Build your Website with WordPress
It is our suggestion to Bloggers, Professionals, and Business Owners that you should build your website on the WordPress ® Platform outfitted with a powerful, SEO optimized Premium WordPress ® Theme such as the Thesis Theme.
WordPress ®
WordPress ® is an open-source CMS (content management system) designed for blogging, but can be easily modified to enable the management of an entire website. Open-source means anyone is able and welcome to freely use the software, view the source code, alter and re-distribute open source software. In other words, you can use it for FREE.
THESIS THEME
A WordPress ® Website outfitted with the very affordable Premium Thesis Theme is the ultimate small business or entrapeneur webstie combination! With these two fabulous web tools, you now have the power of customization in your own hands… Add in the built-in SEO and most users will never have to hire so-called SEO gurus – you can create a professional website that can be found and delivered by the search engines all by yourself! Thesis Theme: It’s the last theme you’ll ever need.
But more on the Thesis Theme in another section. Let’s understand the power of a WordPress ® Website Platform first.
If you are new to WordPress ® and looking for reasons to use WordPress ® as a CMS in your new website, let me give you some:
- WordPress ® is an open source FREE blog publishing application.
- WordPress ® features integrated link management; a search engine-friendly, clean permalink structure; the ability to assign nested, multiple categories to articles; multiple author capability; and support for tagging of posts and articles. …
- WordPress ® is a dynamic publishing tool for managing website content using a web browser. This opensource platform is widely used by leading news agencies and corporations – surely it is a candidate for a new or small to medium-sized business.
- WordPress ® has a user friendly interface for publishing text and media. Also works great to optimize a website for search engines with plugins.
WordPress to the Rescue
WordPress ® is one of the most popular blogging tools available. But what many people don’t really understand is that it is a powerful Content Management System (CMS) that can be used for more than just blogging. With WordPress ® you can build a blog, a website, or both. WordPress is a good choice for small-medium and large business websites. Here is a Northern California Corporation who’s website I contributed to the WordPress ® CMS foundation. Can you tell that this corporate website is built on a WordPress ® platform? Are your eyes opening to the possibilities?Take control of your own web world and destiny
With WordPress ®, you own your own blog/website. Your blog/website is not dependent on a blogging service’s hosting – you secure your own hosting just like a “real website.” (Hosting reviews here). You can install as many WordPress ® installed blogs / websites on your own hosting account where you are also able to install WordPress ® on as many of your domains as you want and you will have total control over all of them.
As soon as your WordPress ® platform is installed on a web hosting service of your choosing, all you need to do is login, write a new page, post, or article and then click publish and you’re done. Slam Dunk!User Friendly
You don’t really have to be experienced to install and use WordPress ® and create your own website. These days most of the better hosting companies provide the ability to install the WordPress ® platform on your newly purchased or existing domain site with a single click of the mouse. Thn, the administration section — the WordPress ® Dashboard — is east to navigate and even easier to add articles/content to your website. If you have yet to choose a web hosting account for your new website(s) please consider my favorite: Bluehost.com or read my comprehensive review of BlueHost where the installation of WordPress ® is literally a couple of clicks away!
Cost-effective? Dude… It’s free!
May I remind you about the cost of choosing WordPress ®? While other blogging applications charge a monthly fee for a software application that is not as good, WordPress ® is a FREE to use application.Using WordPress ® as a Website
You can have, within an hours’ time a Web Hosting Account setup — such as BlueHost, HostMonster, HostGator, etc. — and minutes later have WordPress ® deployed and LIVE on the WEB — an amazingly powerful content management system that is FREE. Don’t be fooled! Your new WordPress-powered website or blog will have a lot of power under the hood for a small, medium or large business looking for an easy way to manage their web site.
Let me STRESS again… While WordPress ® was designed as a platform for blogging, you don’t have to use it as a blogging tool. With a few tweaks it can be used to run your professional. corporate website, with or without any traditional “blog” functionality.
“So if my website won’t be needing Blog Functionality, then why bother?”
Should your new website have no visible blog-functionality, the fact that WordPress ® was designed as a blogging platform gives it some compelling advantages.
WordPress ® is optimized for easily publishing and easily adding and changing content. That’s not all! Getting good SER — search engine rankings — requires fresh, unique content. You need a system that does not get in your way when you want to update your website with a new article, webpage, category, post or newsletter.
