My Website Complete

Choosing a WordPress Theme

Today I will be looking at choosing a theme.

As well as this I have to download the generic “WordPress” template to be able to use a theme.

I have downloaded WordPress to my hard drive and I will be following the instructions on the links my tutor had sent me:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6nse3Gdtvs4

Recommended Hosting  – Hostican
http://www.hostican.com/web-hosting/index.php
FTP Client he mentioned: Make sure you download and install the Mac version

You will need the website FTP user name and password to connect.
http://cyberduck.ch/
Once installed on your web hosting

Here is a video on changing themes:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qPuBLvP8c6g

The WordPress theme that I have chosen was “Stiking” as shown below.

I chose this theme for a number of reasons; firstly it was pleasing to look at and simple in structure, hover extremely customisable with being very user friendly.

The theme cost me $40.

The web theme: http://kaptinlin.com/themes/striking/

Deciding on which website builder to use?

I have decided to use WordPress as my web builder due to the vast number of themes/templates available. All I have to do now is choose a web address, hosting and a WordPress theme.

The structure of the website I hope to build will be on the format I designed in the Muse application below:

 

Looking at Website Builders

I have started to look at some web builders as recommended by John Grindley our course tutor.

Presently as I have not built a website from scratch before, I will be looking at a number of different components at the same time:

Will the web builder be user friendly, fit the criteria for what I need as a gallery based site rather than text heavy, will the website once finished be simple and straightforward to update. Cost will be a factor as I do not wish to invest in a monthly subscription. I also wish to be able to customise my site that it will integrate easily with social media such as a business Facebook page, twitter micro blogging, flickr and the newer Google + business web pages.

I have considered the following web builders so far:

http://www.wix.com
http://www.clikpic.com
http://muse.adobe.com
http://www.moonfruit.com
http://www.photoshelter.com
http://wordpress.org
http://www.squarespace.com

The first web builder I tested was “Clikpic”, it is sensible in cost, fairly user friendly however it only has about 15 or so templates which are fairly restrictive. If all else fails, this is a good one to fall back on, however I will try other web builders in comparison.

The next web builder I tried was “Squarespace” and like “Clikpic” this also gave me many restrictions to window sizes, colours, however had more templates and good social media integration.

I also tried Adobe’s new beta version of “Muse” however, being new I found that there were not enough video tutorials and the on-line reviews were not favourable.

Muse did have a very good website planning software which I used to map my  pages as I would have done in Photoshop. Another downside to Muse was that there would be a monthly subscription to maintain the site for the whole term of use, which could prove expensive in the long run.

Her is my sample website from Muse which helped me plan my structure:

I also looked at iWeb which was extremely simple to use and fairly integrated with my mac software but it seemed unreliable and reviews say that it will be finishing together with the “MobileMe” accounts next year;

The very first web builder I considered was “WordPress” and I had to do a full circle and investigate a number of other web builders to decide that “WordPress” was the most suitable for my food photography website.