Providing Inspiration, Skills and Community for the modern creative. EASY WEBSITE FOR MAKERS & UPCYCLERS by Inma Goodhew on December, 16
EASY WEBSITE FOR MAKERS & UPCYCLERS 1 WHY YOU NEED A WEBSITE 3 WHO AM I? 4 WORDPRESS 4 WHAT YOU NEED: 4 YOUR DOMAIN NAME 5 YOUR HOSTING COMPANY 5 EXERCISE 1: BUY YOUR HOSTING & DOMAIN 5 EXERCISE 2: INSTALL WORDPRESS 7 WORDPRESS ADMIN 9 WORDPRESS MENUS 10 POSTS 10 OPTIONS: 10 MEDIA 11 OPTIONS 11 PAGES 11 OPTIONS 11 APPEARANCE 12 OPTIONS 12 PLUGINS 13 OPTIONS 13 YOUR WEBSITE 14 CONFIGURE YOUR THEME 14 EXERCISE 3: THE THEME & THE LOOK AND FEEL 14 SITE IDENTITY 14 COLOURS 14 HEADER IMAGE 14 BACKGROUND IMAGE 15 MENUS 15 WIDGETS 15 STATIC FRONT PAGE 15 CREATE YOUR WEBSITE PAGES 15 EXERCISE 4: CREATE YOUR MAIN PAGES 16 EXERCISE 5: CREATE A BLOG PAGE 16 EXERCISE 6: ADD PAGES TO YOUR MAIN MENU 17 E-COMMERCE FOR YOUR PRODUCTS 19 EXERCISE 7: INSTALL THE WOOCOMMERCE PLUGIN 19 EXERCISE 8: SET UP A FEW PRODUCTS 20 WIDGETS 21 EXERCISE 9: ADD A PRODUCT CATEGORIES WIDGET 21
WHY YOU NEED A WEBSITE You need a website which reflects who you are and what you do but you are a tiny bit overwhelmed by the whole process. A website is the best way to market your business and create trust with your customers: It represents your brand & values and shows who you are. It can be found via SEO in Google, Bing and other search engines. You can use the blog (a part of the website) to write and post pictures about your experiences, products, materials and why not, your challenges. You can invite people to write for you. You can add an e-commerce shop to sell your products. You may have a Facebook page, but is not YOURS. Facebook is a channel, a window to showcase your business, what you do or how you make things. But it shouldn t be your shop. And would you buy something from someone without a website? You've heard you should use Wordpress, but you may not even know where to start or if you have started you don t even know how to make it look the way it should look! Or you know you can do it, you just don't have the time to figure everything out right now. What should be on your home page? How do you list your products? What theme should you use? Who should you use for hosting? How do you get from a blank page to a gorgeous website? What's the best way to sell your stuff and take payments? SO. MANY. QUESTIONS. This is why I put together this quick guide to help you setup a Wordpress site in just a few hours. Simple. Easy. Just follow the steps and you will have a gorgeous website. From there, and once you have a bit more time and are less overwhelmed because you have already hacked the whole Wordpress thing, you will be able to customise it, add your favourite theme or the plugins to give you the functionality you need. But for now, you only need this. Are you ready?
WHO AM I? Hi!! My name is Inma Goodhew and I am the founder of The Old School Club & Teach Craft Revolution. I have been running my business for 5 years and I can tell you I have learned the good, the bad and the ugly. Combining my experience running a creative business and working in IT for over 10 years, I am now on a mission to help people like you, creatives, homemakers & upcyclers create better businesses so you can run a business that works for you, whether it is in your spare hours or as a full time business. WORDPRESS WordPress is a publishing platform that makes it easy for anyone to publish online. It comes in two flavours: the fully hosted WordPress.com (i.e. they run it for you), and the self-hosted (i.e. you run it) version, this is available for free at WordPress.org. I recommend you go for Wordpress.org. It may be a bit more challenging to start with but it gives you more flexibility, allows for customisation and you can use your own domain name. WHAT YOU NEED: - A domain name (your business name) and a platform to host your Wordpress website. - A theme (this is the main functionality, branding & colours for your site) - An e-commerce plugin or theme. - 5 pages : Home, Products/Shop, About and Blog (optional) and Terms & Conditions.
