How Beginners Can Set Up a WordPress Environment?

Before we dive into creating a website, let's first address some fundamental questions to ensure you understand why choosing WordPress as your website-building platform is a wise decision.

Understanding Your Needs

First and foremost, you need to have a clear understanding of your needs. Why do you need a website, and what functionality do you expect it to have? Are you looking to create a blog, an e-commerce site, a knowledge-based platform, or use it for personal brand marketing?

Who Needs a Website?

Websites are essential for individuals looking to establish an online presence, especially entrepreneurs and digital nomads, as they can significantly boost personal brand exposure. Furthermore, if you plan to run an e-commerce business, whether selling physical or digital products, an official website is indispensable.

Why Choose WordPress?

WordPress is popular because it's more than just a blogging platform. It boasts an extensive selection of themes and feature-rich plugins, much like building with LEGO blocks, allowing you to create a website tailored to your exact requirements. This means you can easily build a robust and feature-rich website, or even a simple personal blog.

Why Build Your Website Yourself?

The benefits of building your website are that you can choose the hosting method and cost that best suits your needs. You have the freedom to select a web server just as you would choose a mobile device, tailored to your site's requirements. Additionally, you can opt to use an idle computer to set up your website, saving costs.
Most importantly, building your website means you have control over all your data, free from limitations imposed by third-party website service providers.

Getting Started with Building Your Website

If you plan to build your website, you will need the following essential tools and hardware:

1. Web Server: You can choose to rent a Virtual Private Server (VPS) service or use an idle computer as your server. This server will be the foundation for your website's operation.
2. Linux Environment: To run WordPress, you'll need a Linux environment. You can install a Linux operating system on your server or use virtualization technologies like Docker to create Linux containers.
3. Docker Software: Using Docker requires installation and configuration on your Linux server. Docker allows you to create and manage Docker containers in Linux, facilitating quick deployment, installation, and running of WordPress.
4. WordPress Software: WordPress is the core tool for building and managing your website.

Setting up a WordPress environment on Windows may pose a challenge for beginners, but don't worry – our course provides straightforward steps and guidance to help you establish a WordPress environment.

Step 1: Understanding WordPress Environment Requirements

First and foremost, you need to grasp the environmental prerequisites for WordPress. Typically, WordPress runs more stably on Linux systems. It relies on web server services and other related services within Linux. However, we will discuss how to create a Linux environment in Windows to run WordPress.

Step 2: Setting Up the WordPress Environment

To establish your WordPress environment, you can choose from the following methods:

A. Installing Virtualized Linux and Docker on Windows

1. Use Docker Desktop: If your computer configuration is high (e.g., with an Intel 7th generation or higher processor) and you are not very familiar with Linux, you can use Docker Desktop's graphical interface. Modern virtualization technology enables virtualized systems to directly access hardware, which is advantageous for high-performance requirements.
2. Use Windows Subsystem for Linux 2 (WSL2): If you have an older processor and prefer a non-graphical interface, consider using WSL2 on Windows, installing Ubuntu Linux and Docker to run WordPress.
3. Use Virtual Machines (VM): You can also opt for virtualization software like VMware Workstation or VirtualBox to create a Linux Docker environment within the Windows environment. This is an effective choice.

B. Direct Installation on an Existing Linux Environment

If you already have a Linux environment, you can proceed with the following steps:

1. Install Docker directly on your Linux environment, which is essential for running WordPress.
2. If you use a Network-Attached Storage (NAS), you can install Docker on the NAS to run WordPress.
3. Another option is to rent a Virtual Private Server (VPS) to install Docker and run WordPress, providing greater control and performance.