Everyone tends to do it. It takes a conscious effort to not do it. I mean, you are a rational person. You believe everything you believe and think everything that you think. Why wouldn’t everyone else think and believe the same way? What are they? Morons?

It's really easy to believe that everyone else is like you. They aren't.

When you are designing your site and writing your content, do it from the users point of view, not your own. They are the ones that you have created this magnificent new web site for, so honor them by talking in their language and answering their questions and meeting their needs.

The first step to do this is to define just who they are. Once you have them defined, forget everyone else. If you want to sell video games, your site will look much different then if you want to sell medical equipment.

It might be helpful to write down your definition of your users and tape it to your monitor, where you can remember them while you’re writing.

Their words, their needs, their solutions. That’s what you need to focus on.

A lot of people are looking for this information, so I figure I should expand on it and tell you exactly what I did and how you can convert any existing web site into a WordPress themed site too.

How To Convert An Existing Site To WordPress

Text Edit
Did I mention that you need a text editor to make WordPress theme files? MS Word will not work. You MUST be able edit the files and save them as “text” files. They can not be formatted in any way. On Windows, look for WordPad. On a Mac, look for TextEdit. Do not make them RTF, or Rich Text Format. Just save the files as simple old text.

Quick shout out for BBEdit on a Mac. The ultimate text editor and if you’re going to be doing this, worth every penny. It does not suck. Says so right on the box.

Set Up Dev
Before we get any farther, you’ll need a development installation of WordPress that you can play with and break. It can’t share the database with an existing installation, or the theme you pick here will be the theme that the existing site will get at the same time.

If you do not have an installation of WordPress yet, install it and we’ll just play with it until we’re happy with the new theme. No one is looking. No one cares. Feel free to break it all you want.

If you do have an existing installation, you need to make another installation. It’s easy, but pay attention. You will have the existing site in your top level. You’ll probably have a “wordpress” folder with all of the files in it, in that top level. Make a copy, or upload a new copy, of WordPress right next to that folder. Name the new folder “dev”. You will now have the existing Worpress in “wordpress” and the new one right next to it, named “dev”.

Take the existing wp-config.php file and download it to your hard drive, where you can edit it. Open it up and look for the line that says ” $table_prefix = ‘wp_’; “. That “wp_” is the prefix for all of the tables in the database that WordPress uses. We don’t want to create a new database. We want to create new tables inside the existing database. We leave everything else in this file alone, but we change the “wp_” to “dev_”. Our new installation will see that and go create a new set of tables, all with names beginning with “dev_”.

Upload that wp-config.php file and upload it to our new “dev” installation. It should be next to all of the other “wp-”folders, at the top level.

Now, we’ll let WordPress do it’s thing. This is where the WordPress is so much better than any other Content Management System out there. We’ll finish the installation using your web browser.

Go to the home page of the new “dev” WordPress installation. If you have a previous installation, type in that URL, followed by /dev/, which is the folder that we put the dev WordPress. If this is a new installation, then you can go to the new home page. You should be looking at a new installation page that says “welcome”. You need to fill in the Name of the new site and your email address.

Click on the Install WordPress button. Wait for a really long time while WordPress goes out and updates the database and installs all of the information that it needs. This might take up 10 seconds on a slow day.

You will be looking at a Success! page. The user name is “admin” and the password is some totally obscure random string. Log into the new site and look around. You now have a development site that we can install themes on and break if we want to.

Lift and Separate
We want to go back to looking at the existing site that you want to convert. We want to lift the HTML from it and separate it into WordPress theme files.

The basic task is to separate out the “theme” elements from the “content” elements. If you have a stack of HTML files on your server and you’re not sure how they all work, download them and look at them in a text editor.

You need to have some background in HTML to know what you are looking at. You’re going to have to read the HTML and figure out what it is doing. You’ll see a lot of stuff at the top, in the <head> section. The next should be the header area, all the stuff at the top. Somewhere down after that, will be what looks like content, the actual writing.

