Do you need a website for your business? Then this is for you! WordPress is a Content Management System (CMS) which allows you to host and build websites. It is a great place to start if you are a newbie to web design, specifically built for blogging and website development. It is also super SEO friendly (more on SEO in a later module) and includes comments, tagging, links and hyperlink management, and content categorisation.
You might ask, “why do I need a website?”
Let’s assume you are a coffee shop owner, and a person nearby is using their smartphone (Google Maps or a similar app) to search for a coffee shop. The person using that app or map may not be able to find your coffee shop as you are just around the corner. This means you miss out on a valuable customer. The moral of the story is you need to be online. Having a lovely shop front is great, but if the customer is not in front of it, how will they know it’s there?
In the olden days, you had to find and pay a developer if you wanted a website. Needed a minor amendment making or to add a new seasonal menu? You had to find the said developer and pay them again. WordPress allows you to build your website, and with a wide range of templates and themes available, it can be set up in just a few clicks. With the expert help of our tutors, you will learn how to use WordPress and its many features, including SEO plugins to maximise traffic to the site, widgets to display additional content, site map creation and security, to name just a few! Critically you can update it whenever you like with news, new products events and more at no cost.
Do Domain Names and Web Hosting mean anything to you? Did you even know these are two separate things? A domain name is the address of a website that is entered into the browser’s URL bar to visit your website. So, in other words, if your website were a house, then your
domain name would be its address!
What is Web Hosting?
Web Hosting is where your website and all the files in it live. So, if the domain name is the address of your house, then web hosting is the actual house at that address! To simplify, a domain name system is like a vast updated address book. Think Yellow Pages but bigger! And behind each domain name is a web hosting service that stores all that website’s information. Although these two services are different, they work together to make a website possible. Without domain names, it wouldn’t be possible for your customers to find you, and without web hosting, you wouldn’t be able to build a website. Got it? Great.
In our Skills Bootcamp we’ll guide you through the process of securing both a domain name and a web hosting service to meet the needs of you and your business. We will give you the knowledge required to understand the hosting features and the importance of SSL. SSL stands for Secure Sockets Layer. In short, it’s the standard technology for keeping an internet connection secure and safeguarding sensitive data sent between two systems. This prevents criminals from reading and modifying any information transferred, including personal details. A website must be protected by an SSL certificate, which makes the padlock appear in your browser. This is important if you sell products and services to customers via your website!
