Installed at godaddy…but now I am lost

Welcome.

You login to your WordPress website by accessing either:
https://<your web address>/wp-admin
https://<your web address>/wp-login.php

From these pages you can edit your website pages, posts, menus, themes, images, plugins and so on.
You need to read some of the articles linked from this page:
https://codex.www.ads-software.com/Main_Page

Of course when you get stuck it is appropriate to start a new thread in the relevant support forum here.

You probably want to be able to access your old website while creating your new one, you will be able to copy+paste some or much of your content.

To get started with WordPress give these links a read.

https://codex.www.ads-software.com/Main_Page

That’s a lot of links. Focus on the “Learn How to Use WordPress” part for now. ??

Do I need to download the WordPress software onto my pc as well so that I can work on building a site inside of that?

You could and many people do that. It’s a good way to get started on WordPress without risking your current web site via a mistake.

https://codex.www.ads-software.com/Installing_WordPress#WAMP
https://codex.www.ads-software.com/Installing_WordPress_Locally_on_Your_Mac_With_MAMP

Or you can setup WordPress on your web server and your host provider may be able to assist you with that.

https://support.godaddy.com/help/article/834/installing-wordpress-on-your-hosting-account

https://support.godaddy.com/help/article/5110/manually-install-wordpress-into-your-hosting-account

If you do go the web server method then you can install WordPress in a separate directory to not interfere with your current web site. Please make sure you have good backups incase you accidentally overwrite something on your current web server setup.

I have already installed WordPress on the server there at godaddy and yes I have been reading some of that content referenced…digging through but could not locate answer that I needed.

The advised
You login to your WordPress website by accessing either:
https://<your web address>/wp-admin
https://<your web address>/wp-login.php

is part of the problem. I cannot access mysite from either of those, thats the issue, although its been successfully installed at godaddy. As I mentioned I have it on the root there with my main site and receive 404 message- cannot locate when searching using either of those prescribed addresses.

Your WordPress has probably been installed upon a sub-directory.

You need to access your website files using either FTP or the hosting management file manager. You are looking for thing.php files, you must find index.php and wp-config.php these show where your WordPress website has its root.

IMHO it is a good thing if you are installed upon a sub-directory because it means that you can develop your new website while accessing the old one.

I built some years ago using a template based website building software…FrontPage

Which means that you more than likely have a Windows hosting account with FP extensions.

recently installed WordPress there at my godaddy hosting service. Its situated on the root drive where my other site sits.

although its been successfully installed at godaddy

If you are unable to access the WP site via the mentioned URLs, then you must have used the “auto installer” for WP available in your hosting control panel. As Ross mentioned, they generally, without user intervention, place it in a sub directory.

If you are certain that it has been installed in the root, then, using your hosting control panel file manager, have a look and confirm that there are these three folders in the root:

wp-admin
wp-content
wp-includes

If they are there, then indeed it has been installed in the root.

You will also then have a file there named either home.htm, home.html, index.htm or index.html. Temporarily rename this file to index_OLD.html for example and then try accessing your domain, e.g. www.mydomain.com after refreshing your browser. This should get you your WP site if the auto installer has placed it in the root.

You can have both an HTML and a WP site installed in the root; I just verified on a local server where I placed one of my old FP sites (yes, I did that too! ?? and then placed the WP site files. The FP site will come up by going to the root URL but after renaming it, I was able to access the WP site.