Your task, and this is the hardest part, is to figure out exactly where the “top” stuff stops and the “content” stuff starts. It could be a table cell. It could be a <div> tag. You need to find that point.

In the simplest form, there’s a bunch of HTML, then there’s content, then there’s a bunch more HTML. The goal is to slice that HTML into files named “header.php”, “sidebar.php”, “footer.php”, and most importantly, “index.php”. There could be others, but we’ll talk about that later.

Slice off the top stuff and put it in the “header.php” file. Figure out where the side bar stuff might come and copy it into that. You don’t really need a sidebar file if you don’t want to have one or you might want a couple, using sidebar-right.php and sidebar-left.php. You’ll have to go through your code and look at the layout of the page.

Take the bottom stuff and put it in the footer.php. You saw that coming, didn’t you?

You’re left with the content. You need to create an “index.php” file. At the top, you want to have the tag <?php get_header(); ?>. At the bottom, you want to have the <?php get_footer(); ?> tag. You can put your sidebars in where you want them, before or after the content, for left or right.

In the middle of the index page, you want to put in the magic PHP tags that display the content. Open up the default theme index.php file and look at it. Copy everything starting at the <?php if (have_posts()) : ?> tag down to the <?php endif; ?> tag. You’ll get a bunch of “class=entry” and “php_content()” tags.

Save all of these files into a new theme folder. You’re doing all of this on your hard drive. Name the new theme whatever you want. “MyNewTheme” sounds great. Copy the style sheet from the default theme into your new theme folder. If you already have a style sheet from your original site, use that instead.

Open the .css style sheet file. You want to have the new name so that it shows up in the Appearance page in WordPress. At the top of the file, you need to have at least “/* Theme Name: MyNewTheme */”. The slash and asterisk means that it’s “commented out” so that it doesn’t interfere with the style sheet. Don’t use the quotes, just the slashes and asterisks. Look at the default theme style sheet or the codex for more info. This is minimum.

Upload and Look
Upload your theme folder to the “wp-content” themes folder, next to the default and classic themes. Go to your Themes page in WordPress admin and see if your theme is there. If it is, select it and activate it. Hold your breathe and “View Site”.

Did it work? Did it break? If you have horrible text that displays PHP error messages, read what they say and try to figure out where the error is. It’s probably a missing closing tag or a missing semi-colon. I hate those.

Did it display something, but it’s all out of whack? You need to play with the style sheets and the theme files to get it to display correctly.

Fix it
The simplest situation here is that you copied the code straight out of the original files and plopped it in here and it all works.

The issues could be style sheets, missing code, or badly written HTML. The more you change from original, the more you need to know what you are doing.

Pages
After you get it working and looking right, you want to create new pages for each page in the new site. Just create them and put some gibberish for now. You just want a place holder. Make sure that the menu points to the right places. Menus will be the next issue.

Existing Pages
If you have pages that you just don’t want to convert, you can put them into the Worpdress top folder, so that they act like normal pages. In my example, all of the portfolio pages are still hard coded PHP files. http://www.flowerart.biz/portfolio/ I needed to make sure the menus work, but those are hard coded pages. They are not visible in WordPress, but they are visible to the user. Read “Put A WordPress Menu In An External Page” to see how I made the menus dynamic on a hard coded page.

Menus
If you want to have dynamic menus, where pages are added to the menu when you create the pages, then you need to read through the codex about menu tags and their attributes. It’s possible to cut out the hard coded HTML menu that you had and replace it with a dynamic one. See where to cut out the old one and replace it with the new tags.

Different Templates
If you have different templates for different pages, you need to know what the differences are. If you need to create a new template for each page, you can do that. Go into each old HTML file, cut out the “contents” and replace it per the directions above. Now, create a new file that will act like that specific page’s index.php file. I like to name them all starting with “template_”, so you might have template_aboutus.php.

