How to Create a WordPress Site and Avoid the Mistakes I Made, Part 2

I mentioned in Part 1 of this series that I found Third Tribe Marketing early on in my search for information, and that was a blessing in many ways. Here I found heart centered, high integrity people who were very successful at making a living from their blogs and websites. So when I saw that many of them were using a WordPress theme called Thesis to create their sites, I looked into it. It sounded good so I bought it. Now let me state first, I believe Thesis is a very good product. I’m a Thesis affiliate. I’m promoting the product. But for me it was not the right fit. This was my first mistake in creating my website.

Let me back up a bit and tell you what I did first that was useful. Before downloading and installing WordPress on my new server (Hostgator, which I highly recommend), I went to Lynda.com, a site I’ve spent a lot of time on in the last couple of years, and I looked for tutorials on WordPress. There were a couple, and they were helpful in getting WordPress installed on my server. They gave me an introduction to how WordPress works and got me started.

I’d like to take a moment to recommend Lynda.com,. It’s a site filled with video tutorials on just about every commercial software that exists. It’s constantly growing and adding more, and I have been a big fan and user of the site for several years. If what your heart desires requires that you learn new software, take a look at this site. I have found it enormously helpful in learning graphic programs and video editing. And the price is quite reasonable. And it’s not limited to graphic software (that’s just my interest), it has just about anything you could want. Check it out. That said, let’s return to WordPress.

After installing WordPress, I bought and installed Thesis. I don’t know if the advertising was unclear or just my interpretation of it incorrect, but I thought Thesis was strictly a WYSIWYG (what you see is what you get) program that would  allow me to create a custom look for my site without having to know CSS and PHP coding. I found that it is a program that will let you create a very customizable and flexible site, but it is not fully WYSIWYG. You need to be comfortable with doing some coding work to use this theme, at the very least doing some copying and pasting of code in the appropriate places. I, however, have no knowledge of CSS or PHP coding and soon found myself lost. I stuck with it for several weeks, not really knowing what alternative I had, and finally had to say, “I can’t make this work.” Now had I been tuned into the heart a little better, I might have seen the truth sooner and saved myself from at least some of that 2 weeks of frustration and anxiety, but I do have this way of trying to “push the river” and just keep going when I really would be better served by stopping, resting, and seeing what is needed from that place of stillness. I finally did do that and quickly was guided to another theme called the Ultimate Blogging Theme. It’s not perfect (and no theme is), but it is WYSIWYG, no coding required to use it. You can create a custom look with it pretty easily, and like all WordPress themes, you can ad functionality with the multitude of plugins available free at WordPress.org. I’m very happy with it.

I did find the process of working with WordPress a bit frustrating. While the tutorials on Lynda.com gave me an introduction, I had to do a lot of trial and error learning to work with the interface. Over time I got comfortable with it, but wish I had found some of the programs I now know of, that take you step by step through the process of creating your blog. By the time I found them, I had figured most of it out myself, but it was not by the most pleasant of learning processes.

As I look back on my experience, I see I made 2 mistakes that I hope you will be able to avoid. First, I spread myself too thin in terms of what I was focusing my research on. I was trying to learn as much as I could about blogging and social media marketing at the same time as I was at the beginning stages of setting up a WordPress site. Had I put aside some of the material about social media marketing for later exploration, and concentrated solely on searching for materials on how to create a WordPress site, I probably would have found the step by step programs sooner and saved myself the frustration of all the trial and error leaning.

Secondly, if I had stopped myself in the midst of my frustration and anxiety more often, and just sat in stillness more frequently, I would have been able to listen more clearly to the heart and it’s guidance, and not made mistake number one. This is a lesson I seem to need to learn over and over. Maybe you’re like me, too. Maybe that’s part of why I am writing this, to remind you again to stop and listen, allow your heart, Spirit, God, however you think of it, to guide your actions. Let activity arise spontaneously from this place of stillness.

So next time I’ll outline the sources I eventually found that guide you step by step in the creation of a WordPress site.

Oh, and about Thesis, when I finally realized I didn’t have the right skills to use this program well, they graciously gave me my money back. Good people, good company.

I look forward to your thoughts and comments! (if you are reading this on the home page the link to comments is found to the far right of the post title)

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Other Posts You May Like

• How to Create a Wordpress Site and Avoid the Mistakes I Made, Part 3
• How to Create a Wordpress Site and Avoid the Mistakes I Made, Part 1
• How to Create a WordPress Site and Avoid the Mistakes I Made, Part 4
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