Building my own wordpress site

chiffs

chiffs

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Sean
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Ok so I have a website already which was constructed for me with dream weaver. Problem being if I want any updates it costs and I have to wait a while for them to be done :( which I'm not overly happy with.

I have started looking around and have had Wordpress suggested to me which is fine. From what I have seen and looked at so far on the web it's a case of find yourself some nice templates, add them and customise, add site content (text and images) and then there are tons of widgets like google map location.

Reason I'm thinking of doing this is so I can update as and when needed such as add new images, new text, update prices etc rather that wait for someone to do it for me.

How easy is it really to do all this?

Is the seo easy to sort? I'm guessing all my current seo would disappear and would then take me a little while to get back while the google bots search me again.

Can I possibly build the wordpress site offline and then shut my current site down and just transfer over the domain and make the new site live?

Have already asked if the domain can be transferred and have been told that would not be a problem so I'm happy there.

Any tips of what and where to look at the moment? As I'm kind of clueless right now.

Thanks Sean.
 
Have a look at Photocrati, it's a Wordpress theme that is very user friendly (well you need a little Wordpress understanding) but it has an excellent support and online help that walks you through most things.
Single payment gets you the supported theme with all updates.
 
chiffs said:
Can I possibly build the wordpress site offline and then shut my current site down and just transfer over the domain and make the new site live?

Have already asked if the domain can be transferred and have been told that would not be a problem so I'm happy there.

Any tips of what and where to look at the moment? As I'm kind of clueless right now.

Thanks Sean.
Click to expand...

What I did was download xammp http://www.apachefriends.org/en/xampp.html and I run Apache and MySQL, and run wordpress on local host, meaning I simply installed and run wordpress on my PC. When I was happy with the layout and template and all other plug ins, I simply did a back up, and I installed all the content to my host making the site live.

It is a bit fiddly, but it can be done.
 
why don't you just use a sub domain to develop in - test.seanchiffersphotography.com. That way people still go to your live site while you work and its no really difficult to move afterwards
 
boyfalldown said:
why don't you just use a sub domain to develop in - test.seanchiffersphotography.com. That way people still go to your live site while you work and its no really difficult to move afterwards
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Sorry have no idea about how it all works fully yet.

With doing that, is it then easy to amend the domain name once the site is all done?
 
boyfalldown said:
why don't you just use a sub domain to develop in - test.seanchiffersphotography.com. That way people still go to your live site while you work and its no really difficult to move afterwards
Click to expand...

Hugh, the only problem with that is search engines will index it. It may confuse people as they will get dead links when he moves it. Search engines may also see it as duplicate content, and seems they don't always like that.
 
jonbeeza said:
Hugh, the only problem with that is search engines will index it. It may confuse people as they will get dead links when he moves it. Search engines may also see it as duplicate content, and seems they don't always like that.
Click to expand...

you can ask/tell search engines not to index your test domain - wordpress has an option to do this or use robots.txt
 
If you're happy to spend money to save hassle, get a ProPhoto site. All the benefits of Wordpress (easy updates) with all the benefits of a properly developed site (great customer service when required).

As for the original question - yes it really is easy to update. You need to get your head round SEO before you start, but a well designed WP template should make it easy to create great SEO content (WARNING - not all WP themes make this easy).

Again, I can only speak for Pro Photo, but I can keep my site close to the top of P1 for my 1st choice search term with ease, I've discussed this with other WP users and stuff I can do simply isn't always as straightforward for them. Yet they'll tell you that their inexpensive theme is 'easy to use'. PM if you want specific examples or a discount code for Pro Photo.
 
That's a lot of money, I have a general distrust of subscription type sites, what restrictions are there?
 
Phil V said:
That's a lot of money, I have a general distrust of subscription type sites, what restrictions are there?
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Think you are right there Phil, have been playing with it for the last 2 hours and its very fast for building a site, commerce only works in US at the moment so thats not too great. Think it has some nice features but once you've done everything you cant add little extras that i believe you can for wordpress.

My head hurts!!! Spent last six hours or so looking, reading and playing.

Going to stop now as i think i cant take any more in tonight.

The one you suggested looks nice, will do more reading tomorrow and probably ping you an pm at some point.
 
Your current site is quite successful, so a little planning should pay dividends.

Who do you host with?
 
I think it's with heart Internet at the moment, never had a problem with the site being down as far as i know and built using dreamweaver, hence really wanting to take it over and change to a Wordpress site.

If I can get it to look very similar I would be happy with the added feature that I can update images when I want or even add an online password protected gallery for client ordering. Is the last easy and possible with the prophoto theme?

The more I look at that the more I'm liking it.
 
Yes it's easy to add password protected galleries, but if you want to sell from the site, pro photo might not be the best choice.
The simple solution for that is Zenfolio, or if you want to stay Wordpress Photocrati.

But I don't believe either of those make a great site, so my recommendation would be a Pro Photo site with a Photocart added on, it's not particularly cheap, but it's a one off payment and gets rave reviews.
 
Thanks Phil, a cart was more thinking in the future.

