Last Updated on March 6, 2024
Times of man’s dependence on the Internet has come. There are a tons of users who definitely want to leave their mark on the ever growing web. The easiest way to do so, is to create a website/blog/forum/portal. If you want to do something like that you should have specific knowledge and skills. Today however, everything is different because of Wordpress. So, what is Wordpress? Let’s talk about it.
If you turn to the Wikipedia, you would know that WordPress is a content management system (CMS) with open source software, distributed under the GNU GPL. It is written in PHP, use MySQL as the database. Scope of application varies from blogs to complicated news sites, and even online stores. Built-in system of “themes” and “plugins” with good architecture allows the construction of any web-projects. WordPress is released under the GPL version 2.
In the simplest terms, WordPress is the best platform for the Internet project in the whole world, which publishes a daily news, photos, videos and other information (content). Why the best? Decide on your own, I’ll bring you five main benefits:
> Price. WordPress is free. For the beginner who wants to create a blog or a small project, this is important point and a huge advantage. Why should you pay money for other content management system, if the best one available free of charge?
> Easy. The entire installation process takes less than 5 minutes, and you don’t need to be a programmer or understand other technical moments. The developers tried their best to make the system simple and user-friendly, so even the absolute beginner could quickly find out how to use it.
> Cross-platform. WordPress is installed and used directly on your site (server). The computer doesn’t need anything extra to install. It means that you can manage your website from any computer and any operating system. The only necessary condition is an Internet connection. Even in vehicle with mobile phone in your hands, you can add a new article on the website and attach a picture.
> Built-in editor. Using WordPress is easy with an intuitive built-in editor. If you’ve ever worked in Microsoft Word, using the editor would be children’s task for you. Text formatting, links, inserting pictures and videos, all these acts can be done in a couple of clicks.
> Popularity. WordPress is the most popular content management system. According to official statistics, WordPress market share exceeds 55% from other competitors. And the latest version of WordPress 3.2.1 on September 2011 has been downloaded more than 20 million times (the number is growing at a breakneck pace)!
What does it mean? It means that you’ll find a lot of free themes, templates and plug-ins in internet. And if you have any questions, you can easily find the answer, because of huge Wordpress community.
So, now you have a website, which is powered by Wordpress. What else? I want to add a few things, which will convince you to finally undisputed leadership of Wordpress. And the first is a Theme that can make your page unique.
[heading color=”black”]Wordpress Themes[/heading]
Conventionally, all the Themes can be divided into two groups: paid and free ones. There is a great number of both free and paid templates. If you’re not ready to invest much in your website, a free theme is the best option for you. Now I’m going to share several free themes which are worth paying attention to.
1. PageLines Wordpress Theme
PageLines will help you do amazing things faster & easier than ever before. A responsive drag-and-drop platform for professional websites based on CSS3 and HTML5. It was designed by PageLines in California.
2. Responsive Wordpress Theme
Responsive theme WordPress, which has 9 template pages, such as a Blog, Blog template design, and summary based on the layout: side / content side / the contents of half the content/sidebar and content/lateral half. Responsive also supports 9 widget areas, but the main thing is that the theme is made with a liquid fraction, based on a grid system to adapt the design to any screen, browser and operating system. There is also a full-page width, site template, as well as landing page for your PDA or any other purpose.
3. FTFTheme – FreePremium WordPress Theme
This theme is extremely easy in use, because it controlled by the Turbo Editor Framework. This theme can be used to conduct your personal page or any other type of business. Moreover, this theme has many built-in sliders, which can be used for various purposes, such as a perfect demonstration of your portfolio.
I would like to say a few words about the paid themes. The fact is that a huge part of free themes have weak functionality, design and underdeveloped shortcomings, that is why finding a good theme is extremely difficult task. If it appears, it becomes popular at once. I’ll share with you the themes that I like the most. If you want something different, there are a lot of Marketplaces, which sells a lot of incredible themes. Thus, the three paid themes, which will perfectly fit for almost any type of site.
1. Garnish: Clean–Cut WordPress Portfolio Theme
Garnish is an AJAX-powered one-page portfolio theme, designed by Orman Clark. It’s clean, filterable and simple. The theme is available at ThemeForest for $35. Thanks to the easy-to-use control panel, you’ll have no problem customizing the logo, layout or portfolio.
2. Angular – Responsive Portfolio
Angular is a responsive WordPress Theme (it means that it tries resizing your browser). It’ll perfectly fits to users who want to showcase their work on a neat portfolio site. You can easily edit the layout, fonts and colors directly from the backend. Dynamic template builder will help you create the website you need in no time.
3. GoodSpace – Responsive Minimal WP Theme
Good Space is a Wordpress theme, created for the design agency. It’s clean, minimal and modern. This theme has a responsive ability as well. Moreover, it comes with tons of features. The admin panel is featured really rich. Choosing over 450 fonts (or if you want to use your own), you can create unlimited sidebar. Also you have the possibility to translate each elements to your own language via this admin panel.
