Wordpress+Theme = Presentable Site with Capable CMS

After multiple false starts I decided to use Wordpress for this site. I found a customisable theme that offered the mix of pages and posts I was looking for and started tweaking. A month later I can report Wordpress is proving an able, affordable and low cost site building and content management system.

The current site is barely version 1.0 but Wordpress offers the flexibility to take us to 2.0 and well beyond.

If you are looking for an easily managed website consider getting your web developer/designer to modify a Wordpress theme. If you know what CSS* stands for, consider doing it yourself . The key to success is finding a theme that will suit your needs.

A Presentable Small Business Site Shouldn’t Cost You Your Entire Marketing Budget

The days when a getting a presentable small site required an investment of thousands of dollars are past. Options now abound when it comes to building a small site like this. Indeed, there are almost too many of them with most web hosts offering some sort of site building facility and multiple software options to download or install…

I know. I’ve tried a few (which I might revisit here). I found they either:

• required too much effort,
• offered too little flexibility in templates,
• lacked functionality options
• or failed the search engine friendliness test.

In short: the end result ended up looking amateurish or required too much customisation.

I didn’t want to spend any more than was absolutely necessary. What to do?

The Wordpress Option

I had used Wordpress to blog but a couple of things made me consider it more seriously for the blog-site combination I was after:

1. My long time employer/client Netconcepts adopted a Wordpress platform for its site.
2. I read a series of articles about an experiment with launching a ecommerce store using a modified Wordpress theme

It took a while to get to the point where the site is live — life’s competing priorities, etc. — but after reading the series of articles I decided Wordpress was my best site option.

Choosing a Theme and Making it Mine

As I write this I realise I have much more to say than I have time to say it…

I’ll expand on the process of choosing and customising a Wordpress theme — think “website template” — in the article I am now planning. But, long story short, a long search for a free theme that fitted the bill ended up with many options but nothing that really felt right.

Then I came across a theme that had the sort of mixture of functionality and layout I was seeking. The increasingly popular Revolution Theme cost me US$75 but considering what a bespoke site with comparable functionality would have cost…

It has lived up to its “ïnsanely customizable” billing as I have fiddled to take it from here:

To here:

There is much to do — all sorts of things I would point out to a website benchmarking & review client populate a growing “Not doing as I say” list… A website is never optimised!

I’m pretty happy though. And the last month has shown Wordpress’s worth as a content and site management tool.

Bottom line:
Working with Wordpress is probably easier if you have a level of understanding of CSS and HTML. But the right theme and host will minimise the need to delve too deeply into the PHP code & MYSQL database that makes it all work. And you are more than likely to find a theme that suits your needs without customisation, if you are less fussy than me.

*CSS stands for cascading style sheets a way of determining how your site looks and feels via one file rather than having to modify individual page files.

99designs.com: A New Logo From Romania

My 99designs.com logo contest has finished and I’m happy with the result. My NZ based, US hosted site now boasts some Romanian design.

Over the week the contest ran 104 designs were submitted with some designers revising their submission multiple times on the basis of feedback.

Some of the later submissions were way off target — frustrating when the brief, previous submissions and feedback I had offered gave a pretty clear idea what was needed. But overall the quality of submitted designs was pretty good.

Bottom line: I ended up with a design that fitted the bill.

A need to send money to Romania before I had the design files prompted a bit of concern and a call from PayPal about “activity on my account”. But I’ve had a lot more trouble getting people a lot closer to deliver promised work.

Need Graphic Design? 99designs Works for Designers & SMBs

99designs.com offers SMEs/SMBs* and designers a very worthwhile opportunity. It takes the “put client with a need and expert provider together” business model of sites like Guru.com and Elance.com to a new level.

The Web is above all a communications medium bringing people together. Any number of sites seek to put freelancers and service providers, wherever they might be, together with potential clients, wherever they might be. Great for both parties:

• freelancers cut time looking for prospects down by getting access to people with a defined need for their services — doubly great, no more direct mail and advertising to prospects who may or may not actually need their services.
• SMEs/SMBs* get access to any number of providers via one ad and can then choose from proposals submitted with reference to freelancers’ profiles on the site.

99designs.com is a Sitepoint project spun off into a separate business. It allows you to post design jobs/contests with a declared price/prize and invite entries from the design community they have built up.

The new twist comes in people submitting finished designs, rather than proposals. No need to vet providers and chose one or two.

Designers who think your prize is worth the effort submit a design for rating and feedback.

The approach might not work so well for other types of work — small copy jobs, yes, lengthy projects, no, for instance. And you could find yourself inundated with amateur designs. You can check profiles for designers’ credentials but you probably need to know a little about design and be pretty sure what you want.

Having said that, running a logo design contest through 99designs has allowed me to see a large number of designers’ take on my brief and refine what I need as the entries have come in. The effort involved in achieving the same effect via a Yellow pages/Web search>contact>vet>decide>give brief, more-conventional, process are pretty daunting. And I can’t see an easier way to work with a number of designers simultaneously.

The folks at Sitepoint have done some smart stuff over the years — their site is a great resource. 99designs.com is another smart and useful application of the Web’s ability to bring people together and circumvent traditional channels. Definitely worth checking out if you need some graphic design or a small Web design project done.

*”Small & Medium Enterprises” as per UK commonwealth usage / “Small & Medium sized Businesses” as per US usage