-
-
The #1 question to ask yourself is why you need a website. This will explain where and how to get one done and best practices. Please ask any questions in the comments.
Digital direction & custom WordPress websites:
https://www.michaelbakerdigital.comSelf-Hosted WordPress sites should use managed WordPress Hosting @ WPEngine:
http://bit.ly/WPengineWPHosting -
Got your message. I cannot tackle the work but I am willing to help you here publicly. Ask me a question and I will answer it via posts here or if it’s a big enough question I can tackle it as a video. Your questions help me with coming up with ideas that are important to business owners, so I can help you in return.
If I had to ballpark a site build from scratch with a store it would be 5k-ish
-
My advice is start over. I know you don’t want to hear this but I would go get:
1. Hosting at WPEngine
2. X Theme
3. Install WooCommerce (which is supported by X native, very easy product addition/template)Get to work from there.
The support at both WPEngine and Apex (owner of X) is amazing. -
Get this individual plan:Â Hosting at WPEngine
It’s just the best. You will need to handle email separately – I do it via my registrar (Godaddy) and simply forward to a Gmail and have for years.
-
Email is a service that is not provided by a managed wordpress host, so you have to do email elsewhere. I chose to just forward my email to my gmail via Godaddy. X is one theme and you can instantly set up any of the demos you see here:Â https://theme.co/x/demos
I use X to do all of my sites.
-
That’s what I was just about to ask you, a video to do a storefront from start to finish…! Great minds do think alike!
Since I am a newbie to this WordPress thing, can you recommend a theme that is e-commerce ready and easy to edit so I don’t pull the hair I have remaining out of my head?
Thanks Mike…
-
[quote quote=1688]Ok, looks impressive! Another question for you though… Since I am a newbie to this WordPress thing, can you recommend a theme that is e-commerce ready and easy to edit so I don’t pull the hair I have remaining out of my head? Thanks Mike…[/quote]
X theme – I use it to do https://www.terranovabakery.com – it integrates WooCommerce so you have an out of the box product template that looks like this: https://www.terranovabakery.com/product/box-bread-pizza
-
Ok, so I signed up with WP Engine, I bought the X Theme, and now I am trying to figure out how to point my domain name to WP Engine? right now it has my username followed by wpengine.com. I want to use the domain name that I paid for…
The last company I was signed up with had a control panel…I cannot for the life of me find it, does WP Engine even have one? Sorry man, I am a box of rocks right now and I’m about to break something! lol…
-
[quote quote=1692]Ok, so I signed up with WP Engine, I bought the X Theme, and now I am trying to figure out how to point my domain name to WP Engine? right now it has my username followed by wpengine.com. I want to use the domain name that I paid for… The last company I was signed up with had a control panel…I cannot for the life of me find it, does WP Engine even have one? Sorry man, I am a box of rocks right now and I’m about to break something! lol…[/quote]
yes and the best part of WPEngine is their support – see the live chat thing at the top when you are logged in, they will do anything you need done! This is the #1 benefit of using the service in my opinion.
-
I already had help with support with the name servers. I had no idea what CNAME and A record was…lol…so the guy walked me through it. So now I need to set up the SSL, which I thought I got a free one with WP Engine, but I guess not. What would you recommend for that? A certain company, a free one?
Anyway, thanks Mike for all your help so far, I have more questions to come so be ready…!!!
-
[quote quote=1706]I already had help with support with the name servers. I had no idea what CNAME and A record was…lol…so the guy walked me through it. So now I need to set up the SSL, which I thought I got a free one with WP Engine, but I guess not. What would you recommend for that? A certain company, a free one?
Anyway, thanks Mike for all your help so far, I have more questions to come so be ready…!!![/quote]
Yes a free one comes with the individual plan. On the left of the admin panel in WPEngine is an ssl option.
You will need to have them help you edit the database to update to https (it’s in 2 places in the WP_Options table siteurl & home) and they will help or probably just do it for you.
