This is abit of a quick post but without knowing this I wouldn’t have been able to create my first Wordpress site so successfully.  If you have never used Wordpress before and you are fairly new to CSS then creating a site by this method can be difficult, hopefully this post will help.

Setting up you first Wordpress site can an interesting and challenging experience, however, it may not be as difficult as you first might think.  Here are my tips to creating your first successful Wordpress site.

Setup your site locally first

My advice to anyone new to wordpress would be to setup your site on your own PC and then transfer it to a web server once you are happy with it. Wamp server gives you the ability to setup a virtual web server with full database access and PHP admin support on your own  machine making the development easy and best of all free.

Install Wordpress and start your theme

Once your local server is ready install the latest version of Wordpress to the server (Full installation instructions are available from wordpress.org site), the default theme is fairly boring so you can either download a pre-designed theme or create your own, I would recommend the later with clean semantic themes available from Elliot Jay Stocks with Starkers and Sandox created by Scott Allan Wallick and Andy Skelton which give you an excellent blank canvas to create your own theme from.

Once your site is ready upload it to the web

When you are ready to upload your site to an online space I would recommend the excellent post from webdesignerwall.com on  Exporting and Importing Wordpress, this should be all you need to get your site live.

Without Sandox I wouldn’t have been able to create this site, I hope some of these links will help you in your journey to create your first Wordpress site