Advise on a new (possibly wordpress) website

bass_junkie83

bass_junkie83

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I had some very usefull feedback on my website here a while back in the business section which left me a long list of improvements and changes to make to my website.

Some of those things I am able to do, some I will have to learn, others I know I have pretty much no chance of doing myself. So I was considering the option of starting a fresh using a wordpress based site. I already have a wordpress blog that is integratd into my site, but the site itself was custom built for me, and having spent out a fair amount on it I am reluctant to simply walk away from it.

However, I have recently upgraded my hosting to a resseller account meaning I am now able to set up as many websites as I like. This is all in preperation for a seperate business venture, but it got me thinking, can I now have a stab at making a new website on a different domain, allowing me to fiddle and get it right without any downtime for my current website.

My first question is could I create a wordpress site on one domain, then move it over to another once it is ready? Is that a simple case of downloading the filed from account and simply uploading them to another?

My second question is, can I use my existing blog? If I am going to create a wordpress based site, would I want to use the existing wordpress installation that I used for my blog so that everything is consistant? If that's already in use on my current domain, can I duplicate that on my test domain to build the site and then move it all back over?
 
Yes it is possible to build your website on one domain and migrate it to another. I wouldn't recommend it though. I use a web server to test websites which is only accessible on my LAN. There's no danger of it being indexed by search engines whilst it's incomplete and on the wrong domain - which can be harmful to SEO. If you do have it on an internet accessible server, than you can set a .htpasswd to prevent search engines indexing it. Or alternately, set-up robots.txt or relevant meta-tags but there's nothing to say search engines have to respect those.

When you move Wordpress from one domain to another, you need to run a a script against the database which does a graceful search and replace - old domain for new domain.

If your existing blog is Wordpress - then you can either use that as a basis for your new site (take a copy, host on new private/internal domain, migrate database, run migration script). You can also migrate blog content from one Wordpress install to another - but again some extra knowledge is useful.

Unless you are doing this in order to learn about and get intimate with Wordpress, I would suggest involving a professional. If you are planning on learning wordpress to resell websites - I'd say you have a lot of competition and you need to be really good, n.b. able to create your own themes and templates. It's a bit like becoming a professional photographer - you need a really good website developer take you under their wing first. Or some friends who will let you loose on their websites with no real expectation.

Good luck.
 
I'm only thinking of doing this for myself, I have no intention of offering anything to other people that I can't do properly or have enough knowledge or experience of.

I still haven't decided to make the move to a WordPress site, but if I do it will take some time and would like to avoid a period of no website at all off possible. Unfortunately I don't have my own server to be able to work offline.

I learnt a lot from tinkering with my own site, which I had paid someone to build. But still never really got what I wanted out of it which is why I would like to try to do it myself.
 
Anyone else got any thoughts? Maybe if I list the things that I don't like/would like to change on my site as it is.
  1. Lighter, more feminin theme, lose the black blocks that are the header and footer.
  2. Much bigger slideshow (but mot flash based!) of images and less/no text on the homepage. As a photography site it should focus on images.
  3. Make the footer much smaller and discrete.
  4. Make the home page a single full page without the need to scroll, I assume this would be pretty simple by addressing point 2.
  5. Make the whole site scaleable rather than set width to suit a small screen and lots of dead space to the sides on wide screens.
  6. A mobile version
  7. General content updates/improvements.
  8. Change 'gallery' to 'client area' to stop confusion with the portfolio page.
  9. Better ranking in search results.
I think that pretty much covers it. Anything in red is stuff that I really have no idea how to do. I don't know if they are things I will be able to learn myself, of if moving to wordpress will be the better option.
 
I recently gave up on a wordpress site due to the ridiculous amount of spam, hacking and even had someone take over the homepage.

All the wordpress components were fully up to date, so I didn't know what else to do. Maybe I was just unlucky :(

I assume that is one of the perils of running the most popular open source website back end - everyone and their dog wants to have a go/knows the exploits.
 
An easy option to use to play around with WP, install Mamp/Xamp or similar and install WP locally on your machine. When you've got it just how you like it, upload to the domain of your choice via a plug in from the WP repository such as Duplicator. Duplicator is real simple to use. ;)

That's what I normally do, or if I'm installing a backup facility for clients, I use BackupBuddy - which is a paid plug in, but ideal for moving/backing up sites.
 
I stumbled across serverpress which seems to get good reviews, So I shall probably try to knock something up on there before putting anything online.
 
Serverpress is an excellent resource. I use it everyday.

Xamp/MAMP does a similar job, for free too. ;)
 
bl0at3r said:
I recently gave up on a wordpress site due to the ridiculous amount of spam, hacking and even had someone take over the homepage.

All the wordpress components were fully up to date, so I didn't know what else to do. Maybe I was just unlucky :(

I assume that is one of the perils of running the most popular open source website back end - everyone and their dog wants to have a go/knows the exploits.
Click to expand...

There is a security plug-in which takes care of most of Wordpresses vulnerabilities. I'd take a wild guess and say it was called WP-Security.
 
bass_junkie83 said:
I'm only thinking of doing this for myself, I have no intention of offering anything to other people that I can't do properly or have enough knowledge or experience of.

I still haven't decided to make the move to a WordPress site, but if I do it will take some time and would like to avoid a period of no website at all off possible. Unfortunately I don't have my own server to be able to work offline.

I learnt a lot from tinkering with my own site, which I had paid someone to build. But still never really got what I wanted out of it which is why I would like to try to do it myself.
Click to expand...


Setting up your own web server is relatively trivial and the best part is that you don't need to buy any extra hardware. You can run a virtual server using Oracle VM Virtual Box, for example. There are lots of tutorials around for creating your own Wordpress server using operating systems like Unbuntu Server.
 
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