My son has been telling me for ages that my website is too old-fashioned. I do know it's a real dinosaur! I really do want to get a new one and I really like the Wordpress ones. I see you can buy these ' drag and drop' themes which are supposed to be easy to use? Can anyone recommend any templates/themes which would be particularly user-friendly for someone without much technical knowledge?
Also, I have my own domain which I really want to keep! We have quite a good position on Google, built up over many years but I think we have recently taken a hit because of the penalizing of non-responsive sites! I believe you can 'point' your Wordpress site at your existing domain. Are there any SEO consequences to this if I keep largely the same text?
Advice gratefully appreciated!
Drag and Drop - Wordpress
I am in the process of creating a WordPress site following the bookingsplus4g WordPress course.
You can keep your own domain name ... I am using the accelerate theme.
The course is excellent but a huge amount of work is involved ... I can't imagine setting up a Word Press site without the course
There can be a web site page where one's Google Plus posts can transfer automatically. This means content will be changing each day and should help search engine position.
I began with the bookingsplus4g social media courses
You can keep your own domain name ... I am using the accelerate theme.
The course is excellent but a huge amount of work is involved ... I can't imagine setting up a Word Press site without the course
There can be a web site page where one's Google Plus posts can transfer automatically. This means content will be changing each day and should help search engine position.
I began with the bookingsplus4g social media courses
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AndyPearce
- Posts: 30
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- Location: Kidwelly, South Wales
- Contact:
Whilst there are some nice templates on Wordpress I'd suggest it's not as simple as it might first appear. I'm a web site designer myself and have 'dabbled' with Wordpress over the years due to client requirements but I wouldn't choose it as a platform myself.
As rosebud says you can point your existing domain name to the new wordpress site and if you are cutting and pasting the content from your old site it shouldn't affect your Google results much.
Good luck!
As rosebud says you can point your existing domain name to the new wordpress site and if you are cutting and pasting the content from your old site it shouldn't affect your Google results much.
Good luck!
Personal Website
http://www.websitebuilderexpert.com
The above link is to a website which I found when I started building our website. it is s a goldmine of information about website building and compares all aspects of the various companies who provide drag and drop website builders.
I could not get on with Wordpress. Wordpress has a vast range of plug ins, but the downside is that you need to be able to write code and unless you do a course for writing code, it is very frustrating. I opened free accounts on all the website building providers mentioned on the above website to test them to see which one did what I wanted it to.
I chose Wix which has a very useful tool in that you can edit your site for desktop/laptop appearance and optimize the mobile and tablet version without changing the desktop version.
The templates are also very good as they have several for holiday rentals, B&Bs, hotels, etc. Nice, clean and easy to customize.
I hope you find the link useful.
JaneS
The above link is to a website which I found when I started building our website. it is s a goldmine of information about website building and compares all aspects of the various companies who provide drag and drop website builders.
I could not get on with Wordpress. Wordpress has a vast range of plug ins, but the downside is that you need to be able to write code and unless you do a course for writing code, it is very frustrating. I opened free accounts on all the website building providers mentioned on the above website to test them to see which one did what I wanted it to.
I chose Wix which has a very useful tool in that you can edit your site for desktop/laptop appearance and optimize the mobile and tablet version without changing the desktop version.
The templates are also very good as they have several for holiday rentals, B&Bs, hotels, etc. Nice, clean and easy to customize. I hope you find the link useful.
JaneS
Just to clarify, you do not need to write code to use Wordpress, far from it. If you need a functionality, then that's what the plug ins are for.
I created my own Wordpress site, but it was my second site and so I wanted one with bells and whistles. I used a web guy to advise me and help point me in the right direction. I think as rosebud points out, it needs some assistance to get going but the end result is great.
Once you know what you're doing, it's easy to create pages, add and tweak content.
I created my own Wordpress site, but it was my second site and so I wanted one with bells and whistles. I used a web guy to advise me and help point me in the right direction. I think as rosebud points out, it needs some assistance to get going but the end result is great.
Once you know what you're doing, it's easy to create pages, add and tweak content.
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kevsboredagain
- Posts: 3207
- Joined: Sat Jan 20, 2007 9:32 am
- Location: France
- Contact:
Have a read of my Wordpress for rental sites, which is just a few posts below this one.
There are some really good themes out there which contain nearly everything you might need to make a site. I would look at somewhere like Themeforest and pay for one of the top rated ones, which will also come with good support.
