappointed since Sarah began with how to buy a domain name and hosting of your site.This book gave lessons on how to install wordpress, log in and out of wordpress which also include how to customise your wordpress site. I'm already used to all these and simply opened to the more needed area like "steps to a perfect website", "all about widgets", etc. Of most interest and importance to me are:• How to install wordpress themes and customise it with regards to background, image, colour scheme, site title, header image and installation of useful plugins.• Adding of images to wordpress site which she explained on how to do this from the "media library" and how you can upload images for future use in the media library. I have no idea on how to use this before until I read this wordpress to go by Sarah. Sarah also gave her opinion about adding images/photos to your pages/post as it literally makes your webpage look attractive and relevant.• This book thought me how to add a video to my site, I did not even know that it was so simple and easy to install a video that you recorded by yourself or someone else until I read this wordpress book.Other interesting things that I learnt in this book which though is for a beginner in wordpress and not for the advanced students include:• How to add an image using a text widget.• How to use a text widget to display a banner Ad.• Sarah's opinion about custom menu and why it is good to use them. According to the author, custom menus are a relatively new feature of wordpress but it add a lot of flexibility and power to the design of a wordpress site.• The author also shows how to create a primary, secondary menu and setting the home page of your wordpress site.This book is really good for a beginner in wordpress and is fully loaded with so many examples and instructions on how to get started, be up and running within few hours of dedication and hardwork.Esther(www.tld-reviews.com)

The author starts right off recommending a US based hosting firm called Hostgator whose system avoids "a minefield" [on other hosts]. The material is fairly generic apart form that, but since getting going is the main problem we all have, I am not sure this book does much more than overcome the fear factor.You could do equally well by Googling "wordpress XXX" where 'XXX' is your hosting company. If they offer a similiar facility, you will get a result, probably from a 'XXX' blog or forum.The 'book' takes about 30 minutes to ready. OK, so its only £3, so probably cant complain.In summary the main benefit is to remove the fear factor, and give you a bit of confidence it can be done.