Welcome to the global village!
As you may know a website is a document available on the internet which could be about anything: you, your product or service!
Determine the purpose of the website:
As a simple planning tool you can download these forms
Designing the website:
By deciding to use a content management system (CMS) like WordPress you have decided to focus on building content (pages and posts), while opting out of the sophistication of coding how the site works! You can get your ideas onto the page and available on the internet way more quickly.
When and if you are interested in switching over to your own website address (meaning you take off the “.wordpress.”), you can easily do so. Whether you already own your own domain name or want to get one WordPress.com makes it really easy to switch over whenever you are ready.
Communication should be a two way street:
Always provide a means for your visitors to send you feedback. When your visitors want to tell you something or ask you a question they must have a means of doing so. A simple email address is the least that you should provide them. Better still, post a contact page and create a web form to process correspondence. Going further you should also connect any social media spaces (like Facebook, Linkedin, etc) with your website (and vice versa).
The exchange of information and the melding of ideas is the crowning glory of the internet. Through the interchange of thoughts and personal experiences we become a global community. Person to person contact is becoming more and more important in the modern world to help us maintain our perspective.
Now go ahead and use any resource from this site to help build yours!
Web Design Basics: WordPress.com 
Hi Liz,
I made a Contact category and opened a page and clicked ‘Add a custom form’- clicked ‘Add this form to my list’. This is what appears in the text field. What am I doing wrong? How do I make the form come up?
[contact-form][contact-field label='Name' type='name' required='1'/][contact-field label='Email' type='email' required='1'/][contact-field label='Website' type='url'/][contact-field label='Comment' type='textarea' required='1'/][/contact-form]
Request feedback before publishing – this is just for posts, right? Not for the whole site?
Thanks,
Susi
What may be happening is that you are looking at your page in text mode (where you can see the HTML coding).
Remember you can switch between the two modes of editing your pages if you click on the tabs at the top right of the page you are working on.
You can create a simple form using the add form button in the WordPress post or page editor.
• Contact form
After you insert and edit the form fields, you can publish it or preview the change to see how your form will be seen by your audience.
Thanks very much. Once I published it, the form came up.