How-To Overview + Tips

• New, separate WordPress site.

  For this “project,” you’ll want to start with a new WordPress site, a separate one from any existing one you may have already running and used by the public.

  Although you can indeed do this as an “extra feature” on a WordPress site the public can access — you could, for instance, set up WordPress to be your actual author website, then you can simply make all your notes private and assign it to something like a Notebook category — but not only can that approach get tricky if you don’t really know what you’re doing yet, your existing public site is at risk of getting all screwed up.

  You’ll want to learn and get super comfy with WordPress, playing with as much of it with no worries about possibly breaking anything important or vital to your public online presece. So no, I really strongly suggest you play around and do your learning on a separate, independent WordPress installation.

  The facts are WordPress software is free, storage is dirt cheap, any other resources you need either you already have or can get for free. For goodness’ sake, just create a brand new site and be done with it.

• If you already have Web hosting.

  Being able to set up a new, separate WordPress site along with your existing one will, of course, depend mainly on the kind of Web hosting package you have. These “packages” differ from company to company, so there’s no way for me to tell you exactly what you can and can’t do. But I can observe and have experience, so I can give you some general guidance on what to look for and what to expect, especially if you’ve gone with one of the larger, more mainstream, national Web hosting providers (as opposed to a smaller local or regional operation).

  If you have any issues that prevent you from creating new, separate WordPress installations, that will likely be with the cheapest “introductory”-type packages. Providers understandably impose a lot of limits and restrictions with those cheap accounts, delivering just the bare minimum required by customers of those budget hosting packages. For example, a common restriction would be not being allowed to create and use subdomains.

  Subdomains, FYI, although technically still running under that same main domain, are really independent sites in practice, with URLs that look something like:

  https://subdomain.example.com

  Subdomains are a good place to have a separate WordPress site installed and running, totally independent from your main default site on your root domain (which is what appears when a visitor just enters your domain name in their browser).

  But even if you can’t do subdomains with your hosting,  you likely still have another option: install a new, independent site as a subdirectory.

  Unlike subdomains, a subdirectory is simply a directory underneath your root domain name. Which looks something like this:

  https://example.com/subdirectory/

  Note that a lot of folks, including hosting services, don’t even bother using the sub prefix, and just call them “directories,” plain and simple, or even “folders.” Old schoolers like me are just used to using “directory” for the topmost level in the hierarchy, but it doesn’t really matter. Regardless of how they’re labeled, just recognize what they are.

  Point is, you can indeed install an independent WordPress site within a subdirectory, and a subdirectory under that, and so on. Here’s an actual live example:

  https://wordpreneur.com/wordpressdir

  You’ll recognize the domain as this very site you’re on right now. A subdirectory named wordpressdir was simply created underneath it in the hierarchy, and a copy of the WordPress software was installed there. In effect, that created a WordPress “site,” totally independent of this site you’re on. Go ahead and click on the link above if you want to take a look.

  What this all means is that as a visitor to this main Wordpreneur site, you’ll have no idea what’s happening over there. In fact, you wouldn’t even know it exists if I didn’t tell you.

  This reminds me of something else: Installing that separate copy of WordPress to create that independent example was very easy for me to do. Thanks to a common and popular feature provided by many Web hosting providers: built-in installer software. Typically an included feature in something they call a “control panel.”

  The Web hosting packages from mainstream providers (and smaller services as well, for that matter) try to make it as easy for us users to administer, manage, maintain and fiddle with all the various files, software, data, tools and other technical thingamajigs that are “behind the scenes” of our websites. A built-in tool they provide us with to do this is commonly called a control panel. One of the most popular of these is cPanel. I’ll start using that label here now, but know that when you see cPanel here, there’s a good chance the feature I’m discussing will also be available from any Web host that has a control panel, whatever that control panel software may actually be.

  One of cPanel’s really handy “tools” is a “script library” of various useful apps and software it can easily install for you on your Web hosting server. Software like WordPress! (Note: These script libraries are often called different things, depending on the Web hosting service, like “Script Installer,” “Software Installer,” “Software Library,” etc. Or even Softaculous, which is the name of a popular commercial script library I’ve often seen bundled into cPanel.)

  You have to check your Web hosting package to see how they set up a cPanel for you. This is why I can’t really give you step-by-step instructions for this part of the project. But I can give you a fairly decent generic overview of how these cPanels are typically set up.

  Here’s where it gets really interesting. To install WordPress, you’ll just use the script library feature to easily and quickly install it on your site. It will ask for a few details about this new WordPress installation, one of which will likely be where on your server you would like to install this copy of WordPress to.

  Normally you will want to install WordPress on your main directory (also called the root), so when visitors go to your domain, that’s what they’ll see. But if you’ve got the storage space on your server (chances are you do) and it’s a feature you have with your particular Web hosting package, these installers also let you install as many different copies of WordPress you want, in this case to subdirectories under your root directory. Installers are often even set up to create the subdirectory automatically and conveniently for you. If it all goes without a hitch, you’ll then have a totally independent, separate WordPress installation, a separate site in other words, that you can access by simply going directly to that subdirectory’s URL, which as a reminder looks like this:

  https://example.com/subdirectory

  Again, your ability to do this or not will depend entirely on your Web hosting provider and the particular hosting package you got from them. The good news is, unless you got your hosting from some really obscure local service, there’s a very good chance you have all that I’ve described above. Go check!