-
[quote quote=1710]So how did you change the background color around the logo and menu on that bakery site, the brown color? I have tried CSS, looking in cornerstone, everywhere and I can’t find out where to change the default white color.[/quote]
When logged in click CUSTOMIZE in the header – then the various “stacks” have different defaults and you can adjust as needed
-
Hey, that worked like a champ. I had to add some code to the CSS section so now I can change the color to any color I want on the top. Got a nice blue now!
So now my next question, as you can see, there is a white box under my nav bar. Is it possible to delete all that out so I can start putting in all my content without that annoying box there. I can’t seem to be able to get rid of it. For some reason it is treating my site like a blog layout instead of a website layout.
-
Ok Mike, I am stuck again, no shocker there…lol…
I am playing around with the image at the top under the nav bar. This isn’t the image I want to use, I’m just trying to get the image to go full width under the nav bar. I have gone in and turned off “container” but it still won’t go full width. Is this another instance of where I add some CSS into it to make the image go full screen?
-
Going pretty good…I threw something together real quick so I could get my site out there. I am still working on different styles and layouts. I am still putting some pages together, had to step away from it the last few days to do some new shirt jobs that I landed…
A few questions though since I am stuck on a couple of things.
I got the Slider Revolution plugin and was wondering if there is a way to put the slider at the bottom of the page or do I need to do some CSS for that to happen…? Or do you recommend another slider that has that?
Also, I used the Contact Form 7 for people to contact me through the site. Is there a way to change the color of the text that goes into the fields? Right now it’s gray and kind of hard to read. I would like to change it to white text since my site is a little on the dark side…
Let me know what you think…
-
I’d really begin to dig into their support forums and Google. Ask things very specific and chances are someone has had the issue. For the slider revolution, you caa insert it as an element within Cornerstone to any band, column etc. Make sure you set what ever container its in (Row and Column and Section) to have 0 padding if you want it to fill the screen.
I don’t use Contact Form 7 – I use Jotform for all of my forms. I find it to be the best service out there for email forms.
-
hmmm…ok, I have searched out about Contact Form 7, I will try the forums. In the meantime I will look at that contact form you suggested.
Can you recommend any other plugins that I can use that will add more of a visual element to it. I am going to be working on the woocommerce stuff today or tomorrow. Hopefully that goes well…lol…
-
[quote quote=1771]Yea, still working on that lol, been so focused on the other pages that I forgot it still had the old demo stuff on it. Hey, I like how the Social Media icons are at the top of the page for that bakery, how can I do something like that? Is that something that has to be done by CSS…?[/quote]
Ask da Google: X Theme Social media icons header
You have to have links to social platforms in X settings then enable social icons in the header
-
Hey Mike, I think I have found the direction that I want to go in with the site. I am now in the process of setting up a products page that has stuff I make and sell. So I have done all the settings in WooComm , location, taxes, shipping, etc…Just wanted to get your input on the best company/plug in to use for taking credit cards. I see that I can use Square and get a reader for my phone as well. Do you recommend anything as far as that goes? Thanks…
-
Personally I like Stripe: https://stripe.com – they take ALL cards, the interface is awesome, there are integrations built for WooCOmmerce. Go with Stripe!
-
I looked at them when I first started to do this process…I will check them out for sure.
One more thing, is there anything you can recommend I do or make sure I put in place before I launch my store?
I think I have all my bases covered but want to be double sure I didn’t miss anything.
I have searched this out and I’m getting different opinions, I’m asking you because this is what you do and I really do value your opinion.
Thanks MikeB, you the man…!
-
Hey Mike, so I am moving right along and getting the hang of WordPress and Xtheme, thanks again for the recommendation…!
So my next venture is to get my site noticed by google so it comes up on searches. Can you give me some advice on the best way to go about it? Should I use a plugin that helps, use keywords, hashtags, etc…?
I have been reading online abou this, the one thing is see is that a lot of people are saying to uncheck “disable search engine indexing”, but I have read a lot of pro’s and con’s about it. Any advice will be appreciated.
Thanks Mike…
-
I don’t know if you got past this hurdle yet but 100% uncheck that and go grab ALL IN ONE SEO or something simple and make sure your titles, descriptions are accurate. Make sure you have a verified local listing in Google and connect your site to Analytics and feed an XML Sitemap into Google Search Console.
-
You must be logged in to reply to this topic.