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Step by Step Website Design Tutorial

November 11, 2009 by Matt Trostle Leave a Comment

web-design One of your best marketing tools (if not THE best) is your website. There are several factors you need to take into consideration when developing your site. For most small businesses, being the flashiest is not one of those factors.

Save your money on websites that cost thousands that get you zero traffic or sales – invest in good SEO instead.

I’ve seen small to medium size companies spend $5-$10,000 on a flashy website that makes you go Oooo Ahhh, but gets a measly 100 hits a month. Just doesn’t make sense to me.

I also don’t recommend sticking up a static 5 page brochure site that never gets updated. If you treat your website like more than an electronic brochure, there are some really exciting things you can do to profit from the global market, even in a local business!

Here are the 4 steps to get your site up and running quickly and very cost effectively.

Hosting

There are many choices when it comes to hosting. For me it comes down to who is reliable, easy to use and has a good customer service track record. Here’s my choice for hosting and a tutorial on how to get set up. learn more

Content Management System (CMS)

Using a Content Management System for your site makes it so anyone can update the content on your website. No need to pay someone just to make simple changes. Find out why I chose WordPress as my CMS of choice. learn more

Design

Choosing a design can be as simple as drag-and-drop. With the right tools customizing your design is a piece of cake too. Find out how easy getting your own customized website can be. learn more

Analytics

Now that your website is all setup, don’t forget the analytics. Without it you’re flying blind. Know everything about your website visitors with free website analytics software. learn more

Filed Under: Featured, Web Design Tagged With: google analytics, studiopress, themes, Web Design, Wordpress

Small Business Content Management System

October 19, 2009 by Matt Trostle Leave a Comment

I want to show you how to setup a small business Content Management System (CMS) called WordPress. This software makes it very easy to build and edit your website eliminating the need to call your webmaster to make a simple little change.

Why WordPress?

I’ve used all kinds of content management systems such as Joomla, Drupal, and Site Build It. I’ve even built sites using no CMS at all, just straight HTML and PHP.

WordPress started out as a blogging platform but has grown into so much more than that now. You can build extremely vast websites with a blog component. You can even turn it into a full ecommerce store if you want.

I can tell you that once I tried WordPress there was no going back. I just wish it was the first one I tried instead of the last. But then I guess I couldn’t give you such a definitive suggestion.

If you’re getting nervous at this point, don’t worry. It’s only going to take about 5 minutes. Seriously…

Ok, once you are inside your control panel or CPanel, scroll down to the Software/Services section. Look for the blue smiley face icon Fantastico.

This is going to create the database for you and install the WordPress software. After you click that button you’ll be taken to this page:

Click on WordPress then click New Installation.

Unless you have some reason that you don’t want WordPress installed in the root directory, like your adding a WordPress blog to an existing site, go ahead and leave the Install in directory blank.

Enter your Admin access data. This is what will be used to access the backend of your site. It’s a good idea to write this down.

Enter your Base configuration. There will be some info pre-filled in for you but you’ll want to change the email address to your current email address since it’s probably not setup yet. If you leave it the way it is, the confirmation email will just be sent off into cyberspace somewhere.

The Admin nickname is up to you. Sometimes I leave it as admin other times I use my name as I have here. You can leave the site name and description the way it is because you’ll be changing it later anyway.

Now hit the Install button!

This creates the database. Then click on Finish installation and this will actually install WordPress in the database.

The URL I highlighted here will be the URL you use to get into the backend of your site. They tell you to bookmark it, go ahead and do that. In case you forget, it’s always going to be yourdomain.com/wp-admin.

That’s it! Your small business Content Management System and website is setup. Not bad huh?!

Now if you’ve done all of that directly after setting up your hosting account, your not going to be able to see your site yet. You’re probably going to have to wait a few hours until the domain registration goes through, or what they call “when the DNS resolves.”

If you try now, you’ll get a page like this:

If you want to see if your installation was successful, you can do that by going back to the email that Hostgator sent you. Look for this line:

You can view your site using that link until it resolves. When you click on that link, you should see a page that looks something like this.

If you see a page like that, Congratulations, you just created your site!

Once your DNS resolves, you can move on to the next step – Designing your site.

Filed Under: Web Design, Wordpress Tagged With: cms, content management system, Web Design, Wordpress

Install WordPress Theme

October 19, 2009 by Matt Trostle Leave a Comment

WordPress comes with two basic themes. The WordPress Default theme, or Kubrick. And the WordPress Classic.

Install WordPress Theme - Default Themes

There are literally thousands of free themes you can upload to your site. The newest version of WordPress has made it even easier to find themes with their built-in search function.

To access your themes go to Appearance > Themes. These are the themes currently installed on your site.

Manage WordPress Themes

To search for free themes, simply go to Add New Themes.

Install WordPress Theme

As you can see above, there are lots of options to find the theme you’re looking for. What colors you want, how many columns, etc.

Now, as with anything free, you get what you pay for. If you’re on a really tight budget or just want to blog for fun, then a free theme is probably perfect for you. I’ve used plenty of free themes when I was starting out.

If you want to do any customization to many of the free themes, you’re going to really know what you’re doing. There’s a lot of HTML, CSS and PHP in there. And some aren’t coded very well making the job even tougher.

So, for the serious business person, I recommend going with a Premium Theme. Premium themes are basically professionally designed themes that have lot of customization options right out of the box. NO CODING INVOLVED. That’s probably their biggest advantage.

I researched every major premium theme out there and there are a lot of really good ones. I settled on the Studiopress themes. It a great company with some really talented people behind it.

I got an “All Themes Package” from these guys and I just love them. I actually converted all of my sites to a Studiopress theme that I customized to make look like the original site. Actually, I think they came out better.

Why I chose Studiopress:
• Cost effective at $59
• They look amazing out of the box
• Professionally optimized for the search engines
• Awesome theme options
• Very easy to customize the look and feel
• Advertising ready
• Detailed tutorials and support

Just to name a few…

I just couldn’t find another theme company that offered as much with very little bad feedback. A lot of their competitors have pages of people complaining about their themes being broke or doesn’t work the way it was advertised.

Ok, so you decided to go with a Studiopress theme, good choice! Now let’s get that sucker uploaded to your site.

I’m going to use the Corporate Theme for my site.

After you’ve made your purchase, you’ll get an email with your download link. You want to save that file to your hard drive.

Download Studiopress Theme

Then go back to your WordPress admin for your site. You should be under Appearance > Add New Themes. Next, click on Upload. Now click on Browse and look for the file you just downloaded from Studiopress. Double click the file to load it in the uploader and click on Install Now.

Upload WordPress Theme

It’ll take just a minute to upload then you’ll see this page letting you know the upload was successful.

Wordpress Theme Uploaded

You can see at the bottom you’ve got 3 options. You can preview the theme, that’s nice to make sure it looks right before you activate it. Activating the theme will make it live on your site. Return to Themes page just takes you back to where you can see all the themes that are uploaded to your site.

I’m going to go ahead and activate my new theme.

Studiopress Corporate Theme

There we have it! Now you’ve got an awesome site quickly, easily and for not a lot of money. Your next step is going to be adding some content then customize the theme to just what you’re looking for.

Studiopress has great tutorials on their themes to help you through the process. Or… Hire me to customize it for you!

Filed Under: Web Design, Wordpress Tagged With: themes, Web Design, Wordpress

MattTrostle.com

Step by Step Website Design Tutorial

Hosting

Content Management System (CMS)

Design

Analytics

Small Business Content Management System

Install WordPress Theme

Recommended Business Tools

Local Business Stats

Matt Trostle