In response to a few questions by Mary on my post about using WAMP to install WordPress on your Windows Machine, I’ve decided to write a post and see if I can help her (and anybody else who needs it).
First, an introduction.
Everybody should have a website
I FULLY believe that everybody should have a website. Even more so if you run a business.
In South Africa, if you’re technically inclined (or, can just follow a few simple instructions) you could have your own website up and running in about 4 hours for about R1000 a year.
If you’re not really a technical person and you’d need to hire somebody to help you, then it may cost anywhere from R3000 for setup, and R1000 a year after that. Of course, this depends on the complexity of your website and your requirements.
With it being so easy, you really have no excuse for not having a site.
Why you should use WordPress
WordPress, in my opinion, is the best software for running anything from very simple websites to sites of medium complexity.
You can use it if you only need a couple pages containing the following information:
- Home page
- About page, with info about you and your company
- Contact page – NEVER forget to have one of these
But, thanks to a whole lot of WordPress plugins (or just using some extra built-in functionality), you can use your WordPress installation to do the following:
- Have a built-in forum
- Create a mailing list to keep people up to date with your product listings, perhaps
- Have a website with more than one user contributing to it. For example: a news website
- Create a blog – you KNOW it’s all the craze now
What will my site look like?
OK, so Mary’s first question was: “I’m not sure if (and how) I can integrate my own design as I am not willing to use any ready-made templates”.
What ready-made templates is she talking about? Well, one of the benefits of using WordPress is that a LOT of people have created free templates that you can just upload to your installation to change the way your website looks.
As an example, just do a search in Google for free WordPress Templates or for free WordPress themes.
Of course, because they ARE available for free on the internet, you might not have a unique looking website.
To combat this, you could hire a WordPress template designer to design a custom look for your website, or, you could download one of the free templates and customise it to make it look unique.
Another option is to design your own theme however you normally do it, and then convert it for use with WordPress. This is obviously the route that I would recommend to Mary.
But, how do you do that? Well, if you’re OK with basic programming in PHP, you could take a look at the WordPress guide to coding WordPress themes and templates.
Or, you could hire somebody (like me 
) to take your website layout and create a template that is compatible with WordPress.
How to publish your WordPress website
So, now that you’ve tested your WordPress website using the guide to install WordPress on your computer, and then you’ve gone through and created your own theme, you need to upload it for the world to see.
To do that, you need to do the following things:
- Get a web host – I recommend the on I use for my South African sites -> www.anno.co.za
- Ensure your web host allows MySQL databases and PHP websites
- Follow the instructions for Installing WordPress (it’s a little different to installing it on your computer)
- Change the settings of your site as appropriate
- Upload your WordPress theme and enable it
- Write all the pages you need!
It is that easy.
Of course, as I mentioned before, you could hire somebody to do all the technical stuff for you. Then you can rely on them to set up your site and lay it out correctly for optimal search engine crawling (which could help rank you website higher, helping you get more visitors).
So, Mary, hopefully you found this article interesting and helpful as a starting guide.
If anybody has any questions, post them in the comments section below, and I’ll see if I can answer them.
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Hi, James!
You won’t believe how exited I am to see this post! Thank you very much!
After reading it carefully, I saw that I have done a few things the other way around.
First, I quess it is appropriate to say now, that I am not a technical guru, and what I do has nothing to do with wordpress, design or web programming, (so I quess that is why I did what I did). As a Philologist, these things used to be more like a “What **** is this??!!” to me.
However, two years ago, to my surprise, as well as to the surprise of everyone who knows me well enough, I found that I was beginning to be very interested in the above mentioned stuff. So a started “googling” my way into the world of web design. So far, I have a good command of html, css and some software products that help me with my designs.
However, despite of the functionality of php, of which I am aware, I never really had the time or the nerve to study it.
That is why I find wordpress a challenge. But don’t you worry, whatever the challenge, I take it for the sake of my nature.
Now, about the things that I did the other way around.
First, I paid for a host and a domain. Now, that you’ve got me thinking, I am not a 100% sure if my hosting plan includes MySql and PhP. I need to check that out.
Second,only after I had my hosting and domain name, did I deside that, apart from the layout for the “standard” website, it’d be e great idea if I had a more functional site (more like a blog) where I could post any tutorials, information, fun and serious stuff, even my thoughts on the various topics and issues that interest me, which was why I picked Worpress. Now that you’ve got me thinking, I still haven’t made up my mind on the layout for my blog-like site. I have a few ideas, though…
So, as you can see a Philologist thinks and acts upside-down when it comes to technical stuff. However, there is no way that I hire anybody to do these things for me, as I am decided that, no matter what, I’ll find my way around this, like I did with my first design two years ago, though nobody believed I would.
This post was helpfull indeed for showing me how things are done.
I’ll keep in touch , and if you happen to find or post a tutorial on the actual setting of a customized or personal design in wordpress, be so kind to e-mail me a link.
Thank you very much,
Mary