[keysersoze]

Recently, after much planning and deliberation, I started writing my own blog like the rest of you.

The plan is for it to be centered around game and academics for college males, with other posts on fitness, music, style, money, alcohol, etc. I'm very excited about it, I've posted a couple introductory posts, and I have many other posts planned out.

However, I'm struggling hard with Wordpress. I'm currently running one of the free default themes, which looks pretty basic. I downloaded a really nice theme but I have no idea how to implement it. I'm just kind of lost in general. I've tried Google for answers but I can't seem to find anything that can help me. I don't know how to change font or customize it at all. I feel like an 85 year old woman asking her grandson how to set up her iPhone, but hey, I need help.

Any and all advice, tips, and pointers are greatly appreciated. Thanks guys.

[keysersoze]

No luck.. Move to Lifestyle maybe?

[Seth_Rose]

First you're going to need a new domain name as you are limited in what you can do with a free Wordpress account. See if 'fouryearsofglory.com' is available then purchase that domain name.

From there you're going to need hosting services. I recommend HostGator. Setting up hosting is not rocket science, but not a walk in the park if you've never done it before. There are plenty of YouTube videos out there though that walk you through it.

Once you have all that set up you can install your premium Wordpress theme and customize it as you wish.

As for the site itself, I think there's potential. I've written quite a bit about college on my blog, and think it doesn't get enough attention (At least positive press) in this neck of the woods.

[Nemausus]

You have to use the Wordpress.org platform, which means paying for your own hosting if you want to be able to implement any theme you want. I see you have a wordpress.com link in your signature. That's very basic and allows for limited customization.

This link below will explain it.

http://diythemes.com/thesis/rtfm/differe...s-com-org/

RVF has had a few limited discussions about Wordpress, but there are hundreds of better sources of information.

Reddit has a really supportive Wordpress community: https://www.reddit.com/r/Wordpress/

Also, ask YouTube. It has videos breaking everything about Wordpress that are easy to follow along.

[jamaicabound]

Wordpress can definately be challenging at first setting up hosting and even just laying out your template, posting, themes and plugins.

Ive been blogging for years and have never made the switch from blogger to wordpress. Ive tried a few times over the years and bought hosting and would get frustrated and just go back to blogger. I finally a few days ago tried it and got everything setup. Im debating themes right now. They arent cheap, most I like are like $40 to $100 per theme. Im excited about the new possibilities with a wider array of plugins and features a added customization.

Dont discount blogger though. Its free, you can still have a custom domain. A common argument is google can shut you down and you dont own and cotrol your site, and that is true however you can still own your domain and your content plus a one click button to port your blogger blog over to wordpress. Its not a bad way to get started. You can also run advertising on that platform as well if you wish to run adsense or sell your own product. Its also not that common to happen, you getting shutdown. Theres some pretty controversial shit on blogger sites so I doubt anything your going to do would be an issue. I just read a blogger blog by a girl who gives jerkoff massages.

Blogger is a great way to get started and see if a blog developes or not. Some will just fizzle out or in your case you may later wanna narrow the niche down from a total lifestyle type magazine format to maybe a gaming blog or college dating blog. Id just suggest once you get more familiar make the switch over to wordpress before you get too comfortable and dont wanna make the move.

Here is a theme I just bought for my wordpress project I just started. Im also looking at the ctr and some other ad specific themes

http://www.lipode.com/adsos/

Youtube has walkthrus but try to find something as recent as possible. Wordpress and hosting sites are constantly changing layouts so if your like me and really needed someone to hold your hand through anything on older videos the location of drop downs or selections may not be the same as what a video or screenshots are showing and it can get tricky.

[damianr]

I recommend Hostgator too with cPanel. It's a GUI based tool that let's you set things up over a browser.

[fortysix]

As an example, I am assuming that roosh uses WP for his site - is it difficult to create something similar to his website? Would you require a custom theme / paid developer? Can someone recommend a good custom theme which could produce a similar look?

Thanks guys.

[storm]

Se7en do you have the demand to justify doing something better looking than a free theme?

Your time and money is almost certainly better spent on content. As a general rule, don't change anything customers are not complaining about.

When it becomes a pain point, you can buy a $40 theme (these can be very very good looking). A custom dev will cost you maybe $1000 for a website on the scale of rooshv.com.

[fortysix]

(04-15-2016 01:52 PM)storm Wrote:  

Se7en do you have the demand to justify doing something better looking than a free theme?

Your time and money is almost certainly better spent on content. As a general rule, don't change anything customers are not complaining about.

When it becomes a pain point, you can buy a $40 theme (these can be very very good looking). A custom dev will cost you maybe $1000 for a website on the scale of rooshv.com.

At this point I'm just playing around, so I do not really have any demand to justify paying for a theme. On the other hand, I don't really mind dropping $40 or so to play with a theme that looks nice and makes me happy - do you have any recommendations? thank you

[storm]

I like the ones on http://www.elegantthemes.com

[bigrich]

I would recommend checking out Genesis. I don't use it but I have heard good things. One of the good thing about Genesis is that there is a community around the theme that helps you customize it.

http://my.studiopress.com/themes/genesis/

The level of free themes just keep getting better.

https://wordpress.org/themes/

[TheFinalEpic]

Elegant Themes, get the developer package for $89 a year. It gives you access to many themes and 5 or 6 plugins that are excellent. I have stopped buying single themes and just use Divi off of that now for all of my sites. Ive build landing pages, blogs, niche sites, and my main company site off that theme alone.