• Making your self-hosted WordPress site private.

  Unlike a WordPress.com site, there isn’t an easy built-in way to simply “switch” a self-hosted WordPress site to make it private at will. There are a number of ways to go about this, however. Some ways are exceedingly easy… if you know how to download and install plugins to your WordPress environment (which itself is also easy to learn and do from within WordPress itself).

  So that’s the really easy way: Find, get and install a WordPress plugin that turns your site into a private one, activate it, and voila! Instant private site. There are a number of free plugins out there that do the trick, some are really easy to set up and use, while others get a bit more involved (usually the ones with a lot more features). Assuming it does what you want it to do (keep your site private!), which one you decide to use just comes down to preference. I suggest you start off with the simplest one you can find that does the job and not get too impressed by a lengthy features list; you can always change security plugins later on.

  I myself have always liked simple, and the free plugin I use for this purpose is called Force Login. It’s very small and very easy. In fact, there are no “Settings” for you to fiddle with, no screens or notice boxes to design and screw around with. Straight out of the box upon activation, as its name implies, the plugin’s job is to “force” any site visitors to first login to your WordPress system before they can see anything.

  You see, in case you don’t know, WordPress already has a built-in user management and authorization system. You know, the part where you enter your administrator password to get into WordPress to do posts, install plugins, etc. Yeah, that part. The thing about that, though, is that it’s naturally out of the way, so that regular visitors to your site don’t get bothered by it; they just come and check out your content. What this plugin does, then, is simply force all visitors to that out of the way login screen. They need to login first, or they see nothing but that screen. Since they don’t have accounts to your WordPress dashboard (creating accounts for them is under your control), they then can’t login and ergo can’t see anything. Private! Simple, clever and cool, huh?

• If you don't have Web hosting.

  Instead of a self-hosted WordPress installation, you most certainly can use the free WordPress.com service to create a private notebook to use and play with. If you already have an account, you can create the site using that; last I checked, they let you create as many free WordPress sites you want under a single free account. Or if you don’t want to do that for whatever reason, you can even create a totally new, separate account for it.

  Do remember that they run a modified version of WordPress, with a different interface, slightly different menus, functions that may operate differently, etc. Customizations that are specific to the WordPress.com way of doing things. But for the most part, look-and-feel it’s still very much like you’re working with — and learning — WordPress!

  You also won’t be able to add any themes that aren’t already in its library of available themes for you to use. But you probably won’t need to add more; it already has a darned good theme collection!

  The tricky part here is making that site private and inaccessible to everyone but you. Not difficult, but this only applies to the WordPress.com service, not WordPress sites elsewhere. I’ve seen their interface change over time, so I can’t be sure these will be the exact steps you’ll be doing when you get around to it, but the process should be similar.

  1. From your Dashboard’s menu, click on Settings.
  2. On the Settings screen, click on the General tab.
  3. Scroll down to Privacy, and select Hidden.
  4. Click on the Save Settings button.

  That’s all there is to it! You now have a private site on WordPress.com for your notebook. As you can see from the Self-hosted section above, though, this isn’t how you make a regular self-hosted WordPress installation private. That’s what I mean by differences; some things you learn here you can’t take elsewhere. Whether that will be an issue for you and your objectives, I obviously can’t tell you, but best be aware of these subtleties.

• What to start with.

  One you’ve got your new WordPress Notebook site up and running, what’s next? Log in and start playing with it, of course!

  Scratch that. The first thing I would do, actually, if you haven’t done it yet, is see what a regular visitor will see if they visit the site. This checks if your site is really private. If you’re currently logged in, you can’t just open another tab and enter the URL — what you’ll need to do is open an “incognito window” (in Chrome), or something like “private browsing” on other browsers. You’ll be logged out in that incognito window, which is what you want to be, just like a regular visitor to your site.

  Enter your WordPress Notebook’s URL. What you’ll see will depend on how you set up privacy, but you’ll maybe see a login screen, or some notice saying it’s private, or a “coming soon”-type message. Assuming your new Notebook site is nice and private, you’re good to go!

  So, what now? Well, login to your new WordPress site, and explore and experiment! Just like a kid would who just got their hands on a brand new toy. Check out the menus. See what’s on them. Look all over the screen; read whatever you see. Click on options; see what they do. I think you should be able to figure out how to create a new post just by playing around like this, without really needing to dive into instructions.

  If you’re feeling nervous or scared to try things… why? You can’t hurt anything. And that’s one of the beautiful things about this approach: You got absolutely nothing to worry about. Not even time. You’re under no time pressure here; it’s your own virtual notebook you’re exploring.

  If on the off-chance you manage to screw something up really badly, which is very highly unlikely — in fact, I’d like to hear about it if you manage that and learn what the heck you did, it’s that unusual — just log out of WordPress, go to your cPanel scripts library and uninstall the mucked up site (only a few clicks should do it). Then install a new WordPress site like you did before! Even if you’re on WordPress.com, same thing: delete the broken site, create a new one. Then it’s back to business!

  Don’t forget: You can’t hurt anything. Now go explore, play and learn. Have fun!