Although you can get away with no coding, you will have to compromise a lot with no CSS knowledge. If you are also hoping that it will be a simple task of drag and drop then again I'm afraid you'll be very disappointed. There's still a significant learning curve and a novice can easily become lost or even lose months of hard work.
The good news is though, it costs nothing to give it a try. You don't have to go live and replace your existing site right away. If developing online, which is probably the easiest way, then the site can simply be marked as non indexed for Google purposes. Then when you're done, you simply move it to the root of your domain. You don't point it as such unless you are hosting it in a different place but you'd replace your existing site.
Lots of good, free tutorials on the internet for Wordpress too. I would recommend doing a few of these.
There are some really good themes out there which contain nearly everything you might need to make a site. I would look at somewhere like Themeforest and pay for one of the top rated ones, which will also come with good support.
Although you can get away with no coding, you will have to compromise a lot with no CSS knowledge. If you are also hoping that it will be a simple task of drag and drop then again I'm afraid you'll be very disappointed. There's still a significant learning curve and a novice can easily become lost or even lose months of hard work.
The good news is though, it costs nothing to give it a try. You don't have to go live and replace your existing site right away. If developing online, which is probably the easiest way, then the site can simply be marked as non indexed for Google purposes. Then when you're done, you simply move it to the root of your domain. You don't point it as such unless you are hosting it in a different place but you'd replace your existing site.
Lots of good, free tutorials on the internet for Wordpress too. I would recommend doing a few of these.
I built our website using a theme from Themeforest called U-Design following a recommendation. It has fantastic support; it also now includes a Visual Composer, which does make life easier - at least for ongoing modifications. It may not be the best choice now - I'm not a developer and I've no reason to look at anything else - but worth a look. For me it was several magnitudes simpler than using html which I'd had to get my head round to a degree for our previous website which I took over from the developer - and had to re-learn every time I wanted to make a change! Fine for the pros using it all the time, not so good for somebody like me with a retention capability of a few days.......kevsboredagain wrote:Have a read of my Wordpress for rental sites, which is just a few posts below this one.
There are some really good themes out there which contain nearly everything you might need to make a site. I would look at somewhere like Themeforest and pay for one of the top rated ones, which will also come with good support.
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kevsboredagain
- Posts: 3207
- Joined: Sat Jan 20, 2007 9:32 am
- Location: France
- Contact:
Still a good choice and still a current theme. Many of the premium themes include a more advanced editor than standard Wordpress which makes life easier for most people.greenbarn wrote: I built our website using a theme from Themeforest called U-Design following a recommendation. It has fantastic support; it also now includes a Visual Composer, which does make life easier - at least for ongoing modifications. It may not be the best choice now
Now that would be the key to it that I hadn't realised and I now understand why JaneS said you needed to write code. It all depends on what theme you are working with?kevsboredagain wrote: Many of the premium themes include a more advanced editor than standard Wordpress which makes life easier for most people.
I have a free theme called Omega that is responsive too i.e. mobile friendly. It has a visual editor so I don't need to play with code at all. My web guy created a child theme from it to give me what I needed. I'm sure if you're starting out you can ignore child themes though as that starts to get very technical.
Drag and drop
Hi Nemo.
Yes, it was code all over on the theme I used and it was beyond my capabilities.
As I said in my post, I tried all the providers and their templates out on free accounts before I decided on Wix and I would recommend people to do the same.
The link in my post to websitebuilderexpert has lots of useful information and links to free software etc that the people behind the website have found useful, and they are very good at answering questions.
JaneS
Yes, it was code all over on the theme I used and it was beyond my capabilities.
As I said in my post, I tried all the providers and their templates out on free accounts before I decided on Wix and I would recommend people to do the same.
The link in my post to websitebuilderexpert has lots of useful information and links to free software etc that the people behind the website have found useful, and they are very good at answering questions.
JaneS
I'll never forget the giddy feeling I experienced ( many, many years ago now ) when I discovered I could put a web server on my PC and develop everything locally first.
http://www.wampserver.com/en/
This gave me the freedom to experiment and practice until I was able to build sites of my own ( we're talking early Naughties now ) and things have come a long way since then, however this is still a great way for users to fiddle around at no cost or risk to themselves.
http://www.wampserver.com/en/
This gave me the freedom to experiment and practice until I was able to build sites of my own ( we're talking early Naughties now ) and things have come a long way since then, however this is still a great way for users to fiddle around at no cost or risk to themselves.