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Setting Up a WordPress Web Site

Revised 1 December 2025

WordPress is open source content management system (CMS) software that runs on a web server and is used to create web sites. WordPress software powers around 44% of the world's websites (W3Techs 2024).

These instructions will guide you through the process of setting up a GIS portfolio on a Personal WordPress web site on WordPress.com.

WordPress.com

The WordPress software was originally developed and released in 2003 by Matt Mullenweg and Mike Little. WordPress is free, open source software that you can download from wordpress.org for installation on your own web server.

Mullenweg subsequently formed WordPress.com as a commercial hosting service for WordPress websites, and this site provides a free Personal plan that can be used for simple websites. There are also a multitude of other commercial hosting companies that will sell you hosting plans based around WordPress software.

As in life, there is no free lunch and if you use the WordPress free service there are limitations to what you can do:

• The URL for your website will be something.wordpress.com. You get to choose the something, but the WordPress.com domain name gets stuck on the end and the best somethings are taken
• Part of the way that WordPress.com pays for the costs of hosting and for its employees is that it embeds web ads. This is something that you need to consider if you're going to be using WordPress.com for a client.
• WordPress.com free accounts are limited the number of different themes and the level of customization that is available to you. If you want to make significant stylistic changes, you will need to pay for hosting.

WordPress.com does offer premium features you can pay for, such as your own domain name, removal of the web ads, or limited customization of themes. The cost of these premium features is competitive with other hosting services, with the advantage that WordPress.com's systems administrators handle keeping the software updated and functioning smoothly. If you are dealing with a client that only has limited personnel for maintaining their website, you should consider hosting with WordPress.com.

Create Your WordPress.com Site

Subdomain

A domain name is a human-readable name used to identify resources on the internet like web sites. Examples of domain names include WordPress.com, Illinois.edu, GreenPeace.org.

A subdomain name is a name attached to the start of a domain name (along with a period) to identify a set of resources within the domain identified by a domain name. Examples of subdomain names include the "ggis" in https://ggis.illinois.edu or the "maps" in https://maps.google.com.

WordPress.com uses subdomain names to differentiate websites hosted on WordPress.com. In this tutorial, "janedoegis" is the subdomain, which results in a website URL of https://janedoegis.wordpress.com.

Subdomains have to be unique to identify particular WordPress.com websites. After someone has used a subdomain, even if they close their account, that name can no longer be used by anyone else on WordPress.com.

Choose your subdomain carefully. Some variant on your name would probably be best, although you may need to add additional text if your first choice is already taken (e.g. johnsmithgispro rather than johnsmith). Since this is intended to be part of your professional web presence, choose a name that you will be comfortable sharing with potential employers or clients.

Register

1. Go to WordPress.com and click Get Started.
2. Create your account: E-mail will keep your account safely independent, unless you are specifically interested in integration with your other accounts.

3. Enter your e-mail and continue.
• Although you can proceed to creating your site, you should check your personal e-mail and confirm your e-mail address.
• You will be prompted for a new password. you should use a different password from any that you use in other accounts. There is a facility to reset the password if you forget it.
4. Claim your space on the web: Enter the subdomain you selected above.
5. Skip purchase to select the free option for subdomain.wordpress.com. You will probably not want to get a full domain (e.g. janedoegis.com) unless you are absolutely certain that you will want to keep some kind of active website in the future.
6. There's a plan for you: Select Free. You can always upgrade later if your needs outgrow the free plan.

Site Setup

When your site is set up, you will be placed in the WordPress Dashboard for your new site. This is the administrative panel where you make additions and changes to your website.

The dashboard will give you a brief list of setup tasks. Since we will be customizing this site later, we will only do the essential tasks from this list.

1. Give your site a name: You should choose a name which will appear throughout your website. For this personal portfolio website we use the placeholder name Jane Doe.
2. You should also choose a tag line that will appear under the site name. For a portfolio site like this, the tag line should reflect your professional identity. This can be a single job title or area of expertise, or a list of professional capabilities (e.g. "data analyst, cartographer, historian"). For this example we use "GIS Professional"

Themes

Themes are collections of styles that can be applied to a WordPress web site. Styling includes colors, basic page layout, fonts, sizes, etc. One advantage of WordPress is that themes allow you to change the styling of your website without having to manually change each page by hand when you want to change the look of your site.

The choice of what theme to use depends on what your site is being used for (function) as well as the aesthetic of the organization that it will represent (form).

Themes can introduce great complexity to your layout, so you should choose a theme that highlights your content rather than overwhelming or obscuring it. For this example we will use the Independent Publisher 2 theme, which is a simple, minimalist theme that keeps the focus on the graphics rather than the layout.

