Hello everyone,
I decided that I should split my create a website series and the Larry the Postman contest. I came to this conclusion based on yesterday's results. I received more views on my 3Speak video which had no tags and no community than I did on the full post with tags. One of these days I will learn the right/best way to learn to use 3Speak. Any ad all help appreciated in the comments.
Let's get started with Starting Your Own Website.
Yesterday, I talked about
- Finding where you are going to host your website - $3/month minimum
- Finding your domain name and buying it - $10-12/year
Today,
I want to talk about two things you need to do before you get started
- Pick your theme
- Determine your style
These two things determine the way your website is going to look. Spending time to find a theme you and defining your style not only makes for a good looking site but will also save you work and time.
Pick Your Theme
There are hundreds of pre-made WordPress themes. Many are free. Others can cost $100s. I would recommend you start with a free theme. You can change your theme later. (Sometimes when you switch themes in an existing website, some tweaking is required.)
To look at themes, hover over Appearance in the left column and click on Theme. 3 or 4 themes were added when you installed WordPress. The first theme is the installed theme and it will say "Active". The other themes can be previewed and if you like one you can install it.
If you want to see more themes click the add themes button in the upper left corner. As I am writing this post, there are 4884 themes available some free and some are available for purchase.
Before you start looking at themes, think about what you want your site to look like; e.g., do you want a column on the right side of the content for ads, forms, calendars, etc? What about the left side of the content? The theme options are almost endless. You might want to make very rough sketches to help you.
Pick a theme that looks the most like the mental picture you have for your website. The closer the theme you use is to your image, the fewer changes you will have to make.
In these posts, I am using the Elemenator Hello theme. We will talk more about that in a future post.
Determine Your Style
The style of your website determines how it looks. Style includes
- What fonts are used for what. For example, Your main header may be one font, lower level headers may be a different font, and text may be a third font.
- Your color palette is used to consistently make parts of your website the same colors. For example, your main headers may be color 1, lower headers color 2. text color 3, and highlights color 4.
- Your logo. I recommend you have a logo to start building your brand recognition.
Here is an example of a style guide from Canva.com . You only get the Brand Kit option with Canva if you are an upgraded member. I upgraded on the free trial to access the brand kit.
Another great way to get a style guide is to use Fiverr.com. It is fairly inexpensive to get someone to create a style guide and logo for you.
Any theme you install will have a style applied. You can just use the theme default. It is up to you.
I think that is enough for today. Tomorrow there is a little more prep work to do,
See You At The Bank,
Bob Caine