How to set up a village website using Wordpress
This guide has been written by the Peak District National Park Authority to help parish councils and other community organisations develop a website for their village at little or no cost.
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PDF version of the guide (30KB) 
About Wordpress
Wordpress is a tried and tested system which allows you to set up a website quickly and easily. It was originally designed for blogs (online diaries) but with a bit of work can easily be used for a village website.
Please note there are two versions of Wordpress; this article will only cover the simpler one called Wordpress.com. We hope to write a guide for the more complex but much more powerful Wordpress.org in the near future.
Preparation
Before you think about turning the computer on, it is essential you agree what you want the website to do. Do you want it to be a showcase to encourage tourists to your village, an interactive information exchange for residents or a private website for parish councillors to share documents?
Also think about how much time you and other people have to devote to keeping the website up to date and make sure your ambitions for the site are matched with the time you can spend on it.
It can be worth writing a spider diagram for the website with different ‘legs’ for the sections and pages, and then using different coloured highlighter pens to identify which pages must go on, which should go on, and which could go on but are just nice to have.
Be aware it will take at least three months from your first meeting to the website finally going ‘live’, and may take a lot longer (Alstonefield.org took about nine months to go live – see case study later) but don’t get disheartened, the hard work will be worth it!
Setting up the site
NB Make sure you are on a computer where someone can access email
Page 1
Go to www.wordpress.com
Click the big ‘Sign Up Now’ icon near the top.
Page 2
Add your village or community group name in the username box e.g. parwich
Choose a good password that you do not mind other people knowing - do not use your work password
Type the password in again to ensure you know what it is.
Add the email address and make sure this is correct.
Tick the 'Legal flotsam' box.
Tick ‘Gimme a blog!’ and click Next.
Page 3
Confirm the domain for the website e.g. parwich.wordpress.com. This defaults to be the same as the username but you can change it if you want to.
You can also change the title of the website and language for the site.
We recommend you untick the Privacy box for the time being so you can work on the website in peace.
Click ‘Sign up ’.
Respond to the email
You should soon receive an email from Wordpress.
Open this and click the big link to confirm you want to set up the website.
NB: If the email does not arrive, check your Junk email folder or follow the instructions on the Wordpress site.
Login
The site is now ready to work on, so click the login link and type in the username and password you created earlier to access the administration screen for your blog.
Configure your site
Change the theme
The default design for the site is quite dull and can be quickly improved by choosing a ‘theme’. There are over 40 themes to choose from, some of which are more flexible than others.
To choose a new theme, click ‘Appearance’ near the bottom of the left hand menu and browse through the themes until you find one you like.
Mistylook or Ocean Mist are good choices to start with as they let you upload your own photo for the header and a nice clean design.
Click the ‘Activate’ link to change the design and click the ‘Visit Site’ link near top of the page to see how the site looks.
Choose widgets
Widgets are the boxes on the right hand side of the page, and can be used to...
- ...display a welcome message for visitors to the website
- ...show a list of recent posts
- ...display the logos of your sponsors and links to their websites
- ...pull in thumbnails of photos you have uploaded to image-sharing websites such as Flickr.
Please note not all widgets are available in all themes but the common ones listed above should be.
Change the title
If you want to stop being ‘just another WordPress blog’ click General in the admin menu and update the Tag line.
Click the other links ‘Writing’, ‘Reading’ etc to change other settings on the blog.
Upload a new banner image
Make sure you have picked a theme which allows custom banners then click Appearance and then Custom Header to upload a new image from your computer. The admin screen will tell you the ideal dimensions of the image, but you will be able to crop bigger images on the following admin screen.
Please ensure you are legally entitled to use the image.
Write your first post
Wordpress allows you to add posts and pages. Posts are like diary items and will display on the front page in date order, most recent first.
Posts are perfect for news articles, promoting meetings and other events and showing photos.
Pages are more permanent elements of your website and should be used for information that does not change very often, such as ‘about the village’.
It is likely that 90% or more of the content of your website will be posts.
To upload a post click ‘Posts’ in the left menu and then ‘Add New’ just below it.
Add a title for your post in the top box and your article into the larger box below it. There are basic formatting tools to make your post look more attractive and you can insert images, Youtube videos etc. by clicking on the small icons above the box.
Wordpress automatically saves your work every minute or so, but it is a good idea to click the ‘Save Draft’ button on the right just in case.
Once you are happy with your post, click Publish on the right hand side and your post will be live.
Publishing the website
Assuming you ticked the Privacy button when you set the website up, no-one but you and a few selected others should know the website exists.
Once you are happy to make the site live click Settings > Privacy and change the Blog Visibility setting to be ‘visible to everyone’ (the top setting) and Save Changes.
Google and other search engines will be alerted and your website will be visible to a global audience of several billion people!
More help
If the going gets tough, keep going but don't be afraid to ask for help. Simple problems can take ages to work out yourselves, but can be solved in a few minutes with a timely phone call to the right person or a post to the right website.
There is a very useful website and friendly community of Wordpress users at http://support.wordpress.com/
Keeping it going - top tips from Parwich.org and Alstonefield.org
Having a website is one thing but keeping it up to date is another thing entirely! Here are some top tips from some experienced community groups.
- Get four to 10 volunteers to run the website.
- Share the workload and let people work on the website at a time to suit them.
- Agree ground rules which all contributors have to follow. Make them clearly visible on the website.
- Have at least one person with good IT skills.
- Encourage the whole community to contribute pictures and stories.
And remember, it took several months to develop Parwich.org and over 9 months to launch Alstonefield.org (using the more complex Wordpress.org) so take your time and have lots of fun on the way!
