This transcript was generated from the episode audio and may contain minor errors.
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Hey there, what's up? Welcome to Side Hustle School. My name is Chris Guillebeau. I'm your host. I have the privilege and honor of bringing you stories, tips, tactics, instructions, ideas, hopefully some inspiration, all about starting your side hustle, that income generating project that you operate apart from your day job.
This is not about being a full-time entrepreneur, at least not right away, not taking a huge amount of risk. It's about investing in yourself so that you have options for your future. Even if you love your job, I think everybody needs more than one source of income. So for the past 1,317 days, I have been bringing you these, as I said, daily stories, tips, tactics, et cetera. Now, early in 2020, we started this new series called Classroom, which we did every week for the first six months.
Now in the second half of the year, we're doing it every other week. So that's bi-monthly. I always get that confused. Is it bi-weekly? Is it bi-...
Okay, it's every other week. Let's just say that. Now, if you are new, you can go and check out any of those previous episodes, but you can check out anything in the entire archives. It's all available for free. But the classroom episodes in particular, you can find links to those at sidehustleschool.com/classroom, okay?
Now I also encourage you, whether you're new or you've been around a while, I always encourage you to use your time well. So we've got people out there with a lot of experience, people who are just getting started in various stages of their project. I always encourage you, as I said, use your time well. If some of these topics seem basic, then just skip them, okay? We're still doing two stories a week.
We're still doing all the questions and answers. For today, for example, if you already have a website, so we're gonna talk about today, setting up a WordPress website. If you already have a website, if you understand WordPress, if you're just cruising along, then you might not need this particular episode. But for everybody else, today let's look at setting up a WordPress website. Now this can be like, I don't know, so many things in life, very simple or very complicated.
So I try to stick with the simple, at least. That's my goal for this program. Sometimes in life I make things too complicated, but here today we're gonna stick with the simple. And the goal of this tutorial is to show you how to set up your first website in a short period of time and without spending a lot of money, two good things. Your site probably won't be beautiful or amazing at first, but that's okay because done is better than perfect and you have to start somewhere.
Now, the first year of societal school, I made a page on the website about how to set up a website, which is so meta, right? I made a page on my website about how to set up a website in 90 minutes. Okay, it was like set up a website in 90 minutes and this turned into one of our most popular tutorials. So I wanted to revisit and update it a bit here. Now, when I say start a website in 90 minutes, I just wanna be clear about what I mean because your website is not going to be complete in 90 minutes.
Sometimes I work on my websites for 90 minutes a day, every day for a long period of time, it's never ending. But that's not what we're talking about here. Again, our goal is to start with simple and add complexity only as you need. And because so many of us struggle with getting started, much more than we do with getting better or improving, I want you to be able to get started. I don't want you to be held back.
And so this kind of plan absolutely can make that happen. So that's our goal. It's a quick start plan. It's a way to move forward. If you wanna do that, here's what you need.
You need three things basically. Well, it's like maybe four things, let's say, but the third one is kind of a two-part process. Complicated, I should simplify. All right, you need a domain name, you need a hosting account, and you need to install WordPress and a WordPress theme. That's that two-part thing, but we'll get to that.
So a domain name, a hosting account, and you need WordPress itself, all right? And it is that third one that's gonna take the most time. So a domain name, that's super simple. That is the name of your website, the dot com, sidehustleschool.com, whatever your dot com or your dot org or dot net or some other extension is. Domain names cost about $10 a year.
Probably a lot of our listeners already have a bunch of them. Talked to somebody the other day who had like 300 of them. That's probably too many. Unless you're using 300 domain names, you're probably just paying too much for that. But anyway, a domain name costs about $10 a year.
Very simple, you can register that at lots of different places. I always recommend just to keep it simple, register your domain name wherever you host your website, which is the second thing that you need. So hosting account can cost as little as $4 or $5 a month. Sometimes $10 a month can cost a lot more, of course, but why spend more if you don't have to? I recommend a company that offers a deal like that, a $4 a month deal, well, $4 to $10 a month, depending on what you want, but still very, very cheap.
A lot of our listeners have taken advantage of that. So if you'd like to do that, go to sidehustleschool.com slash website. You can sign up for that very affordable, yet reliable web host, okay? But whether you use that plan or another one, if you've already got something, that's fine, no need to change, it's just a matter of registering, okay? It's just a matter of setting it up.
