Building our website.
We have had a couple of messages from people interested in building a blogging website and in response I thought I’d put together an overview of the process I employed.
Most importantly I certainly don’t consider myself qualified or experienced enough to offer any real advice, here I will merely discuss the processes I went through in putting together our Wordbotherers website. We are a writing group with no real budget to afford anything beyond minimal web-hosting nor do we have the expertise to safely manage a database or business website. Our needs are relatively simple and we see our website as a kind of ‘gallery’ in which we can display our work. The odd links to our Amazon KDP self-published books and embedded multi-media file are still pretty simple.
We determined social media as undependable – this doesn’t mean it didn’t have some use, we were simply cautious about investing any degree of time and effort into a platform that was both fluctuant and largely beyond our control. Our original website was functional but basic and coming up for its first, annual renewal and so we decided that spending some time on improving our website was our next goal.
I have some experience with wordpress, but nothing really fancy. It’s really easy to set up a free blogging website but beware that there is a big difference between wordpress.com and wordpress.org.
It’s beyond the scope of this article to explain the nuances, if you are planning to use wordpress just make sure you know the differences between the two platforms. Briefly, the .com option is simpler, but more costly; the .org option offers much more flexibility and value but requires some technical understanding.
WordPress, whichever version you use, is the most popular website builder which offers certain advantages, particularly for a novice. There are loads of youtube videos offering all sorts of guidance. Whilst it might be initially daunting, it is really very similar to the word processor software you might already be familiar with.
WordPress offers hundreds of free and premium (paid for, either as a one-off payment or subscription) ‘themes’. These themes vary in quality and capability. They are templates of pre-designed styles and types of website. Most are customisable to some degree. Each theme has its own set of parameters such as fonts, colours, buttons, etc that can be customised.
Initially, our website was hosted at wordpress.com. We decided that if we didn’t mind completely rebuilding it, we could change the hosting to hostinger.com and this would give us greater flexibility in its redesign whilst ultimately saving us money. I spent several weeks watching youtube videos, many who had some bias towards one platform due to being sponsored by them, but not all. I would advise careful research as the costs vary widely depending on how long you sign up for.
After careful consideration we decided hostinger seemed to offer the best price for what we wanted. Nevertheless, I recommend contemporous research as this is probably pretty dynamic. For about £140 we got four years hosting with the option of multiple sites if we needed them. It cost us an extra £10 to move our website from wordpress.com.
Our Website.
Our initial website was very basic with an author, blog and magazine page. We wanted our new website to have a contemporary feel, and after watching several youtube videos exploring current themes we decided on a ‘bento box’ look. This is a website that utilises ‘cards’ – which are stacked together into ‘boxes’ – similar to a style of Japanese cuisine.
Hosting.
Whilst hostinger offer the option to import a wordpress website, our current plan with wordpress.com didn’t let us do this, so we accepted we would need to rebuild the website from the ground up. This wasn’t too bad as our new website had an entirely different structure.
Hostinger lets you set up a temporary url (website name) whilst you build your website. Once you are ready, you can then change this temporary name with your official one. Remember there are lots of youtube videos that can help guide you through this, if needed.
The first stage therefore is to find a suitable website hosting company – we used hostinger.com – and then, once subscribed you will then either use their ‘in-house’ editing software or a third-party software like wordpress.
Building.
For about six weeks beforehand I watched several hours of youtube videos focusing on wordpress web design, trying to familiarise myself with the many, differing approaches. I didn’t really understand much of the technicalities and there were so many different themes, each with different styles, it was hard to settle on a single, manageable guide.
In the end it was a case of selecting something that offered a look we liked, coupled with my technical ability to follow the instructions given. Furthermore, we had to work within the confines of free themes with only the more basic options.
I did look at artificial intelligence built and assisted options. These, at that stage, were unpredictable with limited editing options or incurred additional costs.
We had a deadline as we cancelled our wordpress.com subscription and so I selected a youtube video to act as a guide, and pretty much followed the instructions step by step.
Difficulty.
It wasn’t particularly difficult, although there is definitely a learning curve so expect some frustration as you get familiar with the software. It will take you several weeks to learn how to tweak all the various settings. It is remarkably easy, particularly with the free versions where many of the more complicated settings are not adjustable.
Sometimes you have to accept what it gives you, rather than what you precisely want!
Gradually you’ll get familiar with the various parts of the software – I use youtube – invariably there is a helpful video that explains what you need to do.
Security.
There are several free security options, with paid add-on options. You certain need some security and a decent password – we get several log-in attempts a day despite our website holding nothing more than our stories. It seems that most of your security comes from your hosting company who might recommend security plug-ins. Keeping your themes and plug-ins up to date is also recommended.
Costs.
There is a wide variation in the costs you will encounter. Youtube videos that promote one particular host, builder or theme often offer discount codes. However, if you follow the link they provide the plans cost more than finding the same company through google, sometimes. Take time to read the small print, sometimes the low monthly rate is dependent on a one annual payment. Decide what you really need, often the smaller plans are more than enough and you can always upgrade the plan if necessary. Beware of incurring additional costs through paid themes and add-ons.
Currently, wordpress dominates the web-building market and with the huge variety of themes and plug-in on offer, there are plenty of low cost or free options particularly if your needs are relatively simple.
I cannot say how daunting the process might be to a complete novice, but if you have some familiarity with software and are willing to search youtube for guidance, you might be surprised how simple it is, in the long run!
