While working this website and planning our next meeting, Ray mentioned that we really needed a form on this website so we could get members to register their attendance. The concern was that attendences at our meeting have been rapidly growing and the seating capacity at our venue is limited to 24.  Despite my very limited knowledge on creating forms I said “no problem.”  I then googled event registration form and I found the plug-in I needed to and promptly installed it.

It took a little bit of time to get the hang of it but essentially I’ve done it. The plug-in I found was called Event Registration.  Its a nifty little tool and it is also free. The plug-in is quite good and could be great to use if you were holding an event that you wanted people to register to. It even integrates with PayPal so if you wanted to charge for your event you could. This could be especially useful for any niches you might be interested in promoting.  The good news is that the plug-in also has the flexibility to allow you to register people for free. This was great news for me as since the venue at our next two meetings does not cost anything.

The only tricky thing was working out how to display the registration form.  In any case I had to create a new page, find the html code for the form and then paste it into the html tab of the page I had just created.  Once this was done, my form was ready to go.

The only downside to the plugin is:

• You need to register your name, address and phone number.  There does not seem to be any way of changing this within the plug-in.
• It does not integrate with your autoresponder account
• The email comes directly from my web-hosting account so it is not the email address I normally use.   It looks weird and a little like spam as it displays my hostaccountname@box441.bluehost.com. I have not found a way to customise the email address.

The plug-in therefore is limited in some respects.   Now I can see that if you were holding an event that you suddenly had to cancel or there was a change of venue this would be useful.  However, if you were holding an event like we are doing this could be a right royal pain.  Some people may not want to give out their personal details – they might just want to attend. For our purposes, I just want to register Melpies members to our meeting as the room only holds 24 people. Given we had about 14 or 15 people at our last meeting and the numbers have been rapidly growing we needed to know how many people were coming.

So apologies in advance for those who register – I really don’t want your address and contact details but the plugin itself makes it compulsory to put the details in.  The good news however is that we have a registration form.

This is just another reason why I am so in love with WordPress. There are so many plug-ins that I really can’t see why anyone would need to spend any money on having a website built for them.  There is just about a plug-in for everything imaginable.

While working on setting up this website, I stumbled across this great WordPress theme that I found which is really very flexible and is FREE.  The theme is called Semiologic and I am using this theme on this website.  What I love about it is that you can change the colour using skins which are located in the appearance section of the semiologic once you download the theme to WordPress. You can also change the number of columns which is something many wordpress themes won’t let you do.

You can also get your own headers to put onto the theme if you want to (instructions on how to do this are on the website).  I haven’t bothered to create a header and upload it for this particular website but it seems simple enough. If you aren’t an expert at creating headers, you can either the leave the site as is like I have done or pay someone to create a header for you.  The good thing is that at least you have the option of putting your own branded header on there.  This feature might come in handy later on.

As you get good at using this theme, there is an option to buy the Pro version which actually has sales letter templates as well!!! Quite handy if you are into affiliate marketing or are creating your own product to sell. However, the free version is very good and a lot more flexible than most of the themes I have used so would be quite fine to use and worth getting a feel for and playing around with.   I have spent many hours trying and testing out lots of WordPress themes and  I can honestly say that there aren’t many that are flexible as this.  The only other theme that I have found that is as flexible is the Thesis theme and I have used this to create all my other websites.

(Note: The above link to Thesis is a sponsored advertisement.  The owner of this website uses Thesis and also Semiologic and thoroughly recommends both of these products).

One of the subjects touched on at our last meeting, was web hosting. Having the right web host is essential when deciding to set up  a self hosted WordPress website.

There are lots of hosting companies out there but not all are going to be suitable for an Internet business.  There are a number of things the newbie needs to look out for. If you are looking to run an Internet Based Business it is important that you start out on the right foot.

First of all, you want to make sure your future host provider operates on a Linux rather than Windows platform. This is because Linux generally runs faster and performs better. In addition, the majority or scripts and systems out there are written for Linux.

Second, look out for how much disk space you can have on your website. Watch out for hosts that provide limits. It may not be a problem when you are starting out but as you add more content, you don’t want to have any disk space restrictions.

Third, find out if you can get unlimited bandwidth. In the early days the amount of bandwidth on offer may not be a problem but as you get more traffic, it could become one so it is better to ensure you have unlimited bandwidth. You should bear in mind that videos and images can use more bandwidth and you should also assume that you will eventually get lots of traffic to your website.

Fourth, look for an up-time guarantee and a money back guarantee. You want the up-time guarantee before you sign up and you will also find that most quality hosts will offer a money back guarantee. Remember, a website is your piece of real estate so you want to make sure it is up and running at least 99.9% of the time.

Fifth, look for a hosting provider that has My SQL databases. Make sure that the host allows you to have several of them.  This is useful in the event you decide to change hosts.

Sixth, it is also a nice if your web host has php.  What is php – essentially it is simple scripting language that will enable you to run WordPress and other programs easily.

Other things to look out for in a host in include:

• Free set-up (watch out for those hidden fees)
• 24 hour support

I personally use Blue Host and have several websites that are hosted here.  The service has been fantastic and the cost to host these websites is quite minimal – only $6.95 per month.  Another good option is Hostgator. Although I haven’t personally used Hostgator, I know a number of people who use it and love it and it is also rated very highly by people in our group.

(Note: The above links to Hosting Providers are sponsored advertisements for Web Hosting.  The owner of this website uses BlueHost and is comfortable recommending it).

Our November Melbourne Warpies Group focused on how to build a website using WordPress. People of varying levels of experience sat around and learnt how to build a website. In attendance were the two Rogers, Florise, Lorraine, Carol, Ray, Simon, Phil, Adam, Conrad, Eric, Yilmaz, Harry and Domenique.  Over the course of the afternoon we covered WordPress.  Why WordPress?  Because WordPress is:

• Free
• Loved by search engines so you are more likely to get traffic to your site
• Easy to install – you really don’t need to know html or css
• You only need to know how to copy and paste,
• Customizable – there are hundreds of themes so you can change the look of your site in minutes,
• Fully functional – there are hundreds of plug-ins which enhance the functionality of your site
• Inexpensive to host – you only need to pay for web-hosting which could cost you as little as $6.95 per month

Key topics included:

• The difference between WordPress.com and WordPress.org
• What to look for in a hosting account if choosing the self managed WordPress.org option
• How to install WordPress from your hosting account using Simple Scripts or Fantastico
• How to use the settings section of WordPress to optimise your website so search engines can find it
• How to  install and change themes so your website looks the way you want
• What are widgets
• What are plugins and a few critical plugins
• How to customise your sidebar using widgets and plugins
• How to create a static page versus a blog page
• How to add links to your text
• How to change the colours of your text
• How to add images, video and audio

Future blog posts will include aspects of what was covered in this meeting.

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