I have been hearing so much about Wordpress. Is there anywhere a person can learn the basics of wordpress. I thought I would have a professional do my website to get it started and I am just not happy with what they are showing me. It just does not seem like the effort was put into it.

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Michelle Short
VirtuallyOnTime Business Services

I have learnt as I go with WordPress, I originally set-up my website myself and then as I wanted a more professional look I hired a freelancer on PeoplePerHour who used a custom template... I have been adding plug-in's and changing things round myself, it's quite straight forward, if there's something I don't know I just Google!

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Jo Harrison | Virtual Assistant
Writer's Block Admin Services

I bought a great book - Head First Wordpress - which explained things in a very visual way and I was up and running in no time. I use godaddy for webhosting and they have a very easy to use interface that will install wordpress on your site.

Youtube is also a great place to learn about wordpress. Just type in "installing wordpress" and there are a ton of videos.

I would also recommend choosing a theme from themeforest or similar site, although there are a ton of free ones on the wordpress site. You will get a whole bunch of professionally designed themes which have extra capabilities such as jquery sliders that are incredibly easy to use. If you sort by sales on themeforest, you will find the top themes that have great admin interfaces.

If you look at my site, I choose the Karma theme which comes with a ton of different color options and has a great admin interface, plus the designer has a support site and video tutorials. Doesn't get much better than that!

Good luck and feel free to message me if you have any technical questions.

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Marimac Administrative Solutions
www.marimacadmin.com

I had actually looked at your site a couple of days ago, sent the people doing my website a link to say this is what I like but I am still getting the plain page to review.

I am using goddaddy right now, have already installed wordpress. I have even added a couple of pages but this is where I get stuck. For example, the contact page is that a plugin I would have to install? Or if I wanted to show that I was a member of this forum? I purchased Wordpress for Dummies but to me it seems more focused on the blog.

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Michelle Short
VirtuallyOnTime Business Services

Well do you want you contact page to be a fillable form or do you just want to type in the text with your email address and say contact me? If you want a fillable form, I use the plugin Fast Secure Contact Form http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/si-contact-form/

As suggested before, you can search youtube for tutorial videos. Here is a link to some I've used: http://ithemes.com/tutorials/

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Paulette R.
Rhythm Virtual Solutions | Alpha & Beta Translations

It depends on your theme - which one did you choose?

In the Karma theme, there is a module to add the contact form complete with recaptcha.

If your theme doesn't have a contact form, you can add a plugin called "contact form 7" which will do the job well. Plugins are pretty easy to install. Just go to your admin interface, look for plugins on the left hand menu (about half way down), do "add new" and put "contact form 7" in the search box. Once you have located the plugin in the list, choose "install now" and go from there.

So you would use the plugin to create a form, it gives you a shortcode to copy, make your new page and copy the shortcode into the page. Shortcodes are usually one word phrases enclosed by brackets that tell the theme to display certain html or php code. They are cool if you don't know these languages.

The key to using wordPress is to educate yourself well about how all these little doodads work. Once you do that, you will not believe how incrediblly simple it is to create web pages in comparison to the old-fashioned hard coding methods.

I am off to play with grandkids, but don't hesitate to email me if you need further help. I might be a little delayed in my response!

mary@marimacadmin.com

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Marimac Administrative Solutions
www.marimacadmin.com

One more thought--while I know html and php pretty well, I am not graphically gifted, so after putting together 2 pretty ugly websites myself, I went to themeforest because I wanted my site to look like it was designed by someone who designed professionally. It cost $40 bucks and was worth it.

Like me, the person you hired may be great at technical aspects, but not visual so they may have put in the effort, just not with the results you wanted. I recognize this so that is why when I work with clients I am going to strongly advocate wordPress unless the client themselves has some visual talent.

Hope this helps, good luck!

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Marimac Administrative Solutions
www.marimacadmin.com

I am definitely going to look into theme forest!!

Thanks for the help!!

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Michelle Short
VirtuallyOnTime Business Services

Wordpress is a very powerful platform, but setting it up is fairly easily nowadays thanks to auto-installer scripts such as the ones on GoDaddy's hosting, mentioned earlier. But keep in mind that the install script usually just gives you the core, skeletal WP. The tricky part from there is customizing the WP install with the plug-ins needed to give it the features you want.

For instance, on my site (http://www.lukegerhardt.com/), I wanted a contact form, so I Googled reviews of contact forms and decided to add Contact Form 7. I also wanted an image slider, so I found a theme that had one in it (Graphene, free!). There are also plugins that will add a slider, btw. I Googled reviews for a good photo gallery plug-in also, and found one (NextGEN Gallery; for this and another site I'm doing). I also read up on a number of lists of the best plug-ins for WP security, and so I installed some of those as well (Broken Link Checker, Bulletproof Security). I even hunted down a good resume plug-in, and helped the author fix a bug in it (WP Resume).

So, as you can see, there can often be much to add to your base install in order to tweak it to look *just* the way you want it. As a developer with basic PHP knowledge, and a fairly good understanding of CSS, I also made a few changes under the hood in the interest of fine-tuning.

Themes can be a great purchase, and a number of them will be able to get you up and running quickly. But, don't forget the importance of well-selected plug-ins too!

Another option for themes is StudioPress (http://www.studiopress.com/themes) They have easy to use, clean themes and excellent customer support.
Also, here are some video tutorials: http://wp.tutsplus.com/sessions/wp101-basix-training/
I use some of the videos with clients that are new to WordPress. Hope it's helpful!
Feel free to message/email me if you have any questions- I'm happy to help!

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Amy
www.porterofficesolutions.com