Now that you have a domain name and hosting, you are ready to get into the fun part of creating your website. Wordpress offers thousands of themes for your website design. These themes (or templates) takes the hard part of website design out of your hands. The color scheme, fonts, and other elements are pre-set.

Depending on your tastes and the purpose of your website, you will have plenty of choices. But there are a few things to consider before selecting a theme.

Usability and Color Selections in Website Design

Usability refers to how easy your site is to navigate and the user experience when they visit your site. The size of your fonts, placement of your menu and even the colors you use, all affect the usability of your website. Making the wrong choices will cause visitors to your website to quickly leave. Remember,  the website is designed for your readers and potential clients, not ourselves.

In almost every professional design (except from special design showcases such as, e.g., portfolios) you need to offer your visitors

• a clear, self-explanatory navigation,
• precise text-presentation,
• search functionality and
• visible and thought-out site structure.

And that means that you simply have to follow the basic rules of usability and common sense. You want to communicate with your visitors, don’t drive them away, right? – from Smashing Magazine

30 Usability Issues 

Color Selection

Part of making your website appealing to visitors, is the color selection. While a black background with white text may benefit a photography site, it might make reading  difficult for a copywriter’s site. When you are selecting  the color scheme  for your site, keep in mind:

• What is the industry expectation? Certain colors will not match the message you are trying to convey.
• Choose complimentary colors. Choose colors that complement each other on the color wheel and keep backgrounds neutral.
• Be sure to get a unique color combination that will not look like a competitor’s.
• Web compatibility – All colors have to be on the RGB Color model so check your choices before you go too far with your project.

Colors in Web Design: Choosing a right combination for your Website

Selecting a Theme Template

With WordPress theme, you have 2 choices: Free or Premium. There a benefits to using both.

Free Theme Templates

WordPress comes with two  free themes, TwentyTen and TwentyEleven Both are perfectly fine, clean design and a good place to start. If you want to see other themes, go to wordpress.org/extend to search for a design that suits your needs. Some themes offer more options for changing colors, fonts and other features.

Using a theme gives you the benefit of a preset style sheet. You don’t have to worry about fonts, colors or layout. It is all locked into the theme’s design. However, most free themes are limited in how much they can be altered. That is when a premium theme is needed.

Premium WordPress Themes

Premium themes offer much more flexibility in your design. While they require more knowledge of HTML and CSS, premium themes offer you the option to change colors of fonts, backgrounds and much more.

The price can be as low as $40 (usd) for membership in Elegant Themes, which gives you access to more thant 50 theme templates. They have themes for photography portfolios, restaurants, and even a one-page resume  that includes portfolio and social sharing features.

Two of the most popular premium themes, Genesis and Thesis are called ‘frame works’, meaning that out of the box the theme are VERY plain. You must either customize them with HTML code or by using a ‘child theme’.

Genesis

StudioPress Genesis Theme Framework, from Copyblogger Media works with a ‘child theme’ that gives your site its look. The beauty of the child theme is that when the frame work gets updated, you don’t lose any of your customizations. The Genesis framework and a child theme cost $80. Once you purchase the framework, you can change you site by simply changing the child theme. And at $25 you won’t go broke making changes.   StudioPress has an ever-growing selection of child themes to choose from.

Click here to download The Genesis Guide for Absolute Beginners (PDF – 1.4 MB)

Thesis

The Thesis Theme for WordPress, another framework from DIY Themes and Chris Pearson has option panels that allow you to make many customizations to your design. You can also purchase child themes or skins for Thesis to change to look of your site.

Which is best? Genesis or Thesis? Kikolani wrote a great blog post comparing these two powerful WordPress frameworks. Thesis vs Genesis – Comparing Premium WordPress Themes. I used Thesis to create this website,  my movie website and others, but I plan to use Genesis for an upcoming project. Take a look at each   premium theme, consider not only the price, but also your design options and how easy it is to use.

That is just a brief review of some of my favorites, but you might like the features in Woo Themes or Headway Themes.

Thesis

Elegant Themes

Woo Themes

Headway Themes

This is Part 3 in a series of posts helping Freelancers and other small business owners to create a WordPress website. Next Week: Plugins and other finishing touches.

Part 1: DIY Website Design For Freelancers.

Part 2: Getting Started with Your DIY Website

Have you started building your freelancers’ website yet? If so, please include a link to your website in your comments.

Sign up to receive more information about the upcoming 31 Days to Build a Better Freelancer’s Blog Challenge.

Thanks to Brian Clark at Copyblogger for this cool inforgraphic on the 15 Grammar Goofs That Make You Look Silly. Some of these are very common errors. But if you make these grammar goofs online, it could affect how you and  your business will be perceived.  What other grammatical errors are problems for you?

Like this infographic? Get more copywriting tips from Copyblogger.

Creating your own Wordpress website is not as difficult as you might imagine.  Choosing a domain name and setting up website hosting are the first steps on the road to your new website.

Buy Your Domain Name

The very first thing you must do is to  purchase your domain name. That is the name of your website. This is a very simple process and the cost is minimal.  If you operate under a business name, like Incredible Wedding Photography, purchase www.incredibleweddingphotography.com. Even if you have no immediate plans to build a website, it would be a good idea to purchase your business’ domain name or you might be surprised to find that your name is not available. In fact, that is one reason  why you will want to purchase your personal name too. If there is more than one Joe Smith in the world and you want to use www.joesmith.com,  you have to own the domain.

