WordPress is the platform of choice for many blog owners and web designers all over the world. It offers a wide range of ready-made themes which can also be tweaked to suit your needs.
Since no knowledge of coding or scripting is required, anyone with little or no technical knowledge can easily create a site or blog using WordPress. Here are some tips which could be useful to people who are starting out with WordPress.
1. Determine your needs
There are numerous free and premium WordPress themes that you can choose from. Before making a decision, you should first take time to consider the needs of your site.
How do you want your columns, footers and headers to appear? What kind of fonts and graphics would suit your site? These are some of the questions you should ask yourself as you look at the plethora of templates available.
You can get ideas by looking at some of the popular WordPress blogs. How are the photos displayed ? What kind of colors and background is used ? Is there a provision for advertising space ?
2. Select the most suitable theme
It might not be possible to find a theme which exactly matches your needs. The themes available might either have small sidebars, a large header area, few columns or inappropriate colors.
Every WordPress theme has its own strengths and weaknesses. Therefore, choose a theme which is the closest match to your requirements. Preferably, download the best three templates which you can compare before making your final decision.
3. Customize
Install one theme at a time and upload a small amount of content on it. This will give you an idea of how your site would look like with content. Repeat this with the rest of the themes to find out what option works best.
After settling on the theme, you can then choose your plugins and widgets. These features serve different purposes including reducing comment spam, improving onsite SEO or creating contact forms. Install the plugins and widgets one at a time and check how they affect the appearance of your site. Play around with different options to achieve the most suitable result.
4. Keep it simple
To succeed with your WordPress site, you need to keep it as simple as possible. A simple and attractive site will result in a pleasant user experience, thus attracting even more visitors. However, if your site has too many features or excess content, visitors will only end up getting confused.
As a result, this will reduce their chances of reading their content or buying your products. Therefore, when creating your WordPress site or blog, stick to the widgets, plugins and content which will enhance the user experience of your visitors.
Charles Mburugu has a great passion for sharing blogging and web development tips. At the moment, he is writing for Moto CMS HTML templates