YOUR DOMAIN NAME The name for your domain can be your business name, your name or anything that links to what you do. I obviously recommend your business name wherever possible. There are many extensions you can use:.com,.co.uk,.me,.co,.net, etc. Some of them are cheaper and others more expensive. If you are in the UK, I recommend you go for a simple.co.uk. You can check if your domain is available here: https://uk.godaddy.com But do not buy your domain just yet as your hosting company will probably throw a free domain when you buy the hosting from them. YOUR HOSTING COMPANY Choose a reliable, established company to host your domain and website. A platform that can create backups, has a very good support team and very few down times. Note that you will need to pay for your Domain and your Hosting, fish around for prices but do not always go for the cheapest as it may be expensive in the long term. I recommend 1and1.co.uk. I have been working with them for the past 5 years and I have had no issues since. I host 3 websites with them, 5 domains and all my email accounts. You can also use WPEngine.com. (Please note that the link above is an affiliate link and I will get some bonus points if you buy from that link! - Thank you) EXERCISE 1: BUY YOUR HOSTING & DOMAIN Go to www. 1and1.co.uk and select 1&1 WP Hosting (this is the hosting for your Wordpress website). Select the WP Basic Package (You don t need anything else!)
Add your domain name to the package
Make a payment & follow the steps to set up your account. Once you have your account in 1and1, you need to install Wordpress. EXERCISE 2: INSTALL WORDPRESS Log into 1and1 admin console (1and1.co.uk), to Wordpress Installation. Click on Create Website, enter your website title (it should be your business name) and it will create the Wordpress framework for you.
Looking like this: From there you can click on Edit Website or go directly to this link: www.yourdomainname.co.uk/wp-admin Wp-admin is the admin console for your Wordpress site. NOTE: you should have two logins, one for 1and1 control panel and another one for Wordpress. Keep them both safe and easy to find!
WORDPRESS ADMIN Log into your Wordpress Admin This is your Wordpress Admin Dashboard, from here you will be able to configure your website.
WORDPRESS MENUS These are the main options we are going to be using today. POSTS This is the menu where you create and manage your blog posts. When you start you will only have one draft post. Posts are used to create stories, not to sell your products. Through your posts you could be showing people what you do, how you do it, market fairs you attend, before & after, your story, etc. OPTIONS: Create Categories (this is a way to classify your posts) Add a new Post Add tags
MEDIA This is a collection of your images (the library will grow as you add images to your website, products & posts). OPTIONS Add New Media PAGES This is the list of all your website pages. Some of them will come by default when you install Wordpress, others will be created as you configure your theme or your e-commerce plugin. I will cover these in the next sections. OPTIONS
Add New Page APPEARANCE This is your theme, this is what is going to give you the nice look & feel. You can customise your theme to match your brand, colours, sections, front page, blog page, etc. Depending on what theme you choose to install, these options may be different, but most of them offer the following: OPTIONS Select a free theme or add a new one Customise your theme Widgets - adds sections to your website. Menus - add a menu to your website Header - customises your header Background - customises the background or your website Editor - this is an html editor for developers, I wouldn't touch it!
PLUGINS This is where you install specific functionality such as e-commerce (to be able to sell your products online), a mailchimp plugin (to be able to capture your potential customers details and send them newsletters) or a social media plugin (to be able to add the links to your social media for people to follow you). OPTIONS Add a new plugin Activate & Deactivate Plugins
YOUR WEBSITE CONFIGURE YOUR THEME EXERCISE 3: THE THEME & THE LOOK AND FEEL Go to Appearance -> Themes, and select one of the three themes. This is more than enough for now to create your simple website. If you are not familiar with Themes, looking at all the different options and possibilities out there can be very overwhelming, so let s stay with the free theme for now and we will have time to add your desired theme in the future. Select one of the Themes and click on Customise. SITE IDENTITY Upload your Logo, Enter a Title (if needed, I don t have one on this website) and a Tagline (that is the comment under the logo). COLOURS Configure the general colours in your website, you can play with different options and see the final look. HEADER IMAGE You can upload a banner that will show across all the pages. I don t have one on this website, but you can add one if it works with your style.
