Creating a website - need help!

[Gardenarian]

Hi all,

My daughter wants to create a website for a dance club she is forming. We were looking at Wordpress and there are a lot of different formats you can choose from. Is anyone familiar with these?

She wants it to be a site, not a blog. She'd like to have a static home page, with links to further content. She's like to be able to use her own graphic for the background on the home page.

She would like to be able to add fun stuff like quizzes (I have no idea how you would do that...)

There are so many different Wordpress themes - any suggestions?
Thank you!

[Kestra]

Wordpress tends to look "bloggy" but you can eliminate a lot of that with having a static front page and changing what shows up in the sidebars.

Also if she's not that familiar with website building you may want to use one of the "What you see is what you get" web builders. I've used wix.com with relative ease, and another popular one is Squarespace, which I haven't used myself but I think is similar. Wordpress is moving more in that direction - there's a plug-in called Visual Composer that allows you to edit Wordpress pages while looking directly at the page, as well as giving extra customization options. I find it quite useful.

I use the search function when I'm looking through themes to narrow down my options. Make sure to pick one that's "responsive" so it will look good on a phone.

Here's the website I've worked on that uses wix: http://www.manitobaeditors.ca/

I used Wordpress with a purchased theme for my website: http://www.moneytipscanada.ca/
It'd look better if I used a designer, but there's a general idea. Usually wordpress websites say so at the bottom, so if you find a site you like you may be able to tell what platform and theme they used.

I like to get ideas from sites that are similar to what I'm going for.

[Dhiana]

Wordpress comes in two different options:

wordpress.ORG which is great website building from scratch. I suspect that is what Kestra is using??

wordpress.COM is pre-made formats called themes. They are both the same company and I use the .COM version for my website.
She may be happy with one of their portfolio themes vs. their blog themes: https://wordpress.com/themes/filter/portfolio/
Choose one with a large front page photograph. She should be able to use her own photograph in that spot. The actual background in many of the .COM themes cannot be changed unless one pays a premium for customization.

Quizzes may be added using the poll option: https://en.support.wordpress.com/polls/

The wordpress forums are also good for finding answers to questions.

[Kestra]

Wordpress comes in two different options:

wordpress.ORG which is great website building from scratch. I suspect that is what Kestra is using??

wordpress.COM is pre-made formats called themes. They are both the same company and I use the .COM version for my website.
She may be happy with one of their portfolio themes vs. their blog themes: https://wordpress.com/themes/filter/portfolio/
Choose one with a large front page photograph. She should be able to use her own photograph in that spot. The actual background in many of the .COM themes cannot be changed unless one pays a premium for customization.

Quizzes may be added using the poll option: https://en.support.wordpress.com/polls/

The wordpress forums are also good for finding answers to questions.

Yes, good to make that distinction. Though with wordpress.org you still use themes.

The distinction is that with wordpress.com they are your website host so it is cheap (usually free), easier to set up, but you can NEVER monetize, if that is your intent. With what is described I don't think that would matter so wordpress.com would probably be fine.

If you use Wordpress.org, you are basically just using Wordpress as website-building software, you need to be hosted by another provider - GoDaddy or something like that. You pay for the hosting and the domain registration, download the wordpress software, then pick your theme and customize as you want, depending on that theme and plug-ins. There are still lots of free themes, or you can chose to buy one from a third party theme developer like I did.

The upside with this is you can have ads on your site if you wanted to, and possibly make money, and just a little more power and flexibility. But it's a bit more work.

So what I recommend is to decide based on whether you ever want to monetize or not. If this isn't ever going to matter just use wordpress.com, otherwise do self-hosted wordpress (wordpress.org). You can't easily switch between them, so it's best to start with the right one.

[Gardenarian]

Wow, thanks for all the info!
We were looking at the themes at wordpress.COM, because it looked pretty easy to get up and running. But deciding on a theme is pretty difficult.

Kestra, both your websites are great - nice clean design, and close to what she's looking for. I think my daughter wanted links in the form of pictures, like tiles.

Dhiana, we'll go through those portfolio themes - thanks for the link! There are so many themes to choose from, and I feel we'll be locked in once we make a choice.

More suggestions are very welcome!

[Kestra]

Wow, thanks for all the info!
We were looking at the themes at wordpress.COM, because it looked pretty easy to get up and running. But deciding on a theme is pretty difficult.

Kestra, both your websites are great - nice clean design, and close to what she's looking for. I think my daughter wanted links in the form of pictures, like tiles.

Dhiana, we'll go through those portfolio themes - thanks for the link! There are so many themes to choose from, and I feel we'll be locked in once we make a choice.

More suggestions are very welcome!

BTW, you can easily change your theme at any time and everything you've done - pages, posts etc - will still be there and perfectly fine the vast majority of the time.

[Alan]

You can install as many themes as you would like in Wordpress, then it's just a matter of activating the one you wish to use from the admin panel. Of course, when changing themes, some things embedded in your header, footer or sidebar may not show up or be in different locations. It takes a bit of tweaking but overall it's pretty easy.

[Gardenarian]

I didn't know it was possible to change themes - thank you! That takes a lot of anxiety out of choosing.
DD has plenty of content - now it's just choosing a theme and copy-and-paste (I hope!)

I'll let you know how it goes.