How to Choose a Domain Name

Rand Fiskin of SEOMoz: 12 Rules for Choosing the Right Domain Name

Smashing Magazine: The Effective Strategy For Choosing Right Domain Names

Problogger: Choosing the Domain Name for your Blog

Keep in mind that your domain name is how people will find you on the internet. When you select a domain name, make it short, easy to remember and easy to type.

Resources for buying a domain name

Domain.com

GoDaddy

NameCheap

Hosting: Self Hosted or Hosted

You can create a free blog or website on sites like Blogger and WordPress.com. They offer lots of choices in template design, as well as taking care of your hosting. This is just fine for a personal blog. It is also a good way to give blogging a test drive before you set up a site for your business. Also, many of the free hosting companies will run advertising on your site. You might even have a competitor’s ads on your site. Yikes! You should look the advertising policy of a hosted site if you plan to monetize your site. WordPress.com does not allow you to add any affiliate ads.

Normally,  I would say free is always better for a cash strapped freelancer. However, for a professional business website,  self hosting is the best way to go. With a self hosted site, your domain name would be www.mycoolwebsite.com instead of www.mycoolwebsite/blogger.com. With a self hosting account you will also get an email with your domain name. Think of the impression you make on potential clients when you send an email from your own domain, instead of from yahoo, gmail or hotmail.

Price is not the most important consideration when selecting a hosting company. Security, customer service and ease of use are essential. While most hosting companies will have similar services, you will want to use a hosting company that offers 24/7 technical support and  an easy wordpress installation.

Problogger: WordPress.com or WordPress.org? Which One’s Right for You?

“What Type of Hosting Do I Need?”

Hosting companies offer a confusing multitude of services. If you are not careful, you will purchase services that you do not need. A Shared Hosting account will work well for most blogs and websites. Shared Hosting simply means that several customers’ websites reside on a single web server, and that the server’s resources (CPU and RAM) are shared among every customer account on the machine. The costs for Shared hosting is generally  less than $10 per month.

Once your traffic increases, you might want to upgrade to a Virtual Private Server or Dedicated Hosting. E-commerce and websites that require more resources might benefit from Managed Hosting. This is a much more costly option, but provides a much higher level of service.

To run WordPress your host needs: Linux, PHP version 5.2.4 or greater, MySQL version 5.0 or greater and the mod_rewrite Apache module.  Since you are just getting started, skip add-ons like E-commerce, SSL certificates, DNS for now.

The hosting company will have a C-Panel (control panel) where you will set up your hosting plan, install WordPress, create an email account and other options. I will not go into those details here, since they will vary by company. The hosting company’s technical support should be able to walk you through the process. BlueHost has a very good series of videos on YouTube to help you set up your hosting for WordPress.

How to Use WordPress Course by Matt Hooper

How to Install WordPress and Start Blogging – Step-By-Step Guide by Marko Saric

BlueHost: How to Use WordPress

Resources for website hosting

BlueHost

GoDaddy

HostGator

DreamHost 

Synthesis (Managed Hosting for the Genesis Framework)

If you missed Part 1 in this series, check it out:  DIY Website Design For Freelancers. Next Week: Choosing a Theme Template

Sign up to receive more information about the upcoming 31 Days to Build a Better Freelancer’s Blog Challenge.

Freelancers are smart, creative and busy people. Their days are spent working on projects, looking for new clients, invoicing current clients and marketing their business. Is it any wonder that many freelancers don’t have their own website. You might have a Facebook page or a LinkedIn profile, but you do not have a site that you own and have complete control over. It’s called ‘Digital Sharecropping‘.

Hiring a good website designer can cost from $1500 for a basic design with a blog. If you want something more elaborate, the costs can really skyrocket. While a professional website designer can do a fantastic job and save you some time,  if you are a new freelancer and bootstrapping your business, the cost of website design may not be in your budget.

I am a Writer, Not a Website Designer

What’s a freelancer or entrepreneur to do? You may have the notion that website design is a complicated and mysterious process that involves a secret codes called HTML  or CSS and that you could never create a professional looking website. But with an investment of less than $500 you can build your own website.

How is that possible?  WordPress. With the free CMS (Content Management System), WordPress you can build not only a blog, but a fully functional website, In fact, popular sites like  People Magazine, EbayInc, Copyblogger, Problogger and many others are all built with WordPress.

WordPress started as a blogging platform, but with the use of pages and the new menu features, you can easily turn a simple blog into a website. By choosing the right theme (template) you can even create a portfolio for your photography business, showcase your writing samples or build an online store.

WordPress has thousands of pre-set theme templates and you can create a great looking website with little or no knowledge of html. This website is proof of that.

Some of  benefits of using WordPress as your  CMS

• SEO friendly
• Easy to use and make updates to your site
• Tons of forums, groups and online help available
• FREE or low cost to get started.

Help is Available

There is a wealth of information and resources available to help you get started with your website.

• How to Use WordPress (Video Tutorial)
• Why WordPress is The Best Choice for Business

This is Part 1 in a series on Do It Your Self Website Design for Freelancers. Next week: Getting Started with Your DIY Website will go into detail about domain names and hosting. 

Sign up to receive more information about the upcoming 31 Days to Build a Better Blog Challenge.