As you’ve noticed, all the themes that I presented to your attention were taken from the ThemeForest (one of the biggest Marketplace today). Therefore, if the themes that I’ve suggested don’t fit, then Themeforest will be a suitable option for sure.
[heading color=”black”]Wordpress Portfolio Plugins[/heading]
Whats the next step after the Theme was chosen and installed? Let’s talk about Wordpress Plugins.
Many Themes have provide a great number of functions. These functions can be substitute, but might not be the best quality as they could be. So, if you’re lacking anything in your Theme, just look for a suitable plugin, install and use it. I’ll tell you about some plug-ins, you may find useful.
Let’s start with the portfolio, because it’s a great need to a huge number of people, beginning from photographers, artists, designers, ending with realtors, and engineers.
Before you activate a plug-in for your portfolio, be sure to check if your portfolio already provides it. If for some reason you are not satisfied with the results, you have access to hundreds of useful gallery based plugins that can easily be installed. We listed 3 quality plugins for your convenience.
1. JH Portfolio is multifunctional plug-in, didn’t cause the difficulties in the installation, give more opportunities to customize than others. The plugin works as needed. But here was noticed a small flaw: when you use the Google XML Sitemaps plugin in the sitemap gets only the first page of the portfolio.
2. NextGEN Gallery is the best plugin to create a gallery in Wordpress without a doubt. If you haven’t tried it yet, I recommend you to do it without delay. It has broad functionality and it’s quite simple and intuitive to work through the admin panel. The only problem (if I may say so) is that this module is used by almost everyone, so the original can not succeed. But in the NextGEN has all required from the galleries, it’s high quality and professionally done, and even supports flash slideshow.
3. Lazyest Gallery is a powerful plug-in with a large number of excellent features. It allows you to display images from the gallery randomly, adding a damping effect (fading). This module is fully editable from the admin panel, where you can specify the number of output random images, a variety of effects to change the picture, select portrait or landscape display. It also allows you to post comments.
The most common question from internet users is: “How can I sell products with my website?”
[heading color=”black”]Wordpress Commerce Commerce[/heading]
Do you want to sell products on your website? If so, you need to install the proper plug-in. We listed 3 useful ones below.
PayPal File Download WordPress Plugin
I started with this plugin, because I use it personally. It’s simple. All you need is to create a product page on the plug-in, put a link to download the file and set the price. Once you complete this step the plugin will give you a link that you can put anywhere on your site. This is a great option for those who don’t often sells on the website, but still in need of this function.
WP e–Commerce
WP e-Commerce is a WordPress plugin, which will perfectly fit to anyone who wants to start selling products, services or downloads online.
It doesn’t matter, if you sell 10 or 10,000 products, this plugin makes it easy to add a WordPress e-Commerce shopping cart to your website. It’s also easy to manage, add products, and organize your directory at once using the familiar WordPress interface.
Shoppecommerce platform
Shopp has a lot of widgets, shortcodes, seamless administration tools and taxonomy support. It’s designed for WordPress and allows you to customize and launch an online store in a few steps.
If you wish to skip this step, there are many premium e-Commerce Wordpress Themes, that have a built-in purchase functionality and checkout function. If you’re interested, you can check out high quality Themes here: eCommerce Wordpress Themes.
10 million hits a day with WordPress on a server for $ 15
I’m going to share some secrets with you! Although the idea was not thought up by myself, I believe it’s a really neat trick. I’ll tell you how to get 10 million hits a day with WordPress on a server for only $15.
English developer Ewan Leith published step by step instruction how to raise a virtual mikroserver on Amazon, Linode or another cloud hosting which can turn WordPress blog and maintain 10 million hits a day (the report is compiled using Blitz.io), in this case it will cost just $15 a month.
Instruction describes how to consistently set the Ubuntu 11.10 (Oneiric), MySQL, PHP to PHP FPM, APC module and MySQL, Nginx with Configuration for WordPress. The server runs more slowly, but it changes the setting W3 Total Cache and Varnish, which together with Nginx able to create a real miracle.
Even a man, without technical skills can take note of the instruction.
Ewan Leith is a founder NutmegData, which helps companies migrate to modern platforms.
Check out our previous articles!
- Top 15 Video Themes For WordPress
- Launch Effect: A WordPress Theme For Viral Launches
- 40 Premium Responsive Portfolio WordPress Themes
- 25 High Quality Real Estate WordPress Themes
- 15 Best Responsive Premium WordPress Themes
- 10+ Amazing Premium Buddypress WordPress Themes
Conclusion
Today we’ve looked at a few Wordpress Themes that can be suitable for your next website. Also we gave you a brief overview of plug-ins that can help you improve your site. What else will you need? Interesting and high-quality content!
That would be enough to get success, popularity and good amount of traffic. If you have any questions or additions, don’t hesitate to leave a comment below. I’ll be glad to answer all your questions and help! Thank you and good luck with the creation and development of your own website.
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