I prefer not to say that WordPress is “easy.” It’s just easy-er. It’s easier than a lot of the alternatives such as Drupal or Joomla, and it’s more powerful than other tools like Wix or Squarespace.
I personally use and recommend WordPress because I think it sits in the sweet spot between power and user-friendliness that is perfect for small and medium nonprofits.
If you’ve never used WordPress before and want to get started, here’s what to know:
- Just like learning anything, WordPress will take some time. Don’t expect it to be completely intuitive. Keep practicing!
- Building a WordPress site and editing a WordPress sites are two different skills. You may want to focus on learning to edit content in WordPress first, before you try to build a site with advanced features yourself.
- There are tons of resources for learning about WordPress—including this site!—so look for help when you get stuck and you’ll find it.
- If you’ve never made a website before, don’t expect WordPress to be just like Word, PowerPoint, or InDesign. It’s a purpose-built tool for making websites and works in certain ways because of that.
- Keep it simple! A really good site with a missing feature or two is much better than a bad site that can do a lot. That’s true both for site editors and site users.
It’s not easy to build your own WordPress site, but it’s possible! Thousands of people do it every year, and I hope this site can help you save time when it comes to looking for hosting, themes, and plugins. Patience and persistence usually pay off in the end.
Many nonprofits try to build their own websites to save money. Just remember that what you save in money, you pay for in time and frustration! There’s no right or wrong way, but remember that you’re making a trade-off. We hope our recommended hosts, plugins, and themes will make the DIY-WordPress process a lot easier than it would be otherwise. 🙂