What is WordPress?

Business, shop, hobby or a passion. Whatever it is that you’re looking to do a website is the most efficient way to reach a global audience.

Your own website isn’t governed by social media regulations, you’re in control. You can promote your message and build your own brand.

Maybe you already have a website and need something new or you’re dipping your toe in the digital waters for the first time. Whatever your situation we’re here to make the decision of ‘what to use’ for your website an easy one.

Websites are based on content – there is a content management system, or CMS for short, that has rapidly grown from its inception back in 2003 into a platform that is so versatile that it is now used on millions of websites, with 500+ new websites being created daily!

Used not only by people to setup a simple blog, but also by multinational companies, celebrities and media institutions.

This is WORDPRESS

Take a look at a small sample below of some high profile websites that run using WordPress.

Something even more impressive is that you can harness this very same powerful platform, that is used for major websites – for FREE. 

WordPress is open source. This means that the source code is freely available from WordPress.org and may also be redistributed and modified.

This has led to constant development on the WordPress platform since its inception back in 2003, that sees it regularly updated, along with the growth of over 50,000 plugins that can help you to achieve a multitude of things. It’s the Swiss army knife of website platforms.

You can harness the power of WordPress very quickly!

All good web hosts have automatic installers to setup WordPress. If you’re looking for hosting click here for our recommendations.

Once setup you need to choose a theme for how you want your website to look. This is where it gets really exciting as you can leapfrog weeks of development by selecting a good theme. 

Once you have your theme you can then modify and change it so that it is truly unique to you. 

Need a head start for a theme for your new WordPress website?

Here’s how we recommend to get going.

FREE OPTIONS

If you’re on a budget and can only stretch to good hosting a free theme is a fantastic place to start. In fact some free themes are so good that they make a brilliant base to build your site. 

On WordPress.org there are over 6000 themes listed in the theme directory. These are listed as featured, popular and the latest releases. This gives you a wide selection of themes to look at.

When looking through themes on here click ‘More Info’ that appears when you hover over the theme. In here you can check to see if this is a free theme or if it’s paid, or requires another premium theme or framework to run.

HashThemes have 5 brilliant FREE themes that not only look great straight ‘out of the box’, they can also be easily modified.

Each theme is based on a certain content type. These are a magazine news portal, a minimal theme ripe for customisation, a multipurpose theme that is great for businesses, a one size fits all theme that can be used from corporate applications to a personal blog and a seasonal theme based on Christmas. 

PAID OPTIONS

There are a multitude of paid theme options that are available. You only need to Google WordPress premium themes to see a vast selection.

To save you wading through all of these we have two recommendations. We chose these because we’ve worked with them for many years. We have tried other themes and frameworks, but have always come back to these as they’re robust, lightweight, perform well, provide a quick start and are designed to be customised.

Imagine having a theme that gave you over 500 layouts that you could use as a starting point to build your website. Then imagine that they then add a new layout each week. This is Divi!

Even better, Divi also has the option of using a visual builder for those of you who don’t want to get bogged down writing code. You can literally see what you’re building. Flexibility is Divi’s strong point as everything can be modified within its interface. It also gives you the ability to add your own code to produce some truly unique websites. The page you’re reading right now was created using the Divi builder!

The Genesis Framework is a building block for a whole selection of premium themes. For the coders among you there is also the option to create your own theme from scratch. 

There are 35+ premium themes that target different areas. Each one is designed to be search engine optimised. With Genesis you can use hooks to easily modify your theme. Think of a hook as the ability to change a section on the page. Each page is made up of multiple sections that you can hook into. 

Don’t want to go through the whole process of setting up your website? Let us do it for you. We offer a wide variety of services including: content creation, website setup, customisation through HTML, CSS, PHP, Javascript and JQuery.

To get help all you need to do is click on the button below. 

If you want to roll up your sleeves and get stuck in we have a great resource for you that is packed with training courses. This saves you having to keep repeatedly Googling problems when you get stuck. 

To find out more all you need to do is click on the button below to claim 2 months FREE access to over 700 courses that cover all areas of WordPress setup, management, development and promotion.

Affiliate Disclaimer: Please note that some of the links on this site are affiliate links. This means, at no additional cost to you, I will earn a commission if you decide to make a purchase after clicking through the link. Full disclosure on all affiliate links and why they’re recommended can be found in the affiliate disclaimer by clicking here