Lately, I’ve been telling my clients that a website made using WordPress is the most economical way for them to get an online presence. I love WordPress because I can install it on a server quickly and teach most people how to update and add functionality to it quite easily.
Perhaps you have heard the old saying, “you can have it fast, you can have it good, or you can have it cheap—but you can’t have all three”. If you want a web site without spending a lot of money, you can do that, but it is going to cost you in either quality or in time.
A WordPress site can be cheaper than a static HTML site, even if you pay someone to do all the work, (but it depends on how fancy you get). In either case, I can create a custom theme for you that will give you a unique, reasonably priced website that you can easily update yourself (if you have some basic computer skills).
Once you know how to use the backend content management system (Dashboard, pictured above) you will save money by updating the site yourself. Full documentation is available for free at www.wordpress.org.
You will have to commit some time to learning how to use the “Dashboard” to control your site, but if you update your site often, you will get quite comfortable with it in no time (and increase your site’s Google ranking too).
To give you an idea of what your site might look like, I’ve made this site using WordPress. I’ve coded the site in a very non-traditional way for a WordPress site – blog posts are not on the home page, you can find them on the News page. I’ve also created a theme that doesn’t include the author, date, edit, and comment icons found on most blogs, so the site looks more like a traditional website.
In a perfect world, I’d have clients come to my office for a lesson on the basics of using WordPress. That just isn’t possible, since I have many clients that live on the other side of the country. The tutorials and examples on this site are intended to help out those who can’t take a private lesson.
The tutorials are intended to help you learn how to make the most of your WordPress site, no matter where you live. If you have any suggestions for tutorial topics, please let me know.
***Words to the Wise***
Please be aware that WordPress isn’t for everyone. If you are not computer savvy, if you can’t learn on your own, or if you don’t have time, then you might not want to use WordPress.
WordPress is open-source software and is constantly being upgraded. Plug-ins are also upgraded often. Each time you add a WP plug-in (like the one I’ve used for the photo gallery on this page ) you may find it isn’t compatible with another plug-in or the version of WordPress and things don’t look the way you want. These problems take time, research, and technical skill to resolve (if they can be resolved at all). Unless you can do it yourself, you’ll have to pay someone to do it for you.