Free WordPress in an Hour or Less: The Get It Done Guide to Installing and Using WordPress by Edward Jones

INTRODUCTION
    Welcome to WordPress in an Hour or Less, the book from the popular "Get-it-Done" series that's been written to show you how to get up and running quickly with WordPress, and how to do so with a minimal amount of hassle.  In one hour or less, this book will show you how to set up a hosting account and your own private domain, and install WordPress on the account that's associated with that domain.  I step you through all of this using steps that happen to work with GoDaddy.com, a major company providing domain names and web hosting services, although there are plenty of companies that can host your WordPress site.
    Because this book takes a "get it done" approach like the other books in this series, I concentrate on providing you with what you need to know to get your new WordPress-powered website up and running and looking the way you want, in terms of overall appearance, before you reach the end of the second chapter. Then, I focus on additional topics that let you take your website to a higher level, using the power, sophistication, and ease-of-use that has become a part of WordPress. By the end of the first chapter, you'll have WordPress installed at your own domain, and following the step-by-step directions I've provided, you should easily be able to accomplish this in under an hour. The second chapter will show you how you can quickly log into your WordPress site, change what viewers will see, add new pages or posts, and customize your site's appearance by selecting from the thousands of themes (most of which are free!) that are available for WordPress. You’ll learn how you can greatly extend the capabilities of WordPress using widgets and plugins in Chapter 3, and Chapter 4 will provide the details on how you can add multimedia- graphics, audio, and video- to your WordPress site.
    If you’re seeking to become a “WordPress Guru”, consider my advanced book!
    This book has been intentionally published as two versions: this “slimmed down” version that gives you what that you need to know to get up and running with the basic features of WordPress, and an “expanded” version with added coverage of more advanced topics that teach you how to take your WordPress-powered site even further.

    In the more detailed version of this book, you will find more extensive treatment of popular themes and popular plug-ins, as well as coverage of the installation and use of the popular NextGEN Gallery plug-in that performs phenomenally at displaying complex photo galleries complete with slideshows and custom effects. And you will find some points that lie in the admittedly “techie” area, such as how to perform a manual installation of WordPress (just the thing for those who are taking advantage of free web hosting through their college campus accounts), as well as how to manually install commercially-purchased themes. If all that you need is this slimmed-down version, it retails for less than a dollar at Amazon. On the other hand, if you think that you will benefit from the details in the expanded version, I encourage you to shell out the princely sum of $2.99 (at the time of this writing) for a copy of the expanded version, WordPress from Start to Finish .
    Who am I to be telling you all this?
    Besides being the principal technology writer behind the "Get-it-Done" series of c omputer books, I've also been designing web sites for a variety of clients since the early days of the World Wide Web.  My first client site went live back in 1990, and I created that site using little more than a text editor, Windows Paint, and knowledge of HTML coding.  I've also been a big fan of WordPress since shortly after its inception nearly 10 years ago, and I've used it to design and provide dozens of web sites for a number of clients.  Along the way, I've had the pleasure of seeing WordPress evolve from what was once primarily a blogging platform that could be tweaked into being a basic content manager, into an incredibly