Intro

A week before making this blog website I had zero knowledge of WordPress! I’m excited to finally be able to use it because I know so much of the internet in on WordPress. It’s a good skill to learn, especially in Japan. Even if you think WordPress is outdated that doesn’t change the fact that there are lots of opportunities to make money working on websites that use it. AND it’s a good general purpose drag and drop website builder. I love Shopify but not everyone is trying to sell products so in those cases you would want to use something like WordPress.

Creating this blog website

To go from knowing nothing about WordPress and this website being just a concept, to having it fully operational and open to the entire world, with this first blog post finished, it took me around 7-8 hours of effort, stretched out across 2 weeks. So, I’d say it wasn’t too much of a commitment and relatively easy.
Of course, I’m experienced in Shopify so some knowledge transfers over easily to WordPress but even if you don’t have any experience with website builders like this I think it would be hard for you to take more than double the time it took me. So, let’s say it could take you 15 hours streched over 2 weeks. You can easily fit 60-70 minutes a day into your schedule if it’s in order to gain skills and improve yourself to give you better opportunities in the future. How many hours a day do you spend on social media, watching Netflix/Amazon Prime/Disney+, playing video games, or even more harmful and addictive activites that shall not be named?

What I did

• Researched, chose, and paid for a domain name
• Set up hosting with Hostinger
• Learned how to use WordPress through tinkering and watching tutorials on YouTube
• Built the blog website
• Created a logo for free with Canva (that’s what I always use for other projects as well)
• Used a WordPress plugin for the contact form (messages will go to my gmail inbox)
• Made a Mailchimp account and connected the API to my WordPress
• Now I will have a database of people who sign up for my newsletter and I can make email marketing campaigns

Conclusion

You should build a WordPress site for yourself! Not only is it a powerful tool with endless options available for plugins, but it’s a good skill to have as a developer and could be a vital asset as a business owner.

As this is my first time using WordPress I cannot see why there are so many haters. Maybe if I continue using it for a while and see some negative aspects I will change my mind but for now I am LOVING WordPress!

LET’S GO HARD IN THE CODE!

-Zach in Japan (WebDevJapan)