Wednesday, January 19, 2011

WordPress Websites and Themes


A friend of mine has asked me to build a website for her, but there are two catches: first, she is on a tight budget; second, they want to be able to upload new info and pics themselves.

Now, for the first issue, I have built websites in the past with the help of my computer geek husband (meant in the nicest way possible :) and know that if you make one totally affordable for the buyer, you could probably flip burgers at McDonald's for the same amount of time and make more money.

Secondly, if you don't speak computer geek, it is hard to maintain a site yourself. To maintain a website you have to understand the language, which my friend does not. And then we're back to the first problem of money, because Steve could make a user friendly website... if he took lots of time, which translates into lots of money.

So, I decided to try a WordPress website. Now, please understand that I don't speak geek as well as I should being married to one. I am still wrapping my head around the whole WordPress website thing, but I'll tell you what I know (and then I'll correct my mistakes after Steve reads and corrects my misunderstandings! ;)

First of all, if you are new to WordPress websites, take a look at my friend April's. It looks like a regular, business-like website. You'd never guess that it is just as easy to maintain it as it is to use a WordPress blog, would you?

Just now I looked up "WordPress website" into google's search engine and one of the results was "WordPress for Dummies Cheat Sheet", which is cool. It lists my server hosting company as one of the good ones for the WordPress website option, which is great!

I'm going to go ahead and post this much for today, and then have some screen shots on how to add a WordPress website to your server tomorrow.

Your homework is to go and look at all of the different "WordPress Themes" there are. WordPress Themes are the template for the website I'm going to create for my friend. It has all of the code already written. There are three column and two column websites, along with different colors and styles.

Here are the two I'm looking at for them: The Industrial Theme and Free Web 2.0 WordPress Themes. My friend thinks her husband will like the 2 column one best, so we'll see.

Once I choose and set one up, Steve will then help me tailor it to her needs, since he has the expertise to do that, but the time needed to do that will be minimal since the basics are already done. I'll share those tips and tricks with you here, too.

Okay, so before I say anything that may confuse more than I have already, I'll be quiet, but go take a look at the options on google and we'll talk more tomorrow okay?