Hello everyone!

I am ready to start building my website and am so excited. I am trying to choose between Weebly and WordPress, but am having trouble deciding between them.

I am new to both Weebly and WordPress. While Weebly seems easier (initially), I think WordPress will allow me to grow the site along with the business.

Rather than start on Weebly and eventually move to WordPress, I'm really leaning towards WordPress. One of my issues, though, is the vast amount of choices in WP themes. Where in the world do you start when trying to pick the one that's best for your business? Right now I don't see a need for sliders since I am just starting, but in the future I may want to include them. I would, however, like to be able to customize a few things such as background color and fonts, and track stats just to name a few.

Anyway, if you have your site on WordPress, how did you select your theme?

If you use Weebly, are you happy with that choice?

Thanks for your help,
Karyn

I'm in the same boat. Did you select your theme yet? If so, are you finding it easy to navigate for a newbie?

Yes, you can lose an entire weekend just looking at themes . It's crazy what you can do with WP now.

Never use Weebly if you have any intention of growing your site. Moving to WordPress later will be costly both in time and money.

I would suggest starting by laying out on paper what you must have NOW. And then only evaluate themes that fit that.

That said, you just need to get online NOW. You can stay under construction while you build out and learn WordPress. When you first install WP, it comes with what's called a default theme, called Twenty-Eleven. You can easily change out the 'header image' (large image at the top), column layouts, etc. to have a nice, basic website that gets the job done for now. You can tweak and add as you go and learn more.

Things like sliders, galleries, feeds, and all those bells and whistles can be added into your theme by way of 'plugins' - add-on bits of code that do those neat things.

You can also sign up for an account at wordpress.com and play around with the dashboard (admin panel) there - it's identical to the one you would have when you self-hosted your site on your own hosting account, except you can't install plugins.

I suggest you give THAT a try so you can see before you commit to one or another how you like it.

Hope this helps - it's a pretty vast subject, so start SMALL, bit by bit, to get a good feel for how you might want to use it.

Warmly,
Gower

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Mentoring, Training, & Assistance for Virtual Assistants: WordPress, Business, and Profit Mindset (and it's fun, too!)

Hi Gower & Dotyel,

Thanks for your replies. After I posted the message last night, I went on to WordPress and started playing around. I want to at least have a page up with basic info while I build the site. So I created my logo, included it in the header, and put my relevant info on the home page. I have used Blogger quite a bit to create blogs for myself and friends, so although I am a WordPress newbie I think I can find my way around relatively well.

Right now the theme I am using is a very basic version of Twenty-Eleven, meaning I haven't done any special formatting or anything. I'm going to change the wording around, add columns and a few pages today/tonight. I may switch over to one of their other free themes just to get a feel for things.

If you'd like to take a sneak peek, my website is www.harmonyvirtualassistants.c om. I'm not sure if the logo in the header is too large, so I may decrease its size.

Thanks again!
Karyn

Thanks for sharing your experience with getting started and the link to your first WordPress web page! You're an inspiration for all of us newbies out here.

Hi Karyn - love the colors! Very crisp and fresh and easy to read. I also am setting up my WordPress site and basically tried to find a theme that would be professional looking but not stuffy. Looking at the header pictures helped to rule out a lot of the themes. You are right, though, it can take a lot of time to find the right one. I still haven't decided on a final product yet. I think your logo is good right now while you are under construction - it puts the logo right up close where it needs to be for recognitiion.

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Jill Alward
Administrative Expertise

I'm a true WordPress fanatic and it accounts for about 75% of my business. The best thing about doing your site in WP is that you don't have to settle for the theme that you choose today.

You can switch out themes, as your needs or style changes, and still keep the core of your website and blog's content in tact.

New themes are added daily and you can spend hours searching for that almost perfect one... you'll find it, but if you keep looking, you'll find another one

One trick is to look at the source code for websites that you like. If they are done in WP, you can find the theme name there (unless it was customized or the name changed).

Good luck in your search but know that unlike with HTML, your efforts aren't lost if you decide to go with another theme down the road (and you probably will!

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Vivi Gonzalez
www.ChaosRelief.com

Excellent information, Vivi - encouraging and affirming. Thanks.
- Eleanor

I use weebly but am always wishing I had used wordpress. In the end, wordpress offers far more options. I intend to switch to wordpress as soon as I can get my web host to switch me over.

Evening Karyn,

Just had a look at your new WordPress website, and love what you have done!

Good choice in the colors, fonts and good work on the logo!

And for sure, WordPress is the way to go!

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Christiane Jechoux / Certified Social Media & Internet Marketing Consultant
Virtual Managing Associates