“Okay, okay…, I’m intrigued – but can you bottom-line it for me?”
Top Five Reasons to Use WordPress for Your Business Website
- Ease of Use – WordPress ® can be installed in a 1-Click Installation. WordPress is suitable for just about anybody – from the absolute novice to the advanced programmer.
- SEO – WordPress ® provides good Search Engine Optimization (SEO) right out of the box.
- CMS Content Management System – WordPress ® is easy to update content on your website without knowing HTML. Do you hate the idea of having to learn to use a complex HTML editor tool, Flash, DreamWeaver, PHP, CMS? Do you dread the hassle and expense to “ask” your webmaster every time you want to make a small change to your website? Well no longer – once WordPress ® is set up for you, you can easily create new Web Posts, Pages, Newsletters, Articles, or Blog entries using a simple rich text editor.
- Plug-Ins – Just like Apple’s® iPhone® and iPad’s® 75,000+ “applications” — there are 1,000′s of WordPress ® Themes, Modules Plug-Ins, and mini-applications that are FREE or nearly free! Consider the power and flexibility of FREE design themes, adding shopping carts, blogs, forums, poll-taking, contact forms, comments, calendars, scheduling, social media linking, Flash® banners, creating revenue streams with Google® Ads, or your own affiliate marketing, and 1,000′s of other cool features without having to hire a web developer.
- Support – If you do have problems or desire some initial hand-holding to teach you the ropes, perhaps you want to add very custom features, it is easy to find support (that’s why I am HERE – and thousands of talented geeks like me…) who are here to help you become your own webmaster.
Huge Community of Users and Developers
WordPress ® has a HUGE user and developer community, with comprehensive support, documentation, and online forums. Certainly, there is still a learning curve involved – but that is why I am here to get you set up and ready to take control of wheel.With a large base of WordPress ® users, any bugs that may show up in the underlying programming code are dealt with swiftly and without cost to the users as fresh revisions are deployed by armies of talented code geeks. Moreover, because there are so many users, online forums, How-To-Do-Guides, and detailed blogs created just to help others in the WordPress ® community, when you climb on the WordPress ® Bus, you can truly say: “No problem, I have people!”
Themes Support
You will never run short of Themes that define the Look and Feel of the website that you are envisioning when using WordPress ®. If you don’t like the themes that come with the default installation of WordPress ®, you can hunt on the Internet and you will find thousands of free themes that you can download and use for your website. There are themes which can even make your website look like a regular site instead of a blog. If you do not find satisfaction in the Free Theme World, go ahead and drag out that barely-used checkbook and shop for a Premium Theme ($19 – $200). In the ballooning Premium Theme market (where you will hear a lot about one of my favorites: THESIS), there is another huge universe of amazing themes at your beck and call!
Plugins Extend Functionality
After you have chosen a theme of your liking, WordPress ® plugins allow you to do just about anything that you could possibly imagine and these plugins can be installed in the click of your mouse. For example, if you want to have a slide show of your portfolio on your website, just search Google and you can easily find the relevant plugin that will easily do the job for you. Plugin developers – like Theme developers – create modules of of sophisticated code, which gives you enhanced performance and functionality for your site/blog without having any coding knowledge or specific training yourself. There are many FREE plugins available for free.
SEO Friendly
SEO (Search Engine Optimization) is all about optimizing your site so that its Google, Yahoo, Bing search rankings climb to the top when people are searching for a keywords and keyword strings that are relevant to your blog, service or product. Search Engines msut be kept in mind when building a website. Proper arrangement of the content on your site in such a way that is search-engine friendly, inserting reinforcing keywords into each page’s contents, and linking your site to other relevant websites are all part of successful SEO.
WordPress ® is already pretty well SEO Optimized sending pings to other sites, allowing users to create meaningful categories, tagging posts, the use of h1/h2 tags etc… Moreover, where WordPress ® drops the ball here and there, Premium Themes such as one of my favorites (THESIS Theme) take SEO to an extreme, engineered science that is both powerful yet understandable to the average WordPress ® user with just a little study. If you choos a FREE theme that lacks SEO sophistication there are FREE Plugins that pick up the SEO tasks and bring SEO back into your site without the added cost of investing in a Premium Theme.
