By the time Jade’s Saturday pottery class ended, there were six bowls on the shelf, three mugs and one thing everyone had politely agreed to call a bowl.
She was scraping clay off a table when her phone buzzed.
Hi. I’m thinking about the beginner class. Do I need to bring anything?
Jade wiped one finger clean enough to type.
No. Just wear something you don’t mind getting dirty. Aprons provided.
A few minutes later, another message arrived.
How much is the Saturday class?
She had answered that one already too.
There were others.
What time does the class start?
Can complete beginners come?
Could I see some of the things people have made?
The answers were scattered through old messages, social-media posts and Jade’s own memory.
Maybe it was time to put them somewhere people could find them.
She needed a small website.
Class times and prices. A few photographs. A way to contact her.
Jade asked two friends what they used.
One replied:
WordPress.
The other said:
Just use a website builder.
Both probably thought they had answered the question.
Jade searched both and became confused.
If they both build websites, what’s the difference?
Jade tries the website builder
One of the website-builder services Jade found offered a free trial, so she signed up and opened the editor.
The service asked what kind of website she wanted and showed her a collection of starting designs. Jade picked one that looked simple enough.
The page already had someone else’s words and photographs on it.
She clicked the heading and replaced it with the name of her pottery classes.
She swapped the sample photograph for one from her studio.
Better.
Then she added the information people kept asking for.
Saturday Beginner Pottery Class
10:00 a.m.
Aprons provided
She added the price underneath.
When Jade wanted a contact form, she found one among the things the builder could add to the page. She clicked it, dragged it where she wanted it and dropped it in.
Easy-peasy.
She changed the wording and there it was.
Name.
Email.
Message.
The plan she was considering included hosting too.
Good. One less thing to sort out.
After half an hour, Jade could see how this worked. She had started with a ready-made design and was turning it into her website with her own words, photographs and pages.
She could probably finish the whole thing this way.
But she still didn’t know what her other friend meant when he said:
Use WordPress.
Jade sent him a message.
So, what is WordPress?
“Okay. This is WordPress.”
Her friend stopped by that evening with his laptop.
“Okay,” he said. “Let me show you what I mean.”
He signed into the account he had with his hosting company.
“WordPress is basically the software I use to build and manage my website,” he told her. “My hosting company set it up for me when I created the site.”
From there, he opened WordPress.
A screen appeared with a menu running down the left side.
Pages.
Posts.
Media.
“Okay,” he said. “This is WordPress.”
Jade had been half expecting some mysterious piece of software to appear on his computer.
Instead, she was looking at the place where he actually worked on the website.
Her friend opened one of his pages and changed a line of text.
“So this is what you use to work on the site?”
“Yep.”
That made considerably more sense than Use WordPress.
“What did the site look like when you started?”
Her friend moved down the menu, clicked Appearance, then Themes.
A page full of website designs appeared.
“This is the theme I’m using,” he said.
Jade looked through a few of the others.
Different layouts. Different type. Different ways of arranging pictures and words.
“Oh. So a theme is basically a design I can start my website with?”
“Pretty much.”
That she understood. It wasn’t so different from the starting design she had used with the website builder.
Then Jade thought about the contact form she had dragged onto her other site.
“What about something like a contact form? The website builder already had one I could add.”
Her friend clicked Plugins.
“I added mine with a plugin.”
He showed her the one he used.
“So what’s a plugin?”
“Something you add to WordPress when you want it to do something extra.”
He searched for contact forms.
A long list appeared.
Jade laughed.
“I only wanted one.”
“Welcome to WordPress.”
Her friend showed her a couple of the other plugins he actually used and what each one did.
Now Jade understood a little better why he liked WordPress.
When he wanted his website to do something it couldn’t already do, he could go looking for something to add.
For Jade, that meant more choices than she wanted right now.
The website builder had made more of those choices for her already.
“There seem to be a lot of moving parts”
Jade looked at the menu running down the side of his WordPress screen.
“There seem to be a lot of moving parts. Do you have to do much to keep it running?”
“Some,” her friend said. “My hosting company takes care of the WordPress updates and makes backups for me.”
“Backups?”
“It keeps copies of the site. If I mess something up badly enough, I’ve got something to go back to.”
“That sounds useful.”
“Very.”
“What about the plugins?”
“I keep an eye on those and on the site itself.”
Jade nodded.
That sounded like more looking-after than the website builder she had tried.
Not frightening.
Just more.
Which one does Jade choose?
The next morning, Jade opened the little website she had started in the builder.
Her pottery photograph was at the top.
The Saturday class time was there.
So was the price.
The contact form worked.
She thought about what her friend had shown her.
Themes.
Plugins.
More things she could add or change if she needed them.
Jade could imagine one of those choices becoming useful someday.
She just couldn’t name the problem it would solve yet.
For now, the website builder was already doing everything she needed.
So Jade chose the builder and finished the site.
She checked the class page once more.
Saturday Beginner Pottery Class
10:00 a.m.
Aprons provided
Then she clicked Publish.
The following Saturday, while Jade was getting the clay ready for class, her phone buzzed.
Hi. Do I need to bring an apron?
Jade looked at the message.
Then she sent back the link to the new class page.
A few seconds later:
Found it. Aprons provided. Thanks!
Jade put the phone down.
WordPress could have gotten her there too.
But for the website Jade was building now, the builder had already done the job.
That done, she went back to her clay.