Resource: Get Creative Control of Your Website with WordPress

Too often I hear stories of people stuck with website designs they don't like, doesn't work right or at the mercy of an overworked, grumpy web master/designer who decides to hold their website hostage. "Pay me XYZ or your website is mine to do as I wish." (I've been there!)

The way of the future is to be able to creatively control (read: no need to go through a web master or designer) to make the simplest changes on your site.

Now I am NOT advocating that you design your website and do it all yourself. I don't think that's a good investment of your time. If you're making over $100 dollar an hour to work with clients, it's well worth to pay $50 per hour for a web master. That's just good math.

Having said this, if you should have more time than clients (or money) or you enjoy (like me) having creative control of your website, WordPress is the way to go.

WordPress is a free blogging platform (techie-talk = open source software) that allows you to make it look like a real website by adding regular looking web pages. If you know how to operate a WORD document, than you'll know how to use WordPress.

You can make it look as fancy as you want by hiring someone to create a customized template for you (there are tons of designers who specialize in this - I recommend Chris Jernigan of Sawcy.com), or you can do what I did, which is choose from one of the many existing FREE templates, customize the header and then you're good to go.

However, there are quite a few ins-n-outs to learn about setting up a professional looking WordPress website. For example, I didn't use the free templates available at WordPress.org and WordPress.com. I bought the Semiologic version which comes with a few bells and whistles for running a business, though at the cost of the variety of beautiful templates on WordPress.com/WordPress.org. (You don't have to do this).

The good news: my husband and fabulous coach Drew, being the leader in all things technical in our house, decided to put together a step-by-step guideline for setting up a WordPress site in about an hour.

You can get this here.

But before you start scrolling the WordPress templates, be sure to understand this: The content of your website comes before site design. Most people get this backward. How can your web designer ever match who you are and what you do if you don't have a clear message, tone, feel, emotion and words to match all this. Message first, design second. It's easier to make a site match a message versus changing a site to match your message.

Here's that link again for instructions on setting up a low-cost, easy to manage and great looking site.

Please note, if you're coming to my workshop on Discovering Your Niche in July, you'll get this resource in your goodie bag!

Hope this was helpful!

Karin

Like what you read? Learn more about revamping your marketing materials by signing up for my newsletter. Get the details here.