God bless you people

[GPWA Aaron]

I'm in a men's chorus, and have been nominated to redesign our group's website. I decided on WordPress because I'd heard that it was easy to use and customize.

I bought a custom theme, started working on it, and holy cow, I can't believe how frustrating it is. I've spent about 10-12 hours working on it and I've gotten nowhere. I don't know how you all do this every day.

[wonderpunter]

it's easy to use for a beginner, after about a week of working it out you will also think it's easy .. Some themes are more limited than others though

[sweetbet]

It took me a while to get the hang of it, but now that I'm quite familiar with it, I wouldn't use anything else. Wordpress rocks !!

[Triple7]

It all starts with choosing the right theme. Some themes have such limited options and are such a frustrating thing...

[Miles_FTA]

You have to do some looking around On Google for hints and Tips that make things easier . No one said its easy but with a little work and a bit of extra effort and you ll soon see the benefits

[knowyourbets]

If you've not got too far have a look at creating a Joomla website. Also free but seems to have more flexibility and some great extensions. Of course, as with Wordpress will no doubt seem daunting but once you get used to it, it becomes very simple. Also they have a great forum where you can post your query and a member generally provides assistance in a couple of hours.

[Rostick]

you will get the hang of it if you continue working, keep reading tutorials, short "idiots' guides", nothing fancy (I guess it`s not your job). But it also depends a lot on the theme. there are some themes that limit you, especially some themes for woocommerce are horror in terms of customization.

[peterhanneman]

You'll get used to it, trust me. WordPress can be very hard to use for the first few days but as soon as you get to grips with it, it's reasonably easy to code and customize.

[sweetbet]

Remember to safeguard your WP site from the countless number of hackers out there.

[RacingJim]

I love Wordpress, the best thing is how many free extensions there are and how much support there is out there cos everyone's using it. Stick with it, it's well worth it. Avoid Joomla by the way, it's a dog.

[GPWA Aaron]

Still hacking away and not accomplishing anything. I'm so confused by the Internet. Should I admit that if I work for the GPWA?

[DanHorvat]

Ask away, Aaron. What's the problem?

[GPWA Aaron]

So the site is finally up and running. Still a little thin on content, but I'm getting there.

I have to say I am very impressed with how available the developer of the theme (Soundcheck) was to answer questions. Once I figured out where to ask about problems, he walked me through all the quirks I was dealing with.

I'm still not using full functionality of the site (I'd like to upload audio so people can hear our songs, among other things) but it's ready to roll and launched prior to our open rehearsals, which was pretty important.

If you'd like to take a look, here's where it lives: http://highlandgleeclub.com/

Any feedback -- good, bad or ugly -- is welcome (I know, we need more images and more blog posts, I'm working on that)!

[GPWA Aaron]

Oh, but one thing I haven't been able to figure out is how plug-ins work. Some seem to be available right within the web client, while others require a download. How do I use a plug-in that requires a download if I only want to work on the site in the web client? This is obviously a work-on-it-when-I-get-an-hour-or-two project, so I'd rather not have to spend a ton of time trying to learn a whole new bag of tricks.

[DanHorvat]

Sweet. That's talent, my friend.

Images make or break the site. While the main pic is great most of it is out of focus. The quality of the logo is poor. Got any other versions of it? I actually tried to fix this one for you but it's hopeless.

You install all plugins by searching for them from within your Wordpress administrator back end, I think it's "Add Plugin" and then there's a search box. You can also search on Google, then download plugins and then install them manually but I'm never doing that.

[Doolally]

I agree with Dan on the background pic but overall the site looks really good and seems to work well.

Well done.

[RacingJim]

I like it, I don't mind the main pic at all as I felt it was meant to be like that but each to their own I suppose. Overall I think it's a nice looking site, maybe get a logo done but again not really necessary for the type of site it is.

[GPWA Aaron]

Yeah, I need to get a better copy of the logo. No one seems to have a hi-res digital version.

We're hiring a professional photographer to our first rehearsal next week, so I should have quite a few images then. I'm going to lobby for hiring one for our first concert in October, too, so we'll have loads more images to work with (and I can find a more suitable banner image to work with).

I'm working on a few more history pages that are fairly easy to set up, then need to figure out the audio portion. Overall I'm pretty pleased, especially when compared to what we used to have. Wish I'd saved a few screenshots of that ugly beast!

[DanHorvat]

Careful what you wish for.
http://web.archive.org/web/201412171...dgleeclub.com/
http://web.archive.org/web/*/http://...dgleeclub.com/