1. From the Dashboard, select Appearance and Themes.
2. The default theme at the time this tutorial was revised is Retrospect.
3. Review the list of available themes. You will likely want to stick with one of the free themes unless you specifically have a need for features or styling in a "premium" theme.
4. Select a theme of interest to you and Preview to verify that you like the design and feel it is appropriate.
5. When you have found an appropriate theme, select Activate.
6. If you have content, keep it, of course. Otherwise, update the boilerplate content that comes with the theme.
7. View your site to make sure the theme is what you expect.
8. You can change themes at any time.

ArcGIS Pro Exports

Map Images

Images of maps can be inserted as image blocks on pages.

The layout Export facility of the desktop GIS software ArcGIS Pro provides multiple options for map image files. There are three types of image files supported by almost all web browsers:

• PNG (portable network graphics) files are a "lossless" format that involves no reduction of quality when you create it, although the files can be large. PNG files are best for images like maps that contain sharp edges and / or small text.
• JPEG (joint photographic experts group) files are a "lossy" format that trades off smaller size for a reduction in quality. JPEG files are best for photographs where continuous tones predominate and the quality loss will be largely unnoticeable. JPEG files are commonly used for storing photos taken with smartphones.
• GIF (graphics interface format) files are a "lossy" file format used for simple animated images. These involve a significant loss in color resolution, so they should only be used for animation.

The video below shows how to export a simple map layout from ArcGIS Pro.

1. After you create your map layout, go to Share and Export Layout.
2. For File Type, choose PNG.
3. Select an output file Name. Use a meaningful name that clearly but succinctly specifies what the map contains. Including a year of creation or content can also be helpful for organizing your files as you update the website in the future.
4. Use a Resolution of 300 DPI. WordPress will automatically resample to a smaller image or image format when needed to minimize site loading time.
5. Click Export.

Map PDF Files

If you are posting maps that are highly detailed, or large PDF documents of any kind that are designed for printing, you will want to show a preview image of the map on the website, but modify the image link so you can download a PDF for printing.

1. Share and Export Layout a 300 DPI PNG of the map layout from ArcGIS Pro as described above.
2. Export Layout a PDF of the map from ArcGIS Pro. Use the same name as the PNG file, but use the .pdf suffix so it is clear when looking at your media files that these two files are related.

Adding Content

Adding a Blank Page

The content in this tutorial is added to blank pages.

1. Go to the Pages page in the dashboard.
2. Click Add Page.
3. Select Blank page unless you specifically want one of the complex pre-defined layouts.
4. Give the new page a title.
5. Click Publish to save your changes and make the page visible.

Image Blocks

Pages consist of blocks of content, which can be chunks of text, simple single images, or complex tabular layouts.

Simple image blocks can be created by uploading an image from your local machine.

If posting camera images, leave them full size rather than reducing them in size to save space. When you upload a large image to WordPress, the software handles creation of smaller images that will be more suitable to mobile devices.

If the image does not contain content that clearly indicates what it is, you should add a caption describing the image, preferably with a date.

Even if the image is self-documenting, you may want to consider adding a caption anyway so that search engines will know what the image shows and can direct people interested in this type of image to your web page.

1. Click the plus sign (+) on the page to add a block.
2. Click the Image icon.
3. Click Upload to add a new image.
4. Add a caption.
5. Align center.
6. Save your changes.
7. Preview the page to verify that it appears as you expected.
8. Click the arrow at the top left of the screen to return to the dashboard.

Image Blocks with PDF Links

If you are posting maps that are highly detailed, or large PDF documents of any kind that are designed for printing, you will want to show a preview image on the website, but modify the image link so it links to a PDF file in your media library that can be downloaded for saving or printing.

1. From the Dashboard go into Media and Add Media File to upload both your PDF and PNG preview files.
2. From Pages, edit the page and add an Image block with the preview Select image from the Media Library.
3. Add a Caption and Center the image and caption.
4. Save the changes.
5. Go back to your Media library and copy the URL to the PDF file.
6. Go back to the page and add a Link to the image with the URL.
7. Save the changes.
8. View the page to make sure the link works as expected.

Embedded PDF File Blocks

If you have small or medium-sized PDF documents (1mb or less), you can embed them directly in pages so they appear on the page in a PDF reader.

If your PDF files are large, you should use the preview image and link technique given in the Image Blocks with PDF Links section above. Embedding large PDF files can slow the performance of your website, which will dissuade visitors from staying and looking around.

For this example, we will post an embedded PDF of a resume on its own page.

