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WordPress・Getting to know WordPress

Touch WordPress with no install

WordPress normally needs a server, but the official "WordPress Playground" tool lets you touch it in 3 seconds, right in your browser. Grab a practice ground you can break and erase all you like.

WordPress is originally software you install on a server (a computer that houses your site) to use. But renting a server just to practice is overkill—so we’ll use the official WordPress Playground. Just open a URL in your browser, and a whole, real WordPress springs to life.

Opening it takes just one URL

Just open the following URL in your browser. Add ?language=en and it starts in English.

https://playground.wordpress.net/?language=en

Wait a few seconds and a site called “My WordPress Website” starts up inside the screen. This is your very own, freshly-made WordPress site.

The WordPress Playground screen. There’s a dedicated address bar at the top, and below it the blog page of a freshly-made WordPress site is displayed
Playground right after startup. A real WordPress is running inside the frame.

How to read the screen

The Playground screen has a “browser within a browser” structure—there’s another small browser inside your browser.

  • The black bar at the top—Playground’s own control bar. It shows the address of the WordPress site inside
  • The screen below it—your WordPress site. This is the part that looks like the live site (the front side)
  • The thin admin bar at the top of the site (“Edit site,” “New,” etc.)—an operation menu visible only to logged-in people

Normally you have to log in yourself to use WordPress, but in Playground you’re already logged in as the administrator (admin) from the start. You can jump straight into the admin side.

What you can and can’t do in Playground

Inside Playground, you can do almost exactly what you can in real WordPress.

  • You can—write posts, swap out themes, install plugins, do everything in the admin screen. All the practice in this course is completed entirely within Playground
  • You can’t—show the site you built to other people. Your site lives only inside your browser and isn’t published to the internet

“You can practice the exact same operations as the real thing, in a safe place no one else sees”—that’s what Playground really is. The moves you pick up here work as-is in real WordPress.

Going back and forth between “front” and “back”

A WordPress site has two faces.

  • Front (the site)—the pages visitors see. The blog screen showing now
  • Back (the admin screen)—the operator-only screen where you write posts and change settings

On the admin bar up top, hover your mouse near the site name and an entryway to the “Dashboard” appears. From here you can enter the back side (the admin screen). We’ll practice this back-and-forth feel carefully in the next lesson.

Summary of this lesson

  1. With WordPress Playground, you can touch WordPress with no install and no server
  2. The URL to open is playground.wordpress.net/?language=en—you’re logged in as administrator from the start
  3. It’s a practice ground where a reload erases everything—don’t fear breaking it, touch away

Try it: start up your own WordPress

Let’s start up your very own Playground right away.

  1. In a new browser tab, open https://playground.wordpress.net/?language=en
  2. Wait a few seconds until the “My WordPress Website” blog screen appears
  3. Check that there’s just one post, “Hello world!” (a sample post WordPress prepares for you at the start)
  4. Try clicking a few links on the page and walk around inside the site

We’ll use this tab in the next lesson too, so keeping it open makes continuing smoother (and if it vanishes, just open it again).

FAQ

Is WordPress Playground free? Do I need to sign up?
It's completely free, and no account signup is needed. Just open the URL in your browser and you can use it right away.
Can I save a site I make in Playground?
By default, it disappears when you close the tab or reload. There's a feature in the top menu to export a site, but for practice we recommend going in lightly, assuming it will vanish.
Can I use Playground on a phone or tablet?
It works as long as you have a browser, but the admin screen involves a lot of fine-detail operations, so we recommend practicing on a computer.