Web Business Freedom

Note: This is part of an ongoing series of articles that chronicles the steps taken to create WebBusinessFreedom.com.

In the previous article about using WordPress, I mentioned some of top reasons to use it for your blog or small website.

One of my priorities when planning for Web Business Freedom was to establish a very professional look for the site. I am firm believer in the power of quality graphic design. Unfortunately on the web, design often takes a back seat to content. However, I think both design and content play a role in making a positive impression on your users.

Initially, I felt strongly about creating a custom, one-of-a-kind design for this website. So I asked a very talented designer I know to give me a quote. When it came back at more than $5,000, I decided to try to look for a cheaper option. Being in startup mode, every penny counts!

Fortunately, there are a lot of very good pre-defined WordPress layouts, otherwise known as themes. Once you have WordPress (the .org version) installed on your server, you’re free to use one of these themes.

Thousands of themes are free, and the only dilemma is spending the time searching for something to fit your needs. WordPress has its own free themes directory that allows you to search for many of these. Using a free theme is a good way to get started with WordPress. And you can always change your mind and choose another design.

If you’re hankering for something with more pizzazz than a standard free theme, but that’s less expensive than a custom design, you might try a premium theme. Typically, these will be very well designed WordPress layouts that also come with extra features built in, such as ready-to-use widgets that will enhance the functionality of your site.

I was fortunate to run across a relatively new site, WooThemes, that specializes in premium themes. One of them was very close to a rough sketch I had in mind for the Web Business Freedom site.

Like most premium theme sites, WooThemes provides detailed instructions on how to download and install their themes. After deciding on the theme I liked, I debated whether I wanted to do the installation myself. While not a novice with things like FTP and server settings, I was nevertheless a little intimidated. Essentially, I felt it would be a better use of my time if I could find someone to install the site for me, add my logo to it, tweak a few other settings, and make sure it was all working.

A friend suggested I contact one of the designers at WooThemes. I figured it was a long shot, but in a surprisingly short time I got an email back from Adii, a self-described WordPress Rock Star and one of the WooThemes’ founders. He agreed to help out, for a lot less than what I was quoted for a custom design. Granted, I could’ve spent very little money to do everything myself using WooThemes, but I still decided to hire Adii.

Adii spared me a lot of time by setting up the hosting, installing the theme, adding my logo and color scheme, activating some essential plugins and even tying into a third-party email campaign system I use. Even with Adii doing the bulk of the work, I still invested many hours overseeing the job and testing the site.

Overall, the process went smoothly. Inevitably, though, I hit a snag or two along the way to launching the site. I had trouble uploading images, and when Adii wasn’t readily available to fix the issue I asked another developer for help using the WooThemes’ support forum. That person was able to fix the images problem, but unfortunately he wiped out my logo and the email signup box! I accepted responsibility for not waiting on Adii, which is a lesson for anyone launching a new website: Be patient. Stuff will happen, and haste makes waste. Too many people working on the same files is a recipe for disaster.

Once everything was working correctly, I started adding pages and content to the site. As I said, WordPress is pretty good and user-friendly, on the whole.

My biggest gripes revolve around actually inputting content (copy) and uploading images. As anyone who has written for the web knows, it’s trouble to use Microsoft Word and then copy-and-paste into WordPress. Even in HTML/text mode in WordPress, many characters get mangled in the process.

At first, I opted to first write my articles in Google Docs, but also found some formatting and copying-and-pasting to be quirky. Then I switched to TextEdit (I’m on a Mac), but again found some gremlins creeping in. It became a tedious process of pasting text in WordPress, saving in “unpublished” mode and previewing each article (repeatedly) to check the formatting.

Finally, I started typing all articles first into TextMate, which seems to be working better than any of the above methods. I also use BlogAssist and TextExpander to quickly type common HTML tags, like commands for bold, italics, links and paragraphs. I wrap all of my content in tags in TextMate, beforeI copy anything into WordPress. I strongly encourage anyone who is thinking about blogging to become familiar with how to use these basic HTML tags, at a minimum. You can add tags right in WordPress, but the editing window is small and not a great place to spending editing your text.

I’m sure there are probably easier ways to get raw content into WordPress, but for now these are my personal preferences. I also know there are other tools that you can use to post content via a web browser or email, but I am too picky about the way I want things to look to pursue these options.

In terms of images, I think WordPress makes it a bit difficult to upload and assign images within posts. Some of WordPress’ built-in tools just don’t work well, so I find myself having to manually copy the full URL of each image that I upload and add this entire string as the image reference. It’s also important to size and compress images properly, before uploading them to WordPress.

To sum up, WordPress is a fantastic platform for launching a blog or small website. However, it does come with a learning curve, especially if you are a novice with server lingo/setup or HTML. It pays to get someone to help you get it set up correctly from the start. And later, you need to learn or brush up on some simple HTML and photo editing techniques. Otherwise, you might get frustrated at wacky formatting or images when creating your blog masterpieces.

Photo credit: http://www.flickr.com/photos/jetheriot