WP for Boomers

Choosing a theme

The theme you choose gives your site’s “Look and Feel.”
 Choosing a theme is the fun part where you decide what you want your site to look like! If you already have something established that you want to work with, such as a business card or sign a photo or the item will make sure everything matches. The look should reflect you and/or the subject of your site as clearly and quickly as possible. Unfortunately visitors don’t spend time trying to work out what a site is about, so if you want them to stay, the site should quickly tell them know what you are about.

For example, a pink baby site with images of things people associate with babies in the background, or a photos of the baby wearing a headband tells the visitor it is about a baby girl, as pink is a shorthand for ‘girl’ for many people.

If your site is about historic documents you might be wise to keep to more traditional fonts, and maybe keep to a cream and brown color palette to convey age. Ultimately the design is your choice, so spend some time thinking about what your readers will respond to in terms of colors, phrases and photos.

The colors, images and layout are all very flexible, so go and look at sites you particularly like and start to think about what you would like your site to look like. Bookmark or write down the sites you particularly like so you can go back to them again.

When you have installed WordPress it comes with two themes to get you started. It is a good idea to play with these options to begin with as they are fully functional, and can be changed to fit almost any color scheme.

You will notice on the “install themes” section you have an array of additional themes you can select, and quickly and easily install. You can even preview the way the theme will look on your site before choosing to ‘activate’ it and working with it.

Whatever you do, be very careful about downloading “free” themes. Some of them have embedded viruses that can do harm to your site and data base. There are many reputable places where you can buy themes to use, but it is wise to play with the free themes and see how they work before you decide to buy a theme that may require more adapting than you can initially handle.

When you do come to but themes I recommend visiting the sites for Headway, ThemeForest, Themify and Woo Themes (see the box in the right hand column for examples) to see some of the many themes that are available for use!

Hosting your site

Now you have chosen an address – or domain name – for your site, you need to find hosting – or a home – for your site. Again, there are many options, and have most of my domains hosted with HostGator. For about $5 a month you can host your site with them, and I have found their customer service to be excellent. You can call them, text them or use chat to ask questions, and have been able to get really helpful advise every time.

Another option is once again NameCheap, and if you are feeling a bit overwhelmed, buying your domain name and hosting here is an easy option. Generally the idea is not to have “all your eggs in one basket”, but for a first site (and there will be more, it is addictive!) it is OK to keep things simple. NameCheap is currently offering a hosting rate of $2.95 per month if you pre-pay 36 months of hosting, or if you prefer a shorter commitment, it is $3.95 a month for a year.

Either of these options comes with a huge pool of email addresses that you can create for your domain, and which are easily set up. This means you can have ‘yourname@yourdomain.com’ as your email address, and then add ‘info@yourdomain.com’ or ‘support@yourdomain.com” or any number of other possibilities. You can either access the mail through the hosting, or set them to be forwarded into another email account.

Generally if you pre-pay a lower level of hosting and then decide you want to build a forest of sites, you can upgrade to larger scale hosting, and apply the pre-payment to the new hosting. The advantage of having the more expensive hosting is that you can host multiple domains (“add-on” domains) within one package of hosting, which brings the per-site cost down dramatically. Be warned that ‘unlimited’ hosting does have limits, but it will take time to find where they are…

Chosing a domain name

As you think about the site you want to build, the first decision you need to make is to find a domain name for your site. This is the “address” of your site, so whatever you choose should clearly explain what your site is going to be about. For example, GillianLancasterDesign.com is one of my domains. It is my portfolio site which displays my design work. Another site of mine is MainLineMobileSites.com, reflecting the geographic location, the Philadelphia Main Line, and sells mobile websites.

If you aren’t sure what direction your site is going to take, or have several ideas you want to develop you might want to use your own name. On the other hand if your business already has a name, then your goal is to think of something that will help both current and potential customers find you. For example, if your business is known as “Danny’s Bistro”, then “DannysBistro.com” would make it easy for existing customers to find you. If the bistro specializes in French food, then “DannysFrenchBistro.com” would help newcomers find you and know exactly what you offer. The goal is to come up with a phrase that will attract the people you want to visit your site.

Where do you buy a domain name?

There are a number of sites which sell domain names, and the prices are generally quite similar. I recommend NameCheap.com, as I have found them to be very helpful. I have also used GoDaddy.com and like them for buying domains, but do not like their hard sell of extra products, so be warned!

It is important to mention that not all domains are available, so it may be necessary to add another to the name you chose. Think of this as another chance to help visitors find you, so if “DannysFrenchBistro.com” has already been taken and you are located in Brooklyn, maybe “DannysFrenchBistroBrooklyn.com” is available instead! If you want to use your own name and it has been taken, then you might want to add a middle name. Think about this gently and write down all the ideas you come up with.

You also have the choice of many different options after the ‘dot’. If you can’t get the .org version you want, you could consider .info or .co.uk, but beware that whoever owns the .com version is likely to get some of your traffic as people tend to assume all sites end in .com. Unless you are famous, or have a famous product, you don’t need to buy every version in addition to .com.

What is WordPress?

According to WikiPedia, WordPress is:

“a free and open source blogging tool and content management system (CMS) powered by PHP and MySQL. It has many features including a plug-in architecture and a template system. WordPress is used by over 14.7% of Alexa Internet‘s “top 1 million” websites and as of August 2011 powers 22% of all new websites. WordPress is currently the most popular CMS in use on the Internet.

It was first released on May 27, 2003, by Matt Mullenwegas a fork of b2/cafelog. As of December 2011, version 3.0 had been downloaded over 65 million times.“

What does this mean for you?

“Free and open source” means that the code for WordPress was developed to be freely used and developed by anyone, and that all additions to that code are available to all users. While the main software, many updates, themes, plugins and widgets remain free to all, other developers have taken the process much further and sell their WordPress themes and resources.

“Blogging tool” means that originally this software was built for creating personal blogs, but as people have developed the way they interact online, it has become a great tool for creating websites as well. If you aren’t convinced, companies like The New York Times, CNN, VW, eBay and UPS use WordPress as the basis of their websites.

“Content Management System” means that all your materials are kept within the site software, so you can use it in different places, or have several people working on the site simultaneously. For smaller sites, this is the benefit to you.

“PHP” is a computer language used to create web pages and items that respond to mouse clicks. You don’t need to know more than that, except it is a good thing!

“MySQL” is a data base system that is used to store then access all your site information. Again, you need to be aware your site is built on this database, so if you ever have to move or restore your site, it is important that you have backed it up and saved it regularly. (There is a plugin you can install to do this, so don’t panic!)

“Plug-in architecture” means that you can add functions to your site through installing a plug in, you don’t need to know how to code the site to make this happen. There is an enormous repository of plugins on the WordPress site, but wait to go and look – there are over 18,000 free plugins listed – and many more premium ones you can buy.

“Template system” means you use a ‘theme’ to make you site look the way you want it to. You can choose from an amazing array of layouts and color schemes, and having chosen a theme, can easily switch it out for another theme! (Once you have a great deal of material on your site, you might want to think carefully before changing the theme as some elements may not transfer over.)

So, if you want to build your own site on your own domain, you can do so with WordPress, and have an attractive site up and running within just a few hours.