BACKGROUND IMAGE Again, you can upload a background image for your pages. I don t have one on this website, I like to keep it simple! MENUS This is where you are going to set up your Top Menu (and Footer menu if you need one). But let s start with the Top Menu Click on Add New Menu, give it a name. Mine is called Main Menu. Click on Save and keep because you need to have some pages created before you can add them to your Menu - we are going to do this in a minute. WIDGETS This is where you will add specific functionality such as the Search Box or your Product Categories. We will come back to this in a minute. STATIC FRONT PAGE This is where you select what you want to appear on your Front (Home) page - this could be a static page or your blog page with the latest posts. And which one is going to be your Blog page. CREATE YOUR WEBSITE PAGES These are the main pages of your website. You will be able to create more as you need them, but for now you only need these.
EXERCISE 4: CREATE YOUR MAIN PAGES Go to Pages on your Main Menu, and Add the following pages: - HOME PAGE : mine doesn t have a title, but you can call yours HOME. - ABOUT : this is where you are going to write down WHO you are, WHAT you create, make or do and HOW your customers are going to benefit from it. - TERMS & CONDITIONS : this includes your return policies, delivery prices, materials, regulations, etc. - CONTACT: this is for people to find you! If you don t want to add an address you can start with a telephone number. - BLOG : This is going to be your blog page. I will show you this one step by step. EXERCISE 5: CREATE A BLOG PAGE Add New Page, call it BLOG
Do not write anything on the large text box. Click on PUBLISH EXERCISE 6: ADD PAGES TO YOUR MAIN MENU Go to Appearance -> Menus Click on the Menu you previously created. Click on each page you would like to add and Add to Menu. You can sort out these pages as you wish.
Click on Save Menu Now let s configure your front & blog pages. Go to Appearance -> Customise -> Static Front Page Select the HOME Page as your Front Page Select the BLOG page as your Posts Page Click Save & Publish You can now start creating new posts for your Blog!!!! You can also edit your HOME Page (Go to Pages) and add images & text.
E-COMMERCE FOR YOUR PRODUCTS You don t need to sell your products through your website just yet, but with an e-commerce functionality you can upload your product images and build a portfolio for people to see what you make. You can add a note saying something like contact me for details or commissions if you don t want to sell online. EXERCISE 7: INSTALL THE WOOCOMMERCE PLUGIN Go to Plugins, Add New. This will give you a list of the most popular Free plugins. On the Search box, enter WooCommerce.
Click on Install Now (mine says Update because it is already installed!) Once the Plugin is installed, click on Activate, two options will appear on the left side or your Wordpress Menus: WooCommerce and Products EXERCISE 8: SET UP A FEW PRODUCTS Go to Products - Add new Product. You should familiarise with the different product options, including variables, delivery options, shipment options, categories & other attributes. This will create a portfolio of products to display in your shop. Add the following pages to your Main Menu: Account & Shop.
WIDGETS Once you have a few product categories and products, you can add a list of categories to one of your sections (Widgets) on the website. EXERCISE 9: ADD A PRODUCT CATEGORIES WIDGET Go to your Wordpress Menu and select Appearance -> Widgets Click on Sidebar (your section on the right side) and the widgets you would like to display. For example you can add a Search Option And if you go down the Available Widgets you will see the WooCommerce options. Drag and drop to your Sidebar and click on Save. You should have now a simple but ready to rock Wordpress Website. There are lots of things you could do to improve it (add a new more customisable Theme, a mailchimp box, a more dynamic home page, a payment system ) but there is time for everything!!! ARE YOU READY FOR THE CHALLENGE? READ MORE ON TEACH CRAFT REVOLUTION