The back end is exceptionally easy to use after the learning curve, and their support team is unreal. There is unlimited customizations you can do with CSS and they are more than happy to show you how to implement the code.

I've also used Jupiter by artbees in the past, no complaints there except that you can't use it on multiple sites.

A theme is probably the best investment I've made in my sites, allowing me to be flexible with all forms of websites, incoming traffic, and building a media and real estate network.

[weambulance]

(04-15-2016 01:35 PM)se7en Wrote:  

As an example, I am assuming that roosh uses WP for his site - is it difficult to create something similar to his website? Would you require a custom theme / paid developer? Can someone recommend a good custom theme which could produce a similar look?

Thanks guys.

Not difficult at all with a free theme. The only thing I see on his site that isn't readily available is the banner. Most good themes allow a fair amount of customization with live preview through a menu system--setting up widgets and layout, sometimes changing colors, etc--without ever touching the code.

I don't have any specific themes to recommend, but it's a classic wordpress look, so you could probably find something quite similar in 15 minutes by just randomly trying themes from the free theme collection.

I've never bought a premium theme, so I don't know anything about that side of things.

[Moma]

Is it worth purchasing the domain privacy when going through hostgator? Or does it still subject your info to spammers and email marketing lists?

[ElFlaco]

(04-15-2016 04:52 PM)bigrich Wrote:  

One of the good thing about Genesis is that there is a community around the theme that helps you customize it.

That's an often overlooked point about choosing any tool. I'd rather use a weaker tool with a good user community and developer base than an otherwise superior tool without those things.

For anyone considering a premium theme, don't be cheap. Buy it. The cracked versions out there will cause you hours of misery when a virus eventually commandeers your site and presents insulting messages to your customers. It happened to a client of mine.

[Marmite]

(09-20-2016 07:47 PM)Moma Wrote:  

Is it worth purchasing the domain privacy when going through hostgator? Or does it still subject your info to spammers and email marketing lists?

I purchased domain privacy when registering my domain with 123-reg.co.uk. I still get some of the spammy emails offering seo / design / etc, but it comes through the domain privacy service, so my personal information isn't shared with spammers.

With regards to hosting, if I were to use a multi-domain hosting package for a couple of different sites, could users figure out that the multiple sites are all mine, even with domain privacy? Going off the IP / etc? Or would it be better to have multiple hosting packages?

I've got a few site ideas, but I wouldn't want them to be linked together, as one would be my personal / portfolio site, another my politically incorrect blog, and another for miscellaneous use. The first will obviously hold some of my personal details, but the latter two would need to be as anonymous as possible.

[AFS]

In my experience, and I've created websites for my job, you need to pay for themes where you get good customer support and a good user base. Pay enough money, and you can even get tech support that walks you through everything.

If you want to do it on the cheap, what I did was keep loading free wordpress themes until I found one that is easy to work with. I literally loaded 5-7 themes the last time I was building a website, because at some point in the process I reached a point where you couldn't find a solution without being knowledgeable in programming and CSS, or the theme is just crappy and limits what you can do. Sometimes even changing colors of specific elements in a free theme is not possible.

If you think you can take any free theme and change whatever you want in it, you are sadly mistaken (or simply a better programmer than I am).

Finally I found a theme that is easy to work on, and looks goods. I believe I downloaded it from wordpress themes.

To summarize:
You want a kickass, custom website? Be prepared to pay to get professional themes from a company with a big knowledge database and customer support. Or learn coding.

Want to do it free? Keep installing free themes until you find one that works for you: that looks good as soon as you load it, and is easy to customize.

[Ezio31]

Enclose the blog name, I want to read it.

[fortysix]

Hey guys,

Can someone please give me a recommendation for a wordpress theme that will make my blog look like this:

https://equityzen.com/blog/?utm_source=q...Bsignature

(not the whole equity zen website, but just the blog part [meditations... and so forth, and everything below that]).

Any recommendations? I generally don't mind paying a bit.

[MajorStyles]

Slightly off...but on topic.

I've been trying to find interesting blogs in Word Press. When I hit "Discover" I get a list of suggested sites. For every ten blogs that are listed, nine of them are by women: shitty poetry, nonsense commentary, etc. I find it strange, since I have not purposefully sought out the work of any female writers in Wordpress.

Has anyone else noticed this? It seems like Wordpress is white knighting for these female bloggers, running more traffic their way.

[PoetryOfEros]

Maybe we should start following each other's blogs and network? Sometimes I've wanted to start spending fortunes on themes and key word software etc but I read somewhere that blogs succeed with an email list and networking skills.

Wordpress is more or less the standard blogging platform these days and has been for years.

[CookieDough]

(01-12-2017 12:04 PM)MajorStyles Wrote:  

Has anyone else noticed this? It seems like Wordpress is white knighting for these female bloggers, running more traffic their way.

I once build a Web crawler. It starts at a chosen site (cnn.com for example), visits random links and saves every new site in a database. After a few hours my database had 30k entries. I expected to find a lot of porn but most sites were womens' wordpress blogs. Either most sites are made by women or they link more to each other, maybe both.

Back to topic:
Picking free wordpress schemes didn't work for me either. In my opinion it is easier to build a website from scratch (html & css) than to change a shitty wordpress scheme. But I know that professional marketing businesses use wordpress for small sites.