Can I do this with a dummy account?

Holly, If you want to focus on Wordpress - For maximum flexibility without having to purchase a domain or commit to anything that is "live" on the web, I'd suggest you work through the Local Wordpress Development course on Treehouse. Zac walks you through step by step how to get up and running. After you get comfortable with that, be aware that Zac offers student hosting at a discounted, very reasonable rate - see the TH offers section for details/terms, etc. Good luck!

Hi Holly, local development is a good choice. However, more and more developers are enjoying the benefits from working on a virtual server. You can get setup on Digital Ocean with their one-click install apps and register a free domain at Freenom. This would be one alternative to working locally and testing a domain that you don't have to pay for. Digital Ocean droplets are a very small sum of money for how many ever hours you decide to work. You also don't have to worry about issues that can occur on a local machine.

Buying an affordable domain name and hosting and setting up WordPress using the 1-click install is the simplest way for beginners to get up and running with WordPress. This is why we suggest taking this approach in all our beginner videos. True, you may need to get a dummy test URL, but if you pick something related to your name or business you will likely be able to use it again in the future.

Installing locally or working to find a free way to do this does add some complexity to up and running right away with WordPress, as you've found. I would say the easiest way to keep learning is to go with a domain name and hosting plan for now and in time you will learn different ways to setup WordPress in different environments, however, we have found this is not really a beginner topic.

Also, I will be redoing the Getting Started with WordPress workshop as a course, which will make it available to all users.

Hi Kevin and Dustin, thank you both for your input, I really appreciate it :) I know I'm only in up to my ankles, but as a total newbie, I feel over my head. Both the "How to make a website with Wordpress" and "Local Wordpress development" courses on Treehouse feel way more advanced than I am, and I barely understood your really good suggestions. There's a "Getting Started with Wordpress" course, but ironically it's only available with a Pro membership. ? I contacted Support to ask about using a free Wordpress domain/site, and they told me to ask on the Forum.

If you/anyone has suggestions about a kindergarten-level wordpress class, lol, I'd be interested to check it out. I think Treehouse may not be the right place for me at this stage, may try Lynda.com. Thanks very much! :)

Thanks so much for these resources, Dustin! WP101 has a bunch of free videos -- I watched 2 so far and they are just my speed (explained the difference between wordpress.org & .com, for example -- I didn't even know there were 2 different versions/sites, that's how green I am!). Probably by the time I work through WP101 and explore these other places, I'll have enough of a grounding to come back and make use of Treehouse. Thanks again for your help and support! :)