Get your domain name, get your hosting account, and then you are two thirds of the way through the process. Okay, it should take 10 minutes, maybe 30 minutes, if you want to look at a bunch of options and do some research. But those first two steps, very simple, it's the third that's gonna take the most of our time. So I'm gonna talk about that in some detail, how to install WordPress in a WordPress theme. Let's take a quick break for a sponsor message, and then all about WordPress, as well as your assignment for the week is coming up next.
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All right, so now you need to install WordPress and a WordPress theme, okay? And as I said, this will take the most time. But guess what? WordPress.org is free. It is totally free.
You may pay $10 a year for your domain, you may pay for that hosting account, a small amount of money each month. But if you are using this system at least, WordPress.org is totally free. And just one note that tends to trip people up, 'cause it is complicated, it's different from WordPress.com. Okay, WordPress.org, WordPress.com, if you're going this route, you want WordPress.org. WordPress.com offers paid hosted solutions.
And just for disclosure, WordPress itself has been a sponsor of the show in the past. So you've got two different kinds of WordPress, basically. WordPress.com is what I have mentioned and the sponsor message is WordPress.org is the free option. Okay, so there are pros and cons to each of those and it's not at all that WordPress.com is, you know, not a good way to go, it is, but you have to pay for that. Okay, so the free option WordPress.org, they have a famous five minute installation process that I will link up in the notes.
Okay, so basically, and if you're just looking at WordPress.org, you'll see it there. It will show you how to get the software set up for your website to go live. So there are a couple different steps there. If you need some help, there's an option to pay someone to do it for you, but they do list very clearly what the steps are. Okay, so five minute installation or however many minutes it takes you, it might take you a bit longer, but WordPress.org.
Now WordPress itself is a CMS, that means content management system. And a theme, WordPress theme is how you can make it look nice without being a designer or hiring one. And guess what? Themes can be paid, they are for sale. We've probably featured some theme designers here on Side Hustle School over the years, but they can also be free.
There are a lot of free options. So you can get those as well right at WordPress.org. Just look at the top navigation for themes. And if you do have some design skills, or if you want to pay someone, that theme can be totally customized. You're basically just downloading the code.
And then that theme can be totally customized with different images, graphics, fonts, layout options. And you have complete freedom and license to do that with these themes, which is really cool. So I think that's a big part of why WordPress has been so popular for, I guess, decades now. So WordPress is not the only game in town, of course, like there are other options. For some people, another option might be better, but for a lot of people, it's gonna be great.
So I have used WordPress. I have used the system on most of my websites, probably, I don't know, at least 15 websites that I can think of. Historically, they were very focused on blogs, but you can use this platform to build any kind of website. Like it's very, very flexible. And as I said, customizable.
So you've got that domain name, you've got that hosting account, you've got the WordPress software installation, and you've got some kind of WordPress theme. And by the way, actually, once you install the software, you can publish the site right away. So technically speaking, you don't even need a custom theme, but without a separate theme, it will be very bare bones. So I do think the theme is probably essential to that. So it's not that complicated, as I said, to get going.
There will be more to be done, just to be clear. And in the long term, I also do believe in investing in good design. I do believe in thinking about user experience, web development, all that kind of stuff. But I also think when you're getting started, there's nothing wrong with using a stock theme for your starter website. I have done that before in the past.
My recommendation is almost always to start with something affordable, and then invest more if you need as you go along. So what's next? Well, again, I don't wanna over promise because there is more to be done. You probably need an email list. You might need some other stuff too.
But again, all the basics are here. So go and make your first website. I will include links to all of this stuff at sidehustleschool.com/1318. That is 1318. Or you can go to sidehustleschool.com/classroom to see every episode this year.
And once again, that deal I mentioned for the hosting account, that would be sidehustleschool.com/website. So all pretty simple there. Your assignment is to set up your first website using WordPress, if you have not done so before, or for those out there that are like, yup, I've been doing this, I'm ahead of the curve. That's awesome, well done. So your assignment would be to make two improvements to your existing website.
Like two things that have been bothering you, two features you want to add, or just some process you want to improve or upgrade. Do that this week and whatever you're up to, wherever you are in the world. Hope you're taking care of yourself. Hope you're checking up on somebody else out there. And I hope you're making progress for that goal you believe in.
Thank you so much for being out there. Much more is coming up. My name is Chris Guillebeau, and this is Cycosolschool. [Music]
- From the Onward Project.
