Needing some website/blog template advice and/or recommendations!
Hey folks,
I've been playing with the thought of updating my page with a new design and a custom URL (because, let's face it, it looks like a blog from 2005), but I'm terrible at picking a useful design. I'm using Wordpress at the moment and would be really grateful to all of you if you could help me pick a template that allows for a good representation of my work. So, please, if you have any recommendations, post them here. Paid or free templates, doesn't matter. If it's nice I'm willing to pay for it.
Thank you in advance!!!
I would suggest to purchase your domain name and get a hosting provider if you haven't already done that. For my website I use the Divi theme. It's pretty easy to use, has a lot of youtube videos and tutorials if things get to complicated for you, but most impartantly: it's more customizable than any other theme I have come across, without a need to learn coding.
Not sure if that's the sort of advice you're looking for, but I hop it helps.
I think you're being a little harsh on yourself about your current site. It definitely doesn't look like a site from 2005. (Sorry, but I haz opinions on web design!) Your site has a clean and elegant design. It works beautifully on mobile. Text is very readable, and images look good and scale well.
I think it's easy to go over the top with bells and whistles when it comes to web design, but in your case, you want your images front and centre. The maps are what should draw attention, not the site design. I think, maybe, you could redo your header, though that's only my personal opinion. It looks good, but something with a little more colour might catch the eye more when the site first loads. But again, that's a personal taste thing.
I second Daniel's advice that you should get hosting and your own domain name. It's really not that expensive these days. I'm always slightly surprised at mapmakers who send prospective clients to their DeviantArt page. Nooooo! If your online 'brand' is important to you, you should always have control it. Nothing wrong with augmenting it with DeviantArt, FB, Instagram etc to boost your profile, but you want your own site as the first port of call. Who can say what social media sites will be popular (or still around) in five years. Don't hand control to someone else.
I don't have any specific recommendations for site themes unfortunately. Themeforest.net has some gorgeous portfolio themes, and many of them offer some customisations without requiring much technical knowledge. We've bought a few at work and not had any issues (though these were more 'corporate' design themes.)
"We are the music makers, and we are the dreamers of dreams"
If you're going to be keeping your maps on there then make sure you find a package offering good data transfer limits as well as reasonable disk space. If you can, it may be worth snooping around user forums (if you can get access) or trying to find out a bit more about how reliable their service is. If I was on a website looking at stuff and it kept falling over with internal error or connection refused every couple of pages, or just simply kept timing out, then I'd be off looking elsewhere.
The things you'd need for hosting using Wordpress are PHP and SQL. FTP access and CPanel are pretty much essential too in my opinion. A package called Softaculous makes an easy job of installing packages such as Wordpress and a CMS like Joopla if you wanted to go down that road. A starter pack can range from a few $ per month but as graphics tend to be fairly bandwidth intensive expect to be looking at upgrading the package in the near future, especially if there are a lot of visitors.
Another option is to go for a virtual private server (VPS). This is a server within a server and the way it's usually set up means you get a clean system installed with the operating system of your choice. The downside is you have to set up everything yourself, although many providers also offer a paid for management service. Costs can start escalating by the wheelbarrow load. If you decide on this bear in mind that the disk space is total disk space without anything installed. So 5GB on a hosting package is in addition to things like CPanel, Apache, mail servers, anti virus, that sort of thing. On a VPS you'd have to install those yourself. The OS and even the most streamlined CPanel installation would pretty much wipe that out.
At an extreme level a dedicated server gives you full control but they are very expensive and require a lot of user maintenance unless you're willing to fork out for paid maintenance. I've only mentioned this for completeness. Mind there's another way to get a dedicated server and that's to run one at home using an old PC. I've done this before but again there are problems with redundancy and bandwidth, not to mention power outages. It's great for learning server side setup and for personal "Hello, this is my website and here's a picture of my cat/dog/duck billed platypus" sites but I'd hate to see how a 1000 visitors per day eCommerce site would perform on one.
Sorry for the lengthy reply. I'd do lots of research, check out web hosting forums. Ask lots of questions. Even if you're just getting a few bucks from your hobby rather than relying on making maps to provide an income it still pays to keep your overheads as low as possible while giving your maps the best possible exposure platform that you can. Oh and beware of any hidden charges - like if you exceed your data transfer one month, what happens? I can't emphasise it enough - ask questions, via email if possible, find out exactly what you're getting for your money and exactly what you're not getting.
Oh yeah, I almost forgot to add but ChickPea sneaked in and said it for me - I don't see anything at all wrong with your current layout, it's clean and it's obvious what you're offering. It's easy to read and scrolls well.
Last edited by Straf; 11-17-2017 at 07:16 AM.
I'm not sure I would recommend a VPS/dedicated server unless the person has some experience in that field (sorry Wired, I'm not sure if you do?) I would have through a regular hosting package with a decent bandwidth allowance & mysql would be perfectly adequate. I agree cPanel is pretty much essential and I think Softaculous comes with that as standard? (At least, it was there on every cPanel I've ever used).
Wired, have you seen any sites that you particularly liked and perhaps would like something similar? Or are you pretty much open to anything?
"We are the music makers, and we are the dreamers of dreams"
I'm not recommending a VPS, I was just giving a spectrum of options and also pointing out the caveats. I should have worded it more to point out that a VPS 'deal' may seem attractive on the surface but when everything is taken into account it's anything but as the OS and whatever else is needed eats away at the disk space. Also even asking for help on something falls into the category of server management and can add to the cost.
Hosting is the best way to go but do your homework. Especially monthly data transfer limits although these are quite generous these days anyway.
Well, in principle something like Daniel's design: representative, with the main view on the maps rather than whatever text I might/want to add, but visually "quiet" (ie. not completely overladen). Sorry that I'm keeping this so brief right now, but I totally forgot about this after a pretty stressful week. :/
If you're happy sticking with Wordpress you could look for portfolio themes.
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