Learn WordPress Site Building: Self-Hosting to Member Sites
What to learn for a WordPress site, in order: shared hosting or VPS setup, SMTP and backups, Yoast SEO and caching, Elementor pages, Stripe memberships.
Related courses
Overview
What this course covers
The course is about building and running your own site with WordPress: choosing how to deploy it, handling the basic setup after launch, then SEO, performance, page design, and members-only content.
- A good fit if you want to
- Build your own site the low-code way instead of writing everything from scratch
- Run WordPress on shared hosting or on your own VPS
- Set up a membership site that controls access to content by membership level
- Course page for the WordPress Low-Code Platform course: outline and preview lessons
Choosing where to deploy
From the basics to deployment options
The opening lesson explains why to build a site with WordPress and maps out the deployment environments.
- An overview of WordPress features and plugin extensions
- The deployment landscape: shared hosting, VPS, and LAMP
- Demos of signing up on WordPress.com for a quick site, and a one-click install on shared hosting with cPanel
- Local all-in-one environments and the Docker Compose option
- Preview lesson: Introduction and basic concepts
Shared hosting
Initialize a site on two shared hosting options.
- InfinityFree (no cost) and Racknerd (paid, one-click install with cPanel)
- FTP uploads and database connections
- How shared hosting differs from a VPS, and how to choose
Native deployment on a VPS
Deploy on a fresh CentOS VPS with help from AI.
- Install MariaDB, Nginx, and PHP-FPM
- Directory permissions, the database connection, and the Nginx site config
- DNS for your domain and an HTTPS certificate
- Preview lesson: Deploy WordPress natively on a VPS
Basic setup after launch
Email and dashboard basics
Fix sign-up emails that never arrive, and get comfortable with the dashboard.
- Find out why sign-up emails go missing, such as a VPS with its outgoing mail port blocked
- Configure an email service with an SMTP plugin: DNS record verification, an API key, and a test send
- Dashboard basics for posts, categories, pages, themes, and plugins
Theme setup
Installing, switching, and maintaining themes.
- Install, switch, and delete themes; ZIP uploads and upload limits; deploying through a file manager
- Site identity, menus, pages, widgets, and sidebars
- The risks of editing theme code online, and the ways to update a theme
Automated backups
Make sure the site can be backed up and restored.
- Trim the dashboard and manage online updates, with a quick look at Jetpack and Akismet
- Back up files and the database by hand
- Set up remote storage, backup schedules, and one-click restore with UpdraftPlus
SEO, performance, and analytics
SEO setup
Search engine settings for the site and for individual posts.
- Choosing an SEO plugin; installing Yoast SEO and running its first-time wizard
- Generate a sitemap and submit it to Search Console
- 301 redirects with the Redirection plugin, plus the Cookie Compliance plugin
- Per-post SEO settings
Caching and optimization
Caching and performance settings through plugins.
- Jetpack and LiteSpeed Cache (including QUIC.cloud)
- The Cloudflare plugin and connecting it through the API
- An image compression plugin, and removing plugins you no longer need
Site analytics
Install analytics tools and read your site data.
- Install and configure Jetpack, Microsoft Clarity, and Google Site Kit
- Analyze your data with these tools
Pages and membership sites
Custom pages with Elementor
Build custom pages by drag and drop, without code.
- Install and configure the Elementor plugin and the Hello theme
- Create and polish custom pages by dragging and dropping
Membership management
Use a membership plugin for content access control and plan pricing.
- Stripe sandbox payments and currency settings
- Create multiple membership levels, with subscriptions and one-time purchases side by side
- Manually give a user access to a course, with notes and an expiry date
Membership access rules
Fine-grained control over who sees what, by membership plan and post category.
- Bind access rules to individual posts, and use OR conditions
- Verify the access rules with a test checkout
- Use AI to help plan paid tiers and content structure
Live chat
Add Crisp, a third-party live chat service, to your site.
- Sign up and initialize, then install and connect the plugin
- See who is online and message visitors proactively
- Connect other channels, including a Telegram option
Next step: Multisite on a VPS
Deploy WordPress Multisite on a VPS
Turn a regular site into a Multisite network.
- Subdirectory and subdomain modes
- Edit wp-config.php and the Nginx config, and set up wildcard DNS
- Update the database addresses, and troubleshoot HTTPS certificates and DNS proxying
- Use AI to generate a step-by-step guide
Learning order
Suggested learning order
Start with the preview lessons linked above to check whether the course suits you, then use this order as a guide.
- We suggest starting with the opening lesson to see the deployment options, then choosing shared hosting or a VPS for your situation
- Once the site is live, move on to the basic setup: email, themes, and backups
- When you want search traffic and visitor data, turn to SEO, caching, and analytics
- For members-only content, membership management and access rules work well back to back
- Look at Multisite when you plan to manage several sites on one VPS
- Want to move from low-code to writing your own full-stack code? Read the AI Web Full-Stack Programming Course Overview next
Further reading
AI Web Full-Stack Programming Course OverviewExplore the course content, teaching approach, and learning path to plan your study.AI Creation and Tools Learning Path: Codex and OpenClawHow to learn AI creation and tools: use Codex to turn open-source projects and real needs into live apps, and run OpenClaw AI agents on a server.
