Wordpress questions

MattJPike · Jul 15, 2014

Hi all - newbie here.

Alleycat has suggested I start this thread after having a wordpress question or two. Hopefully this can act as a gateway for all wordpress inquiries.

I'll kick things off, shall I?

I'm jumping to wordpress after building my own website for the past 18 months - with the website landscape changing so much - mobile adaptive etc - I feel my time is better spend on the content rather than the container.

Anyways, I'm wondering if anyone is using wordpress and have a them they can recommend for authors. Something that can house an landing page for individual books, as well as series, plus other info and a blog.

Most themes I've encountered don't seem to translate very well to an author's needs.

Obviously a free one is ideal but paid is fine if it does the job right.

Cheers,
Matt

melindamusil · Jul 15, 2014

First - are you using Wordpress.com or Wordpress.org?

IMO, having landing pages for books, series, and other info has less to do with the theme and more to do with just creating a "page tree." You create pages and subpages, and connect them as needed.

Ex.
You have a page called "a series of awesome books", which is the title of your book series.
Under that you have sub-pages called "a neat book", "a neater book", and "an awesome book" - the titles of the books in the series.

Focus on the content. All your concerns are easily managed in the wordpress settings. It's easy to get caught up in worrying about your theme, but the best theme in the world will fail if it's not backed up with solid content.

MattJPike · Jul 15, 2014

melindamusil said:
First - are you using Wordpress.com or Wordpress.org?

IMO, having landing pages for books, series, and other info has less to do with the theme and more to do with just creating a "page tree." You create pages and subpages, and connect them as needed.

Ex.
You have a page called "a series of awesome books", which is the title of your book series.
Under that you have sub-pages called "a neat book", "a neater book", and "an awesome book" - the titles of the books in the series.

Focus on the content. All your concerns are easily managed in the wordpress settings. It's easy to get caught up in worrying about your theme, but the best theme in the world will fail if it's not backed up with solid content.

Thanks melindamusil. It's .org for the record.

I guess I'm still dipping my toes in the water while trying to imagine the completed structure within a theme framework at the same time.
Based on what you're saying here - which seems like pretty sound advice to me - I think I'll go ahead and build the content structure to a more complete level in the background. Hopefully dropping the themes on top of this will be of far greater value.

Thanks

melindamusil · Jul 15, 2014

Yayyy .org!

FWIW... having quality content for my website is something that I still struggle with. It's so easy to let myself get distracted by the theme or some other not-important issue like that. There's always a little voice in my head that says my theme needs to be better.

But I know that it's the content that matters. I've seen several author websites that use the default wordpress theme with small variations and are very successful, just because of their content.

Feel free to PM me if you want any more specific help. I'm not a wordpress expert, but thinking about author websites is good for me too.

MattJPike · Jul 15, 2014

melindamusil said:
Yayyy .org!

FWIW... having quality content for my website is something that I still struggle with. It's so easy to let myself get distracted by the theme or some other not-important issue like that. There's always a little voice in my head that says my theme needs to be better.

But I know that it's the content that matters. I've seen several author websites that use the default wordpress theme with small variations and are very successful, just because of their content.

Feel free to PM me if you want any more specific help. I'm not a wordpress expert, but thinking about author websites is good for me too.

I've started making some real progress on structure - I might send you a WIP version when it's closer - if that's OK with you?

RichHelms · Jul 15, 2014

I agree. Page vs post is a key with WP. Look is so easily changed. Also do you want new visitors landing on a static front page or latest posts. Personally I prefer latest post as static front pages do not change so do not encourage repeat visits

Laer Carroll · Jul 16, 2014

I agree with several other posters. You must focus on format at the beginning of a blog. But once the basic structure is set content is much more important.

For my author’s web site I used the 2010 theme and set up the blog part of the site as the Home page. I post at least once a week and no more than three times a week. The posts are fairly short, no more than four paragraphs. I always try to include a graphic of some sort, often a YouTube video (meaning the first key image shows up in the post, and the video runs if you click on it).

The rest of the site can be gotten to by a menu across the top of window. It includes a Bio and an introduction to each of my series. Under each series is a submenu which lets readers read the first few chapters of each book.

If I write something long, I put that in the static part of the site. Then in the blog part I put the beginning one to three paragraphs, ending with a Continued link to the long page or pages. One of my earliest long pages continues to be popular three years since I put it up, about 3000 visits over as many years and the numbers per month are climbing.

Including images makes your site more attractive. There are many millions (maybe billions) of public domain images on the web, many of them from government sites or from wikimedia.org.

MattJPike · Jul 17, 2014

I'm starting to discover the widget love - a few of which offer up some excellent flexibility in delivering content. I'm a designer by trade - so I want to keep it visually appealing.
I hear what a lot of people are saying re. content and keeping the home page 'ticking over'. I guess I'm trying to balance that with considering how people will engage with the website. I don't think it's going to visited on a weekly basis unprompted and I will be driving to particular posts through social media.

My though process is the home page will be visited by on more of a one-off basis and I want that to be more of a showcase experience. Other traffic will be driven through to the blog and latest news etc by me through other social media channels - that's were some of the richer engagement will come from but I do want to keep that showroom experience on the home page.

Bushrat · Aug 8, 2014

You can download a dummie version of Wordpress for free, it's called Instant Wordpress. That lets you fool around with all the themes, plugins and widgets in private and is a great way to decide on what you want your wordpress site before committing to a domain. It's also a good way of learning the wordpress ropes if you don't have experience with webpage design - if you screw up, it won't matter because you haven't done anything to your actual website. I found it incredibly helpful.

Wordpress questions

MattJPike

melindamusil

practical experience, FTW

MattJPike

melindamusil

practical experience, FTW

MattJPike

RichHelms

@BookTrailer101

Laer Carroll

Aerospace engineer turned writer

MattJPike

Bushrat

reaching for the sun