Bloggers – No more SLOW Internet Issues
FULL SPEED AHEAD! - Readers who currently have a blog running on a “Blogging Service” will know all about S-L-O-W Internet Issues! When you’re blogging on public blogging platforms that host your blog for you, you are utterly dependent on their servers for hosting your blog, and uploading and publishing your posts. Since you are one of thousands using their network and servers, your frustrating experience is shared by many bloggers worldwide!When you take your Digital Life in your own hand and switch to publishing your blog or website using WordPress ® which will be running independently on your own web host company’s servers, working on your content will be really, really fast. Blogging with WordPress ® offers almost no latency AND your blog / website will not be slow for your readers / customers either! Welcome to the Big Time World or real websites and real Internet Publishing! You are in CONTROL.
Comment capabilities.
A ‘Comment’ is a feature and a functionality that encourages your visitors to offer feedback or participate in a community discussion about your postings. Not only do comments provide to feedback that might be important to you, it encourages that visitor to return to your blog/website to see if others have commented about their comment! This is a good traffic building tool. Moreover, folks who leave legitimate comments on your website leave their email address and their website URL (if they have one) which links your website to theirs and vice-a-versa. This “linking” helps your SEO with Google, Yahoo, Bing and other search engines.Of course, WordPress ® is completely flexible. You can choose to receive comments or not! If you are building a Blog style site, then you will most likely turn “ON” comments. If your website will look as if it is a static, HTML-coded website perhaps not. Then there is the HYBRID Website “Look,” where your site appears to be a hard-coded HTML website with a link in the navigation menu that says: “Our BLOG.” As if clicking that Navigation Link takes you to a WordPress ® Blog – when we know better – your whole website is built on an easy-to-use WordPress ® Platform! Smile - Life is GOOD!
Revenue-Generation / Affiliate Website Designs
Business owners and Affiliate Marketing folks often choose the WordPress ® platform as their choice for a website foundation. There isn’t a better platform available if your website will be designed to generate profit.Using WordPress ®, you can easily add 3rd party advertising — like Google Adsense or Yahoo Publishers Network ads — or affiliate links to merchants or suppliers you’ve chosen. Obviously, you can also promote your own products and services. Moreover, there are numerous Shopping Cart Themes and Plugins that can put you in business and control in no time at all. Shopping Carts, are always a little more technical to set-up but doable for someone who will put in a little effort. If you need help deploying a Shopping Cart or setting up Affiliate Links, Headers, Banners, Sidebars – contact me.
Upshot!
Now that you know why to use WordPress ® – for BEST choice, for ULTIMATE control, and because of the HUGE community and its ability to STAND with you – how can you begin blogging — or set up your professional website — with your own WordPress ® deployment? Fast and Simple!What’s the Next step?
First- You need to choose a website hosting service that works seamlessly with WordPress®.
I have reviewed several hosts over the years on many independent websites. Here, on my site, I review my favorites: BlueHost and HostMonster. They are amazing, feature-rich, fast, professional, very inexpensive, and they guarantee your hapiness or your MONEY BACK!
If you are not excited about those two WordPress ® Hosting companies, or think that $83.40 per year (6.95 month) or $71.40 (5.95 month) is too much, HostGator will save you a few dollars and also ranks very high in my past reviews and is a solid choice.
HostGator has a deal for $4.95 month – but you can only have one (1) domain and if you have not yet purchased your domain name that will add $10 and up. So be sure to take into account all the little details. At BlueHost you get a FREE domain name with your $83.40 annual hosting. At HostMonster you also get a FREE domain name with your $71.40 annual hosting.
FOLKS with Existing Hosting Accounts
NOTE: If you have an existing hosting account and need some assistance use the contact form. If I have some free time I will consider assisting you on a case by case basis.
If you already have a web hosting account you need a Theme Consider These:
If you need help:
- I can get your website LIVE and UP in mere hours and completely fleshed out to your specifications as quickly as 48-HOURS. Simply visit my Pricing/Contract page, and get a quote today.
{ 7 comments… read them below or add one }
Keith! THANK YOU!
Seriously! Thank you so much. As I told you – but others might be interested – I had started a free Blogger blog but it was never found and I got no traffic. I started learning that having your own WordPress on your own paid account would make it easier to be found by Google, would be WAY FASTER [ it is!!!
