My Wordpress website details

Quite a few people have PM'd me to ask me about how my website is set up, so I thought i'd share publicly. It's no secret, anyone can do it, it just takes a bit of time and some playing around.

The site is built on Wordpress and is hosted on HostGator- an excellent web host. That's an affiliate link, but I use them myself for 100% of my hosting. Use the coupon code "potnaug2011" (without the quotes, and it will work for years) for a 25% discount off your first payment, be it for a month or 3 years.

The theme is from Photocrati, who specialise in Wordpress themes for photographers. They regularly update the theme, giving new looks and extra features. I've tweaked it a bit, just to change a few details, which is easy given they give you an area to enter custom css. You can modify the PHP, but since they change that regularly that's more problematic. It's a paid theme, but it's worth the $75 or so for a good professional theme, support is good. I previously used Viva Themes, who provided surly, almost non-existant support, so I can't recommend them.

Here are the plugins I used - all free.

• Akismet (spam prevention)
  
• Bad Behavior (spam prevention)
  
• Contact Form 7
  
• Google Analyticator (for google analytics)
  
• Google XML Sitemaps (helps google/SEO)
  
• Random Image Widgit
  
• W3 total cache (improves page load times heaps but takes 30-60 minutes to set up, and some trial and error with the minify as not all js and css files like to be lumped together)
  
• Widgit Logic (to control what pages the random image widgit shows images on)
  
• WordPress SEO
  

Thanks! always nice to have some sort of direction when creating a new website!

I am trying to setup the nextgen on my home page and wow is it hard. I just cant figure it out.

any help would be awesome.

I remember it being a little tricky. You install NextGen, Lightbox 2, go into the NG control area and define your galleries. Then you use code something like this to display it on a page

[nggallery id=9]

i do everything that you said and post the gallery on my homepage and nothing happens.

I can get the nextgen to work on other pages other than the home page, but all I can get is the small picture. Check my site under portfolio. www.clarkbeckerphotogr​aphy.com

Wordpress is the shiz!

For people who want to do their own coding, or pay someone to do it... that's all good.

But for the rest of us, thank god for Wordpress!

I'm not a Wordpress expert, I just played around until it worked. I don't know if it works on home pages since my site has a custom home page. I can only see one image in your gallery.

Thanks...I've been thinking of doing my own...right now i'm using a template.

I also did my website with wordpress and I created a theme from almost zero see here

Updated with details of my new theme and current plugins in use.

tim wrote in post #13281618
Updated with details of my new theme and current plugins in use.

Thanks Tim. I am a newbie to wordpress, but why do you need a host separate from Wordpress and a theme? How do you use the host? What are the main purposes? Is it to hotlink your images from the host unto your Wordpress site and provide domain support?

professorman wrote in post #14088019
Thanks Tim. I am a newbie to wordpress, but why do you need a host separate from Wordpress and a theme? How do you use the host? What are the main purposes? Is it to hotlink your images from the host unto your Wordpress site and provide domain support?

Like any website, you install wordpress on a host, typically with your own domain name. You can use hosted wordpress on wordpress.com , but you can't customise or control it nearly as much, it's not as professional, and you don't typically get your own domain that way.

If you want to install and customise wordpress, the software, you need a host. I use and recommend hostgator.

Okay, great. What creates the website? Is this the wordpress template? You basically purchase this, then upload it to the host to get the website, then it incorporates wordpress to update the content?

Which plan do you have on hostgator? Their rates seem to be reasonable.

professorman wrote in post #14088285
Okay, great. What creates the website? Is this the wordpress template? You basically purchase this, then upload it to the host to get the website, then it incorporates wordpress to update the content?

Which plan do you have on hostgator? Their rates seem to be reasonable.

At least with my host, Wordpress was already pre-installed in the Control Panel in the domain's hard disk and all I had to do was update it and install the theme. See if you can do the same, my host is a small company owned by a friend but something like Hostgator should have it as well