Our village needs a better website than the thing our Parish Council currently has. The existing site is pretty static, barely meets the accessibility rules, and doesn’t let anyone in the Council make changes beyond posting new docs (as pdfs) to a linked Google docs site.
Changing anything else means a call to the bloke what wrote it, and there’s a subsequent charge for his time. TBF he isn’t stiffing them for vast sums, but the delay in making even simple changes (updating phone numbers etc.) is a PITA, and it would be better if they had more direct control.
As the only person they can find who knows a little bit about html and urls and so on, I’ve been volunteered to do some investigation and exploration of the possibilities. To that end I’ve recently opened a free account with WordPress, bought an appropriate domain name, and started using the online WordPress editing facility to see if I can knock something into shape. It’s coming along OK, but the learning curve is still pretty steep.
Trial and error is all well and good in this early exploratory stage, but once the thing gets published it’ll be a more serious undertaking – low traffic, low volume and low churn the site might be, but it’ll also be ‘official’ and subject to the usual security, GDPR and accessibility constraints. So I feel the need to know a lot more about what I’m doing. The last time I put a web site together I used Hotmetal 6 – if you have any knowledge of these things you’ll realise that was some time ago!
What I really want is a fat tome from Amazon that will guide me through how a WordPress site works under the hood, to give me a fighting chance of walking the walk once I can talk the talk.
Can anyone suggest the best book to buy to equip me for this exercise?
Fortunately, the era of web techies taking charge of your content and charging by the hour to make the smallest change are fast disappearing, and good on you for seizing the means of production.
There are probably some great tutorials on YouTube, though there will be a bit of sifting to find the good ones. I learned all the useful bits of After Effects from a 10 minute video.
If you only need it as an online notice board and aren’t worried about being in the top 10 parish council searches, you could use one of the free sites such as Weebly. I’m aware they have their limitations but they are simple to create and edit.
Things is, as a Parish council, you are subject to reams of compliance legislation, yea, even unto simple websites. Accessibility is one example. If Weebly or whoever don’t meet the criteria, your website is stictly speaking not kosher for a PC. I’m trying to deliver a slam dunk, all platforms thingamajig that folk can look at on whatever device they like and still find it readable. I confess i don’t know if Weebly can deliver that, but I may as well do this once and get it done, so WordPress is the target, at least for now! Thanks for the response.
If there’s a ‘For Dummies’ book on the subject, that is likely to be a good one. I’ve always rated their books.
That’s what I’ve gone for, as well as the good Captain’s reco below. Cheers chums.
I’ve ordered this tome from the dodgers:
WordPress All-in-One For Dummies, 4th Edition Paperback – 22 Mar. 2019
It’s focused upon self-hosted WP sites, but I’m assuming that a lot of the content explaining site structures will equally apply to a site running within the .com environment.
*crosses fingers*
This book’s good for starting out in WordPress:
https://www.wob.com/en-gb/books/alannah-moore/create-your-own-website-using-wordpress-in-a-weekend/9781781570319?gclid=Cj0KCQiA8vSOBhCkARIsAGdp6RTMoqVGkE8vQM_Pvt6OewxWNIAjfd3IZcXNfu6aHIF7NtaAc3TibJkaAvp-EALw_wcB
Thundering Typhoons! Only 4 quid? Ordered. Thanks Cap’n.
My pleasure
Wouldn’t on line tutorials and courses be better than books?
Quite possibly, if you prefer things on a screen. But I like books best.
One thing to look out for is the difference between a wordpress.org site and a self-hosted WordPress site. I think that book is aimed at self-hosted sites so a fair bit will not be applicable to a WordPress.org site. It still looks like quite a good book though, and probably useful to a beginner even on the wp platform.
Certainly a better bet than the only book I have (Smashing WordPress: beyond the blog) which is way over my head and I have had my own self-hosted site for at least ten years!
I think wordpress is very easy to get to grips with because I can’t even remember how I learned it – I think I just picked it up as I went along and taught myself, so it must be simple because I am. Once or twice I got stuck on things and had to ask people I knew who also ran the same software, but I think that was all to do with server set-up rather than the wordpress software.
GDPR is an issue, but shouldn’t really come into it for a site that is just publishing information rather than holding data on users/residents.
I wish I could offer more help, but I think I have forgotten nearly everything I ever knew about editing templates and so on!
Thanks for this – very useful (and now I know that you might have the answers to some things I may come across!). I have only just realised that there are two flavours of WP site – I’m beginning my learning process with a site hosted on WordPress .com, but things may change as I discover more and move towards putting it live.