], and I could finally get serious about by blog which is morphing into a business.
I took you up on your BlueHost suggestion and I didn’t need your help. It was fast, easy and painless. I also got my .com domain name and it was FREE – Yippy… But, as easy as the C-Panel at Bluehost is for me now, (3-weeks later), it was all a bit new that first day. I called you, and true to your word you set me up. We picked the WordPress Beta 3.0 and you made some suggestions for a free theme that matched my newspaper / magazine look. Anyway, wanted to come back and leave my two-cents worth.
Thanks Dude,
I called pretty late and you were there. I appreciate you hanging out with me. Also, I am glad I called you in the middle of signing up my hosting account. Since I had a GoDaddy Domain already, I thought I really didn’t need to take advantage of the free domain offer, but you showed me how tryng to get my local business found using my first domain name (which I have now learned is considered a “vanity domain,” – my incorporated company name which has no logical connection to my business – you helped me. You seriously saved me a lot of frustration and wasted time as the original domain name was not as smart as picking the domain name that spells out EXACTLY what we do here in our small town and will match the typical Google Search for me – exactly!!! I also appreciated that you lent me a hand using Simple-Scripts to get WP all going – and in less than 1/2 an hour. Guess I can still come back for my remaining 30 minutes. LOL
Mr. Bennett. Thanks for your help. And for free as promised. You made me look like I know my way around all this web stuff. I emailed you the USER and PASSWORD and, like you promised, you just got it done. So now my niece who is kind of a web mistress at her college can just log in to my wordpress dasboard and get all my stuff uploaded for my new business venture. Thanks.
BTW – I trusted you again and got that premium theme – instantly downloaded. My neice apparently knew all about Thesis and opened negotiations with me! She suggested that “in trade” for her helping me out getting my posts dialed-in for my new website that I should pass over the $87 single-user license. She twisted my arm to get $190 developer’s version so she can set up many sites there at her school. I gladly agreed. Life is good.
Hey Keith – I’m back for my remaining 30-minutes.
Kidding. I called you just now, and yes, I will happily make a comment and recap for others.
It was only 8 days ago that I set up my first-ever website using wordpress. I called you in the middle of ordering my web hosting from bluehost. You did some quick research while on the phone and found a domain name that is exactly WHAT the people in my city would search for to find me. It was the best advice ever!
Like I told you, even though I only have 5 polished posts up and no banner yet, when you search for Smog Test in my town I AM NUMBER ONE!!!!!!
The other guys who have had websites up for years are on page 2, and 4 – buried. I am the new guy and you were so right about the power of the domain names matching the search strings. I even rank on Google Page 2 for some silly searches. Guess you can send me an invoice next time I need your help. Thanks again
Woah… I had pretty much already decided to ho with hostmonster before dropping in your site, but what made me click over thru your review was all the details you laid out. I came back to say THANK YOU! <3
Really. I got the hosting account set up really fast (like you predicted) and I got a free domain that I wanted too. But the domain that I bought a couple years ago from some no-name registrar that has bad reviews and actually wanted to charge be another $3.95 PER month to setup Wordpress there – well it was THERE and now I am hosting at HostMonster and I couldn't figure out how to make my domain work or transfer or ???
I came back here and saw the offer that i missed the first time and you answered the phone yourself and helped me from your car on your wireless laptop in the Costco parking lot. Thank you. HostMonster (as nice as they were) didn't and couldn't know the other company or their proceedures and the other company where I bought my domains years back — and never used till now ;0( — was not helpful because I coulnd't wait almost an hour for them to pick up their damn phone. Anyway you fixed it FROM YOUR CAR – You rock! -Mandy, Atlanta, GA
Kieth, I got the HostMonster thru your site. The extra dollar/month less than BlueHost was attractive on my budget as I have stationery, cards and lots of other costs. It was easy as you said. I do not need to take you up on the free hour. However, I wanted to go-on-record here that I ordered from you so you will be gentle in your costs for making my banner for me – maybe apply that hour toward the banner work. I had sent you the designer’s first “take” on it last week, as you might remember. I am going to want you to set it up possibly for use with the Wishlist membership plugin that I know you guys are experienced with. Ann
thanks for great informations It’s a wonderful