On This Page: [hide]
Since you reached this article, you probably came up with the idea to launch your first WordPress blog or website, and you are stuck with the process of getting a domain name or hosting.
Don’t worry. It is actually not necessary to do it. If you want to get more familiar with WordPress and its functionalities and experiment and learn more about it, you can simply create your blog on WordPress.com without having to buy a domain name.
WordPress.com
WordPress.com is the place where you can host your first website. It is very similar to websites like Tumblr and Typepad, that allow you to create your own website on a free subdomain, so you can register yourname.wordpress.com for example. If you decide to use WordPress.com you will not have to worry about hosting or domain.
All you have to do is to sign up and start building your website with the provided free themes. Have in mind that publishing your website on WordPress.com is 100% free, although they also offer paid upgrades available if you want to improve your website.
How to Create a WordPress Blog
Once you’ve registered on WordPress.com you will be able to log into your account and you will see a pretty bad looking website, but don’t worry, you will change its appearance pretty soon.
Pick a Theme
WordPress.com offers more than 310 themes for all kinds of web projects. To choose a theme, simply click on “Themes” in the left sidebar to launch the showcase.
Use the search bar, to filter the available themes and find the most suitable for your occasion. You can choose from both free and premium themes that are available in the WordPress.com theme market.
Yet if you’ve chosen a yearly plan, you might have access to some premium themes by default. To preview the theme you can click on any of the themes and see how their demo looks like. You can even activate it and see it directly on your site.
Update Your Title and Tagline
You should update your title to properly label your website. To do that, click on “Customize” and then select “Site identity”. This information appears in your browser when a visitor comes across your website or find it in the Google search results.
When you’ve chosen your theme, you can choose between 2 options for theme configuration. By default, your homepage displays your latest blog posts, but you can still change it to a static homepage.
To do that, click on the create new page button and call it “Home“. Then once again go to the theme customizer and click on “Static Front Page“, set your front page to the new page that you’ve just created and press save.
You can use the same pattern to create your blog posts page and set it to your latest posts. It is just that simple.
Create a Custom Menu
Creating a custom menu in WordPress.org is easy. You might find yourself confused when your installation comes with 4 default menus, but don’t worry they can be overwritten easily. To do that click on customize, then select Menus. Click on “Add a Menu” and create your custom menu. To add an item, choose a menu item from the list, for example, “pages“. You can specify the link to the menu and its text.
And then, you can do some final adjustments with colors and images to achieve the desired outlook.
Our Conclusion
Using WordPress.com will allow you to create a free WordPress blog without a domain name, and it is pretty simple to do it. Yet, managing a website hosted on WordPress.com is not the most professional business web approach, and if you plan to invest in your online business presence, you should focus on quality and thus use a reliable hosting provider and your own domain name. You can also take a look at our article Is Shared Hosting Right For My First Website to learn more about different and affordable hosting solutions.