Can anyone tell me how i could build a site either online or offline or any other way with wordpress/prophoto and then shut my current one down, switch domain name to the new one and off we go. Happy days.

In a reply from ProPhoto i got this. Dont think i can do the temp one with mine as its still registered to the website builder and the other looks a bit crazy. Have read it several time and dont quite understand what they are saying, maybe just too much for me.

HELP


"Sean,

Glad you found us, I'll be happy to help you out with your questions!

As for working on your ProPhoto site and then replacing your existing site, if your current webhost for "http://www.seanchiffersphotography.com/" is a compatible webhost, you can actually follow the steps in this tutorial here for replacing your main site, with no downtime:

http://www.prophotoblogs.com/support/replace-main-site/

Or, if your webhost is not compatible, I would suggest this tutorial here for switching over to a new webhost, with no downtime:

http://www.prophotoblogs.com/support/switch-hosting-for-a-new-prophoto-blog/

(For more information on webhost compatibility, see here: http://www.prophotoblogs.com/support/webhost-compatibility/)

As for using the BitNami app, and installing on your own computer or Virtual Machine, you can do that, but then migrating the content to an actual webhosting server can be pretty tricky, which is why I'd suggest using either of the tutorials above instead.

I hope that helps/makes sense, be sure to let me know if you have any other questions. Thanks!


Dan Lam
ProPhoto Blogs Support"
 
chiffs said:
Thanks Phil, a cart was more thinking in the future.

Can anyone tell me how i could build a site either online or offline or any other way with wordpress/prophoto and then shut my current one down, switch domain name to the new one and off we go. Happy days.

In a reply from ProPhoto i got this. Dont think i can do the temp one with mine as its still registered to the website builder and the other looks a bit crazy. Have read it several time and dont quite understand what they are saying, maybe just too much for me.

HELP


"Sean,

Glad you found us, I'll be happy to help you out with your questions!

As for working on your ProPhoto site and then replacing your existing site, if your current webhost for "http://www.seanchiffersphotography.com/" is a compatible webhost, you can actually follow the steps in this tutorial here for replacing your main site, with no downtime:

http://www.prophotoblogs.com/support/replace-main-site/

Or, if your webhost is not compatible, I would suggest this tutorial here for switching over to a new webhost, with no downtime:

http://www.prophotoblogs.com/support/switch-hosting-for-a-new-prophoto-blog/

(For more information on webhost compatibility, see here: http://www.prophotoblogs.com/support/webhost-compatibility/)

As for using the BitNami app, and installing on your own computer or Virtual Machine, you can do that, but then migrating the content to an actual webhosting server can be pretty tricky, which is why I'd suggest using either of the tutorials above instead.

I hope that helps/makes sense, be sure to let me know if you have any other questions. Thanks!


Dan Lam
ProPhoto Blogs Support"
Click to expand...

Before I read the guidance, what are your plans? are you planning to move the domain name once the site is live? Are you buying new hosting or are you taking over the existing hosting?
 
My site is hosted with heart internet with the web designers account.

I will open my own account for hosting (probably with heart).

Hopefully build new WP site while leaving current live, then transfer domain from web designer to me.


Just messaged heart to hear there thoughts.
 
I've read all the above, as i'm in a similar position, I have a Zenfolio account with my own domain, I want to get my own hosting with a WP theme, is there a way (in simple terms please 8-)) for me to build the WP site on say Bluehost, and then once happy with it transfer it to my domain all the time keeping the Zenfolio site up until switchover?

Keep it simple language please :thumbs::bang:
 
Do you have any other domain names? Or do you want to buy one?

Although it's possible to build a site on hosting without a domain ( I did this recently for a scout site)

Fortunately Prophoto allows for a very simple domain name updating across the site.
 
chiffs said:
O

Can I possibly build the wordpress site offline and then shut my current site down and just transfer over the domain and make the new site live?
Click to expand...

Yes

Install WAMP on your local machine, and install the same version of PHP and My SQL as you have in your hosting environment

WAMP is a simple free local web-server that emulates a LAMP stack on your local machine, and you can easily install WordPress on it.


When you want to migrate your site, it will be as simple as moving the files, and dropping in the database and editing a couple of lines in the config file and a couple of entries in the mySql database


...


Alternatively, it is likely that the index page for yoru dreamweaver site is index.html, so in practical terms, you can install WP on your webserver, and it will install a index.php file on the server. Regular user swill be served the index.html page first, and not see the index.php page. on top of that you can write a .htaccess rule or two to ensure access to the index.php is fairly restricted. in this way, you can work on your real server, whilst still serving your old pages
 
You don't need a domain name on your new hosting just yet, you could do it for now on ip only. Put something like wp-maintenance plugin in on such that you stop any visitors whilst developing and site indexing...Then once ready just point dns to your new server.

Or decent hosting providers like what I do will give you a temporary subdomain on the server itself to keep you going...Just ask them they should be able to do that...Or as suggested before, just create a sub domain on your current domain and point that there in the mean time for ease...
 
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