Website-Setup Week Series

Why Today’s Beginners Struggle With WordPress
(Introduction to the Website-Setup Week Series)

Inspired by JDGresham’s post here: https://my.wealthyaffiliate.com/jdgresham/blog/the-hardest-part-shouldnt-be-the-theme-why-wa-needs-a-real-website-setup-tutorial/

Many new Wealthy Affiliate members arrive ready to build their online business, only to get stuck far earlier than expected. The challenge rarely begins with niche selection or content creation. It begins with something much more basic: building the actual website.

Modern WordPress has changed dramatically. Blocks, containers, rows, global styling, responsive layouts, and theme-specific controls now shape every part of a site. Yet most beginners still expect the older experience; activate a theme, start writing, and everything works. That older world no longer exists.

Because of this shift, the original WA training unintentionally assumes that the website is already built correctly. For a beginner, it is not. This gap causes confusion long before the first post is written. That is why this Website-Setup Week series exists: to guide new members through the modern website-building steps in the right order, using a simple and stable theme (GeneratePress) as the foundation.

Each post in this series focuses on one clear, practical step. By the end, any beginner will have a clean, functional website and the confidence to continue into content creation, branding, and SEO without feeling lost.

Below is the full list of posts in this series.

Website-Setup Week: Complete Post List

1. Why Today’s Beginners Struggle With WordPress (this post)
2. Choosing a Beginner-Friendly Theme
3. Installing GeneratePress and Cleaning Up the Starter Site
4. Setting Global Colors and Fonts
5. Understanding Modern WordPress Blocks
6. Building the Homepage Step-by-Step
7. Header and Footer Setup
8. Creating the First Essential Pages
9. Preparing for Content Creation With Confidence
10. Troubleshooting Beginner Roadblocks
11. When and How to Switch Themes Later
12. Inviting Member Experiences and Building Community Support

Readers can return to this list at any time to follow the series in sequence. Each post builds on the previous one and solves the challenges most beginners face in their first week of building a website.

Let me know what you think about this series in the comments below before I post the first step-by-step guide in the series.

Let’s move on!