1. Prepare a resume with appropriate formatting privacy protection:
• Documents like this should be PDF files rather than Word documents so you can be assured that the viewer sees the document formatting as you indended it.
• Resumes posted online should be stripped of non-essential personal information like home addresses and personal cell phone numbers.
• Because e-mail addresses can be harvested by spammers, you should probably use an institutional e-mail address (like a school e-mail address) or an "alias" address rather than a e-mail address that you use for personal communications.
• Birthdates or social security numbers should never be anywhere on a public website.
2. In Pages, Edit he desired page.
3. Click (+) to Add a block, select Browse all and choose Media, File.
4. Upload the PDF from your local machine.
5. Save the changes.
6. View the page to make sure the link works as expected.

Galleries

If you have multiple images, you may want to consider using a thumbnail Gallery to make navigation easier.

1. In the page editor, Add a block, Browse All, and choose Media, Gallery.
2. Add to upload images.
3. Save the changes.
4. View the page to make sure the link works as expected.

Contact Page

WordPress.com provides the ability to add a contact form that users can use to contact you.

Contact forms are often preferred to directly posting e-mail addresses or phone numbers in order to protect you from spammers and scammers.

However, contact form e-mail sent from web servers can be unreliable. For a portfolio like this where a missed message could be a missed opportunity, you may want to simply include an e-mail address and / or LinkedIn page link on your site rather than adding a contact form.

1. From the Dashboard, select Pages and Add new page.
2. In the page editor, Add a block, Browse All, and choose Patterns, Contact.
3. Modify or remove the placeholder blocks.
4. Save the changes.
5. View the page to make sure the link works as expected.
6. You will want to test your form by sending yourself a message to make sure it works.

Finalize the Overall Design

Disable Comments

WordPress was originally designed to support blogging. The term blog is short for weB LOG and emerged around 1999. A blog is a website that contains a personal online journal as well as reflections and often reader comments and links to sites that the blog author finds interesting.

For the purposes of this example portfolio website, comments are not appropriate, so they should be turned off.

1. Go to Settings and Discussion.
2. Turn off everything, especially Allow people to post comments on new articles.

Remove Unused Theme Blocks

Themes commonly contain placeholder content that may be unnecessary for your application, or that may need to be replaced with real content to be useful (such as social media links).

In this theme, the sidebar contains unnecessary blog post, biographical info, and social media links that can be removed.

The theme template page can be edited from Appearance, Editor.

Delete Unneeded Pages

Remove any unneeded pages. For this example, we remove the placeholder home page that was created when we created the web site.

Set the Home Page

When visitors to your site go to the main URL for your site, they land on the home page.

For a personal website, home pages commonly provide some biographical information and / or provide thumnail images that link to the main pages on the site.

For a portfolio website, a biographical home page may be unnecessary and you might just consider making one of your content page your home page.

You can change the home page by going to Settings, Reading, Your homepage displays, and selecting a static page.

Add a Menu

Websites commonly have navigation menus to facilitate navigation among the different site pages.

Some themes automatically include a navigation menu. However, if your theme needs a menu, you can add it as Navigation theme block.

1. From the dashboard, go to Appearance, Editor, Templates, All Archives.
2. Add a Navigation block where desired.
3. Format the orientation, appearance (bold), and block spacing as desired.
4. Save changes.
5. View the site to make sure everything appears as expected.

Launch your site.

Once you get your initial design and content set, you need to Launch your site from the Dashboard so it is visible to the public.

The Website Life Cycle

A life cycle is "a series of stages through which something (such as an individual, culture, or manufactured product) passes during its lifetime" (Merriam-Webster 2022). All websites have a life cycle:

• Initial setup and beta testing
• Deployment
• Content and software maintenance
• Migration and/or decommissioning

Note that WordPress is not something that you can just install once and forget about. All software has bugs and security vulnerabilities, and there are frequent new releases of WordPress that fix these bugs. If you install WordPress on your own server, you need to periodically update the software - which can be done with one click in the WordPress dashboard. However, this is something that many non-technical administrators may not remember to do or be aware that they need to do on a regular basis. This is an advantage of using managed WordPress hosting or WordPress.com, where systems administrators are responsible for software upgrades.

The last phase is also one that many folks running small websites do not consider. You should not leave a dormant website hanging around on the web, especially if it contains personal information or is a demo site for your client that may get stuck in the search engines. Many hosting providers have auto-renew and will happily continue to take your money to host a forgotten site until you actively cancel your account. Free WordPress.com websites will continue to linger indefinitely unless actively decommissioned.

If you are decommissioning your WordPress.com website, you may wish to make the site private rather than deleting it permanently so that you can recover the contents or subdomain if you need them in the future. If you delete a WordPress.com website, you not only lose the content but also lose the subdomain since WordPress.com does not allow deleted subdomains to be reused.

You can set a website to private from the dashboard under Settings, Reading, Site visibility.