ive been looking into wordpress and i have no prior experience with any sort of platform. i was wondering what the best way to learn how to build sites with wordpress would be. i started a wordpress site but i wasnt sure if it functions the same way as a normal domain+hosting. ive been told that if you use a domain off of say, godaddy, then you upload wordpress and work from there. is the layout the same if you use the wordpress site in contrast to using separate hosting/domain?
You can`t edit themes on a blog from wordpress.com unless you pay. On a self-hosted wordpress site, you can do anything you want.
Other than what RaPeRbOy said, it's the same code in either case, unless you or wordpress.com are late in downloading an update. (And, on some of GoDaddy's servers, WordPress seems to crawl.)
I'd recommend a self-hosted Wordpress site. You'll need to purchase web hosting and a domain name. I prefer HostClear (minimal downtime in my experience) for hosting and NameCheap for domain registration, since they offer free Privacy protection, a $10+ per year feature on GoDaddy. You'll need to point your Nameservers over to yoru hosting company from Name Cheap. The hosting company should be able to help you with that. Then you will use Fantastico (available with most hosting plans pretty much everywhere) to install Wordpress in your main directory/domain. It's pretty easy, but again the hosting company can help you with that. Once it's installed you'll log in via yoursite.comm/wp-admin/. My suggestions for moving on from there are to use themes. Themes are basically pre-designed website that structure your blog and they allow you to easily create some pretty amazing sites. You can Google free wordpress themes pretty easily. I personally use ElegantThemes.com. For $39 a year you have access to almost a hundred different themes. Since I create many Wordpress sites, this is very helpful for me. You simply download the zip file and upload it as your new appearance theme on your Wordpress blog. ElegantThemes and other theme companies usually also have support that they can help you with. If you're looking for a good resource to help you along the way, check out some of the 5 star rated Wordpress books on Amazon.
You can find TONS of Wordpress tutorials online for free ranging from super beginner such as installing it to as advanced as creating your own plug-ins. Google is your best friend and Youtube for video tutorials.
I agree with cluongo18. Try playing with wordpress and learn it by using it (that's what I did anyway)...it was pretty easy to figure out once I worked on it for a few days. It is easy to upgrade a free wordpress site to your own domain if you choose to do so later, so I would suggest starting out with the free version to learn the ropes. There are tons of tutorials and FAQ's that helped me a great deal. Just search what you are having problems with and you should find an answer either on wordpress or through a Google search. Hope this helps a little!
To learn the Wordpress there are so many websites available on the Internet. There are so many tutorial also available on the Internet. And you can join good classes for learning wordpress. And do more practice on it.
HTML, CSS and wordpress codex. This is what you need for building sites on wordpress. You can use virtual web server while developing.
Thanks for all the repkies guys, I really appreciate it. Also, how do you go about giving someone your domain and web hosting? Do you just give them your pw for both or do you have to go through some sort of transaction process?