Building A Simple Informational Website

bingo_bango

You already have a domain, and will now need to pay for hosting. After that, there should be NO other charges, unless you decide to pay for advertising.

Wordpress is really very good for sites, but it can take some time to get used to tweaking the themes to get the look you want. You do not need to buy a theme. Once you have hosting, you can install any of the many free themes around the internet.

Several posts above suggest learning HTML and CSS. This should be your first starting point. I would go so far as to suggest you try to build a basic webpage from scratch so that you understand the effect that changing parameters will have on different elements.

Once you are reasonably comfortable that you can tell a 'div' from a 'class' (which isn't quite as complicated as you might think) then you will have a much better handle on changing the wordpress free theme you have decided to use, because none of them will be exactly the look you are planning.

I installed one last week and had to spend about 12 hours tweaking the theme to get it to do what I wanted. It's still not completed, but is very close to the final look I'm trying to achieve. If you DO decide to tweak the free theme, then read up on creating a child theme beforehand. It's very, very easy to do and will ensure you don't break the main theme template. You can then easily roll back to the default position if needed.

When looking at hosting, it might be better to go for cPanel hosting, as this will have Softaculous or Fantastico, which are software installation tools. These will make it much easier for you to install new themes and plugins.

Finally, if you do decide to go for a Wordpress self hosted theme, then make sure you deactivate all plugins before working on customising the theme template. If you don't, you'll suffer the 'white page of death' which will drive you insane. Once you have finished customising, re-activate the plugins before logging off.

This is all achievable with little knowledge of either HTML or CSS (or PHP for that matter!) and you could have a basic site up and running within an hour if you plan the look you want beforehand. The Wordpress forums are usually able to give answers to problems that you encounter, but if not, then you can always post back here.

Good luck with it!

AndyPix

What hosting company did you use ?

You would be far far better just using their builders for the purpose you require ..

I wouldn't bother with wordpress - and SharePoint :eek: : there are whole careers dedicated to that !!

If you swap hosting, just copy all the files off and upload them to your new host

jbainbridge

My advice would be - don't use wordpress.com

Get your own domain name / hosting and install Wordpress yourself (though some hosts will set it up for you automatically). Get support at https://wordpress.org/

Terrysdelight

bingo_bango wrote: »

You already have a domain, and will now need to pay for hosting. After that, there should be NO other charges, unless you decide to pay for advertising.

Wordpress is really very good for sites, but it can take some time to get used to tweaking the themes to get the look you want. You do not need to buy a theme. Once you have hosting, you can install any of the many free themes around the internet.

Several posts above suggest learning HTML and CSS. This should be your first starting point. I would go so far as to suggest you try to build a basic webpage from scratch so that you understand the effect that changing parameters will have on different elements.

Once you are reasonably comfortable that you can tell a 'div' from a 'class' (which isn't quite as complicated as you might think) then you will have a much better handle on changing the wordpress free theme you have decided to use, because none of them will be exactly the look you are planning.

I installed one last week and had to spend about 12 hours tweaking the theme to get it to do what I wanted. It's still not completed, but is very close to the final look I'm trying to achieve. If you DO decide to tweak the free theme, then read up on creating a child theme beforehand. It's very, very easy to do and will ensure you don't break the main theme template. You can then easily roll back to the default position if needed.

When looking at hosting, it might be better to go for cPanel hosting, as this will have Softaculous or Fantastico, which are software installation tools. These will make it much easier for you to install new themes and plugins.

Finally, if you do decide to go for a Wordpress self hosted theme, then make sure you deactivate all plugins before working on customising the theme template. If you don't, you'll suffer the 'white page of death' which will drive you insane. Once you have finished customising, re-activate the plugins before logging off.

This is all achievable with little knowledge of either HTML or CSS (or PHP for that matter!) and you could have a basic site up and running within an hour if you plan the look you want beforehand. The Wordpress forums are usually able to give answers to problems that you encounter, but if not, then you can always post back here.

Good luck with it!

Thank you - much appreciated.

Terrysdelight

AndyPix wrote: »

What hosting company did you use ?

You would be far far better just using their builders for the purpose you require ..

I wouldn't bother with wordpress - and SharePoint :eek: : there are whole careers dedicated to that !!

If you swap hosting, just copy all the files off and upload them to your new host

I haven't decided on which hosting site yet.


I purchased the domain through a 'back order' on 123-Reg. This is all new to me. I plan to go live with my business in about 3 months so I am doing the research now and getting the website right.


One question - once I start 'building' the website - can I choose it to be 'hidden' until it is completely finished?

AndyPix

Ok so just go with godaddy or 1&1 and use their website builders.
You will have it done inside an hour

You can keep your website "hidden" by just having a holding page as the index.html page.
And build your real index page called something else,
then just rename them when your ready to go ..

But if no one knows your site exists, and you haven't submitted it to search engines, then theres no point in hiding it really because no-one will know its there

Hope this helps
Andy

Terrysdelight

AndyPix wrote: »

Ok so just go with godaddy or 1&1 and use their website builders.
You will have it done inside an hour

You can keep your website "hidden" by just having a holding page as the index.html page.
And build your real index page called something else,
then just rename them when your ready to go ..

But if no one knows your site exists, and you haven't submitted it to search engines, then theres no point in hiding it really because no-one will know its there

Hope this helps
Andy

Knowing my luck, it might appear when someone is searching for my competitors website - I would look like a right old cowboy lol.

AndyPix

Terrysdelight wrote: »

Knowing my luck, it might appear when someone is searching for my competitors website - I would look like a right old cowboy lol.

You do know that your site wont be appearing automatically on the first page of google with all your competitors don't you ??

You first have to submit it to be crawled by the search engines.
And then they use their secret algorithms to decide how relevant it is to certain search terms ..

And that's a whole other story ...:o

Terrysdelight

AndyPix wrote: »

You do know that your site wont be appearing automatically on the first page of google with all your competitors don't you ??

You first have to submit it to be crawled by the search engines.
And then they use their secret algorithms to decide how relevant it is to certain search terms ..

And that's a whole other story ...:o

I guessed that :-)


Advertising, promoting etc will be hard - not going to think about that one just yet lol

Terrysdelight

UKSBD wrote: »

Here is a post I wrote some time ago that may be useful
http://www.uksbd.co.uk/how-to-set-up-a-new-website-from-scratch-using-wordpress/


It's a bit long winded, but it's the cutting corners at this stage that causes potential problems in the future.

I like this. I especially liked when I scrolled down to number 10 on the list of things to do!


Many thanks, much appreciated