Need Help With Web Design

[CharleyFoxtrot]

I'm starting my own business, from my house, and I need a website. I'm not very experienced building websites. I'm looking for good resources for tutorials, maybe free wordpress themes and guides to customize them, and examples for how I should lay it out and what kind of content I should fill it up with. I need to do this work myself because I don't have much of a budget. Any tips are greatly appreciated.

[ComputerRepairTech]

http://www.w3schools.com/ for tutorials on html etc. As for free templates to look over you'll just have to google what ur looking for.

Example:
free web templates
free wordpress themes

etc etc

[drpcfix]

here are a couple tips, DM me if you want more free advice

Find a host that has a one-click-installer for joomla/wordpress

I'll just openly suggest wordpress for you..

A host should be $15/month or less, you can always pay less, but I would find one that will support you. We do it for $15/month on a dedicated server, the sites load really fast.

Keep the layout simple, there are a lot of great examples in the signatures of people on this forum -

The wordpress templates are great, I would not bother with a fancy template from the clubs until you know you need something else.
Start with popular - I use responsive a lot lately

http://wordpress.org/extend/themes/browse/popular/

Change wordpress to use just the post name for the permalinks, so urls look like /about-us instead of /uncategorized/2012-7-11/about-us

Be sure you have your address in the footer for local SEO purposes, also get yourself in at LEAST 5 local directories;
google/yelp/bing/insider pages/citysearch - be sure to use the same info in all of them.

make sure your page titles are different and use a keyword;
main page: Biz Name | Computer Repair YOUR_CITY_NAME
location page: YOUR_CITY_NAME Computer Repair | Biz Name Location

or something similar.. no rules, just get a keyword and such in page title.

You want people searching for "computer repair your_city" - not your business name, so make page titles reflect that.

The rest is obvious, copy everyone else

[CharleyFoxtrot]

Thanks guys.

I do already have a domain registered and wordpress installed. I'm not a total newbie to WordPress in fact. I have installed manually and using FantasticoDeluxe, and I've installed themes and plugins before.

As far as my address goes, I was thinking about omitting my apartment number. Just as an example I feel like it'd be better to have:

CharleyFoxtrot's PC Repair
1400 Washington St
Denver, CO 80206

Than:

CharleyFoxtrot's PC Repair
1400 Washington St
Apt 562
Denver, CO 80206


I've been looking at people's sites in their signatures and I have a good idea for what I'm going to do. I might not come up with the best web design right off the bat but I just need something to get me going, and I can work on it from there.

[krtechsolutions]

I really like cms made simple, it's very simple, it doesn't have a huge following like word press but there is tons of help on the forums and you can convert any CSS website template into a cms made simple template

[Lefty]

Yes, leave out the apartment number. One piece of advice that hasn't been mentioned yet here is get a logo professionally done.

In my experience that has had the most impact on the effectiveness of my marketing, in particular my website.

Originally Posted by CharleyFoxtrot

Thanks guys.

I do already have a domain registered and wordpress installed. I'm not a total newbie to WordPress in fact. I have installed manually and using FantasticoDeluxe, and I've installed themes and plugins before.

As far as my address goes, I was thinking about omitting my apartment number. Just as an example I feel like it'd be better to have:

CharleyFoxtrot's PC Repair
1400 Washington St
Denver, CO 80206

Than:

CharleyFoxtrot's PC Repair
1400 Washington St
Apt 562
Denver, CO 80206


I've been looking at people's sites in their signatures and I have a good idea for what I'm going to do. I might not come up with the best web design right off the bat but I just need something to get me going, and I can work on it from there.

[EvilComputers]

Originally Posted by CharleyFoxtrot

Thanks guys.

I do already have a domain registered and wordpress installed. I'm not a total newbie to WordPress in fact. I have installed manually and using FantasticoDeluxe, and I've installed themes and plugins before.

This is like 60% of the work. I was about to send you an ebook I wrote on how to do the whole setup, but you don't need it. If you know how to use Google, you are set. Search for free themes and find one you like. There are also theme builders available where you can build your own theme....sort of WYSIWYG. Some are free; some are not.

Everything you need from here on out, is a Google search away. Need to add images? Google. Seriously...WordPress is so well documented that you shouldn't have any problems at all finding what you need to know. Google and plugins are you best friends.