My Website

Hi,

You don’t need to be an expert to make a working start.

Start with the basics, learn a bit of HTML and CSS in the process and develop things as you need them.

1. Before you start, try to develop a good idea of what you want to do, see and achieve with your site
2. From that, make a list of requirements
3. This should help you later, to pick a theme and other bits needed for functionality

1. Get some of the tech-stuff sorted
2. Get a domainname e.g. http://www.myspecialdomain.com
3. select a webhost to host your site
4. check if the webhost meets minimum requirements for WP-sites:
   

   To run WordPress your host just needs a couple of things:

• PHP version 5.2.4 or greater
• MySQL version 5.0 or greater

• download WP-files to your PC
• Use FTP e.g. filezilla to upload WP to your webhost
• did your webhost create a database for you? > yes? get the name, server and access to it
• No? Create a database using phpmyadmin of the webhost’s webaccess
• Browser: URL go to your site e.g. http://www.myspecialdomain.com
• the 5 mins. install starts;
  Enter the database etc as given by your webhost
• WP installs your site.
• Go and have a look at themes that meet your needs and requirements-list
• Install a few themes and try if they meet all needs and are easily adapted to your liking
• If not: try another theme
• Have foundt your theme? Great!
• now create a childtheme: Tip use ‘one click childtheme-plugin’
• Go for it!! You’re site is ready to conquer the world..

== == == TIP

How to find which CSS to change

About finding out ‘which things to change in your site [css / html / php]

Well it’s all a bit like trying to solve a puzzle.
Fortunately there are good tools for that.
In your browser: Install / activate webdevelopment add-ons / plugins.

Recommended: ‘Firebug’ and ‘webdeveloper: http://www.chrispederick.com ‘
These tools will show you what’s what.
e.g. right-click > inspect elements > click left bottom arrow-icon
click item in webpage
Inspect css on the right
alter css values to test effect / result
OK? copy altered css rule
paste it in the style.css of your childtheme.

Alternatively:
Press <F12> a screen will show in the bottom.
Move the mouse over each line
The area shows in the top-half
Press + to unfold parts
Investigate and alter on the right etc.
paste it in the style.css of your childtheme.

No, you don’t need to install anything on your local computer – you just access your site using a browser like Firefox or Chrome – and you really don’t need a child theme unless you are going to make changes to theme files. That’s not necessary to get started – you can do lots of things using the theme options and regular WP functionality. This will give you lots of helpful basic info on how to use WP –

http://codex.wordpress.org/WordPress_Lessons

I’d suggest finding a theme you like and just jumping in – that’s how you’ll really learn the best :). And if you get stuck, post a new thread and someone can help you out.

Not really – though they are used so that you can make changes to how a site looks. But the important piece is that a child theme allows you to make file level changes (i.e. .php files or style.css) without those changes being overwritten when the parent theme is updated. See:

http://codex.wordpress.org/Child_Themes

You can use custom CSS for things like fonts, styling. Categories are part of WP Core so no problem there. Tables would likely go in content and a slider – part of a theme or added via a plugin. So it sounds like you’d be okay without one. You can always do it later – so long as you do so before you change theme files – you’d have to redo a few things, but not usually a big deal.

But you can certainly use a child theme if you’d prefer to start off that way.

Yep, to be safe, I’d go with the child theme.

Yes, changes are only made in the child theme – but you do not copy everything to the child theme – read the linked page about how to make the child theme. How much code depends on what you want to do.

If I am stuck, I can post a thread and ask for help

Absolutely :)!