WORDPRESS - The Perfect Website for Small Business People

You can have a fully operational website like this within a few hours.  Free.

A common stumbling block for small businesses is the creation of a new website. Or the updating of an old website.

I’ve seen people waiting  for months while a friend or relative “builds them a site”.  Or  spend thousands of dollars on a custom, hand built site  where every change has to be done by the developer for a fee. Wouldn’t it be great to update and change it yourself. Anytime you like

The traditional way of building a website is to go to a web developer, who creates a custom built website for you using HTML, CSS, PHP, or some other type of alphabet soup.
You may be fortunate enough to find a competent person who has your best interests at heart, and will create a site that meets all your requirements.

Or you may be unlucky enough to be dealing with a prima donna wearing a web developer’s hat, whose main aim is use your money to build a monument to their artistic skills. You can generally recognise these people by their statements that your website “must be unique, different, and offer an amazing user experience.”
You’ll then be tied down to weeks (or months) of consultation and planning, with many thousands of dollars of expense. And almost certain additional expenses whenever you want to make any changes – which only their staff can perform.

Ferchrissakes Get To The Point, Eric.

OK, here’s the point of this post.
In my opinion, 95% of small business websites can be set up and maintained with Wordpress – an open source package that powers millions of successful blogs and websites.

The “Internet Bloke” website is powered by Wordpress. I’ve installed a theme called “Atahualpa” – which is a free theme that allows pretty well unlimited control over colours, fonts, graphics, and many other things. (The “theme” is what controls the entire look of the website.)

If you have an existing website that needs a makeover, you can easily install Wordpress and have it “invisible” while you create your new look. The wordpress site can then be added to your exiting website via a link – or even replace your old website entirely.

Why You Should Use Wordpress

Here’s some more reasons why you should consider using Wordpress for your website:

• Easy installation from most hosting Accounts
• Quick and Simple to change the entire look of your website. Choose from thousands of free and paid themes.
• Use as a normal website, or blog, or both
• If you can use a Word Processor, you can add content and manage the website.
• It’s free to set up and use. Or you can pay someone to do it for you.
• Anyone with minimal technical ability can easily set up and maintain it if you don’t want to.
• Google LOVES wordpress sites – and will quickly find and list your site
• It’s easy to update content for Search Engine Optimisation purposes
• It can be set up to post content just by sending an email – great for updating your blog when you are on the move.
• Wide range of add-ons (mostly free) that extend the features of the base installation
• Latest version of Wordpress is very easy to update – unlike earlier versions.

Setting Up a Wordpress Website.

You can set up a wordpress website for free yourself.
If you have some basic technical skills, you should be able to have everything up and running in a couple of hours.
Wordpress Installation: Use Fantastico in your hosting control panel, or see Wordpress.org

If you want to make some changes to a wordpress theme, it’s usually very easy if you have some knowledge of HTML  and CSS.

If you don’t know about these, then I recommend you try the following themes which allow you to change almost everything from an options page.

Flexibility Theme:

This would have to be the easiest theme I’ve seen for novices to use and change.  Setting up the colour schemes to your liking is a simple “select and save” process. Download it from  flexibilitytheme.com . (The download link  is just under the big advert for their paid product, FlexSqueeze)

Version 2.0 has more bells and whistles, and requires free registration. Version 1 can just be downloaded.
The folder containing the theme will need to be unzipped, and copied to the “wp-content” folder of your wordpress installation.
You then select the Flexibility theme, and you can play with all the endless options that control how your site looks.

Atahualpa theme – Available from http://wordpress.bytesforall.com/

I like this theme more than Flexibility, because it gave me greater control and options for things that I needed. It’s suitable for novices too, and there is a lively support forum.

If you don’t have the skills, I’d say that most people would be able to pick them up in several hours of doing tutorials and exercises that are freely available on the internet. Just do a Google Search for “Installing Wordpress”, and “Installing Wordpress Themes”.
If you don’t have the time or inclination to learn how to do this, just about any competent technical person should be able to do it for you.

Cheers,

Eric G.