Building Websites With WordPress

When I started making websites in 1998 all websites were hand-coded. There were very little fancy designs and the client couldn't update the website themselves. This meant I got a fair amount of repeat business to do updates, which was good!

WordPress was released in 2003 and originally was just a blogging platform. Blog is a shortened version of "web log" and was basically like keeping an online diary with posts appearing in order of publication.

Since then WordPress has evolved a lot! A complete website can be built with WordPress, not just a blog. It took me a while to get to grips with it but having been building websites with WordPress for over 15 years now I don't think I would go back to hand coding - although sometimes it's fun to do.

WordPress - The Basics

The basic WordPress installation contains a "theme" which gives it its look and maybe a couple of plugins (add-ons that give additional functionality).

The first WordPress theme was called the Classic theme. It was a basic theme which made a website look a little better than just plain text. Over the years WordPress was improved along with updated looks and in 2010 they came out with the Twenty Ten theme.

But enough of the history lesson! The default WordPress theme is now Twenty Twenty Five.

When a theme is active you use the Customizer tool to edit things such as fonts, font sizes, colour schemes and more. This way if you use an H1 heading it's the same sitewide and you don't have to do anything to format it.

And then you're all set. Just create pages and add content.

WordPress - Plugins

As mentioned before, plugins are add-ons that provide extra functionality. An example would be a Contact Form plugin to have a form on your website; an events plugin so you can easily show events on your website along with a calendar.

There are also plugins which are "page builders". These plugins can be used to make building and styling pages very easy. They often have page templates so you can create a great looking page just by using the template.

One such plugin is Elementor. You can see all the elements of the page as you build it without having to edit any code. Some page builders don't have this function and you have to create blocks and then save the page and view it to see how it looks. Elementor is my preferred page builder. It has a lot of functionality with the free version and even more with the paid version. You can also get additional plugins that extend Elementor - like an accordion drop-down, or number countdown etc.

Pages or Posts?

This is often a misunderstood concept. Pages are the actual pages on your website and you access them through a menu (usually at the top of the page). Such things as Home, Contact, Services would be pages.

Posts are for the blog. When you create a post it will automatically appear on the Blog page with an excerpt and a "read more" link to go to the post.

This doesn't mean you couldn't link to a blog post from a page but the key difference is that it appears on the blog page.

Some Good Themes

Apart from the default WordPress theme, there are a few which reportedly are quick to load.

Hello Elementor: This is made by Elementor and keeps things down to the bare bones in order to make the website quick to load.

Astra: This theme has some great free templates which you can import and use. Using a template you can practically create a whole website and then all you have to do is change the text and photos to make them your own! This theme uses the Elementor page builder.

Ocean WP: Another theme that has free templates (you can also buy premium ones) and uses the Elementor page builder.

Some Basic Plugins

Elementor: As mentioned above this is a page builder plugin

Elementor Header/Footer: If you have Elementor Pro this isn't needed but its basic use is to be able to create headers and a footer for your website. You can do this in the customizer but there is a greater free for design when using Elementor. You can even create different footers for different pages, for example, you might want a different footer on a landing page which is being accessed from an advert.

Contact Form 7: A popular contact form. It does the job but if you want to make it look different you need to be able to write some styling code.

WP Forms: Another popular contact form plugin. This one looks a little prettier! It also has a few other functions which Contact Form 7 doesn't.

Summary

You could build a great website with just the above themes and plugins!