Building & Designing a Website With WordPress

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WordPress has become THE standard for building websites today because it's flexible, robust and it comes free with paid hosting.

Gone are the days where you have to learn HTML and/or tweak templates.

If you go with WordPress, you can choose from thousands of themes and switching up your design (changing themes) takes seconds.

In the video below, you can watch me take the basic Genesis Lifestyle WordPress theme and design a website from scratch.

Here are some of the topics covered...

• Customizing the header (includes brief Photoshop tutorial)
• Adding/Editing header menus
• Floating social media icons (or any elements) in the header
• Modifying the navigation
• Creating a 3-column footer
• How to use the Simple Hooks plugin to edit virtually any part of the site.

The Genesis Lifestyle theme also comes with a free guide to help you learn.

Wait. You can't create a website with WordPress until you have your own domain. Don't forget to learn about the importance of the name you choose before you begin.

If you need to learn how to setup a WordPress site, click here.

Genesis Themes vs. Thesis Themes

I have used quite a few WordPress themes over the years, but I've spent more time using Genesis and Thesis. However, Genesis is by far my favorite right now.

I like how clean the themes look and they load very fast. Genesis also has really good support and they provide you with a getting started/training guide that will help you customize your website. There is even a customer forum for questions.

In October 2012, Thesis 2.0 finally arrived. I was very disappointed. Thesis had been a pioneer when it came to theme development because it was the first theme that offered so many different customizations right from the WordPress control panel.

No other theme let you change the width of the columns, font colors, menu colors, number of columns, and all sorts of other things right from the control panel.

However, with 2.0 it was like DIYThemes was more concerned with developers than end users. Just going from 3 to 2 columns required a load of work. It was just not user friendly at all and I was quite disappointed having been such a huge supporter for so long.

I was also an affiliate for Thesis so I had to remove all my affiliate links, which of course meant a loss in commissions. But I couldn't recommend something I could barely use myself.

So if you're looking for a premium theme, I'd highly recommend Genesis. You won't be disappointed.

The other cool aspect of owning a CopyBlogger product is they always offer nice discounts to their customers on future products. So they do a great job of creating brand loyalty. I'm always happy to support them.

I also own their landing page generator called Premise. This plugin will help you create landing/sales/squeeze pages for your site without having to dip into any code.

Final Note

No matter what theme you choose, your customizations will always be controlled by how many options are provided by the theme and your knowledge of CSS.

Ready to Get Started?

You cannot create a WordPress blog until you have a domain and web host. Learn more about the basics of making a blog here.

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