- WordPress is a website template system(there are others too);
- The 1and1.com is 1/1000s of webhosting solutions.
As a website 'owner', you
* pick a webhosting solution(2 above) (some cost for yearly hosting plan),
* purchase a domain name (or transfer an existing one to this webhost) and then
* start creating webpages.
If you're inclined to use a template system(1), make sure your hosting solution will have it preinstalled or is willing to install it for you. [btw: these kinds of frameworks use MySQL and PHP as core tools and I haven't seen a webhost that did not support these]. Another system is Drupal. Suggest you run this google search:
drupal vs wordpress
We normally associate this with the website itself, but clearly the tools(aka template systems) to create webpages need to be friendly too, especially when the object is to create nice pages without knowing how to code all the HTTP, HTML, CSS yourself.
I have consistently chosen Register.com as my hosting solution. Another project for someone else uses GoDaddy.com. BOTH of these use a tool (
cpanel) to administer the site, set permissions, setup email and upload pages.
One other MAJOR tool is
Google Webmaster Tools. We use this to setup google search and to monitor SEO information.
Regardless of which template system you choose, you will have a learning curve and it can get confusing and frustrating. First you have the tool itself to conquer and then learning how to get it to do what YOU want, and this one can get frustrating when according to your design concepts it should do 'a,b,c,d,e' and you can't get it to do 'c'. Life will get better if you just learn to compromise with an 80% solution
Suggest you create a list of features you want the website to present to the users/visitors and prioritize this list. Keep it in front of you while you make design decisions.
Give consideration to your site supporting mobile devices - - this complicates the webpage creation very quickly. One example is drop-down menus; Mobile devices have no mouse and therefore can NOT support mouseOver or mouseHover events. If your navigation system require drop-downs, then mobile users can't get to the submenu choices - - you need another concept altogether. See google for
mobile device design guidelines. While you're at it, lookup this one too:
responsive web design btw: TS has a responsive design and you can see it in action:
Notice how the layout changes and at some point, you only get one column
TITLE The CSS is adjusting what is shown based upon the window width
One last comment: Managing mobile devices has two major components:
- obviously the layout needs attention as the viewing area is much less than a desktop monitor
- no so obvious, the user's data plan gets a major impact when lots of data is downloaded
The responsive design will attend to (1) but still download desktop content - - mBytes of it.
Downloading 1920x1200 graphics to an iPhone 4 is just plainly wrong - - but happens all the time.
My B I G complaint with template solutions is along this very issue - - downloading the HMS Titanic load of controls onto every device and the website takes on a very slow loading attribute. I've seen page load time exceeding 45seconds (not here on TS!)