These new template pages need to have all of the tags of the others, header() and footer() and that stuff. It’s possible to have a template page that is entirely custom HTML and not even use the content() tags. You won’t be able to edit it, but it’ll show up on the site and be managed like other pages.

Each one of these new template pages needs to have the commented out lines at the top of the file that has the name in this format: “/* Template Name: About Us */”, again, without the quotes.

Upload this new file to the theme folder, next to the index.php file. Go back to the page that needs to use this template. On the right, there’s a “Template” drop down menu that should now list all of the template files that contain that “Template Name:” line in them. Select the one you want to use for that page and update.

Go look at it. You will have to customize and fix each template to make sure it works with the pages that you want.

Final Touches
You will have to go through each page and make sure that the menus work and that they look right. You can use the default theme as a guide. You can look up specific problems in the codex or the forums or you can ask me.

From here on out, it will be stylesheets and php tags to get it to look and work right. If you have a specific problem, let me know in the comments below and we can walk through it.

SEO stands for Search Engine Optimization. How much it costs will depend on how optimized you want it to be. Nothing in SEO costs any money, only time. You should learn what the techniques are and then you should do them your self.

SEO just wants to be free.
Don't pay for it.

The first thing that you must do, MUST do, is to pick some keywords or phrases that you want to rank highly for. The best way to do this is to think about it from your users point of view. What problem are they trying to solve when they come to your site. Why should they be there? Wedding Flowers? Car Repair? Pizza? a TV Show? What are those words that they will type into Google to find you?

It’s good to get one main phrase that you was to own. That phrase will go everywhere on your site, so many times that’s annoying.

Now you need to pick 3-5 more phrases that you want to do well for. Maybe you won’t own these, but you still want traffic from them.

Remember, these phrases must be from the user’s point of view, not yours. You might think that you sell “water treatment systems”, but your users want to buy “water softeners”. You might think that you sell “hand made, one of a kind, jewelry”, but I’m looking for a “woman birthday gift”. You might think you sell “woman’s action wear”, but my wife’s looking for “woman sports clothes”.

Now that that has rolled around in your head for a while, you can write down the phrases that you want to rank well for and the one that you want to own.

Next, you can scatter those phrases around your site and ask for links from other sites. Make your title on every page contain that main phrase. Leave comments on other sites using those phrases. Do all of the other SEO stuff that you can find on the Internet and that I’ll talk about later.

SEO just wants to be free. Don’t pay for it.

I saw an article recently listing 10 free web site building tools.

Most of them take a while to figure out.

They won’t all let you do what you want to do.

None were expandable to your own site if you ever wanted to take the next step, from “free” to “owning your own”.

The biggest cost is time.

The biggest cost is time.

How long does it take you to learn how to work it and make it do what you want it to do?

How much is it going to frustrate you and make you figure out how to do something simple?

In my experience with WordPress, and I’m coming at this from a developer point of view, it’s much easier and intuitive to learn to use WordPress than with any other platform out there.

When I build a site for a client using WordPress, it’s much easier to train them and get them up to speed on WordPress than other systems that I’ve tried.

The Real, Hard Costs

Let’s look at the cost it would take to put a WordPress site on your own server and run it for a year.

Domain name is $10. Don’t pay more than that for a domain name.

Hosting packages can be had for less than $80 a year.

Call the whole thing $100 for a year of hosting your own site.

If you use a good host, they would have an auto install version of WordPress. Click, click, bang. It’s set up.

Play with a theme. Spend too much time looking on line for a theme. Download, install.

Play with plug ins. Download, install.

Write a few posts. Create a few pages. Change the layout a bit.

Call it 8 hours total, from start to having your own blog on line, working, with your own theme and content.

You have added the plug-ins that you wanted, the theme that you wanted, the layout, the content, the menu.

All of it is exactly what you want.

The Price Of Choice

The cost in time is really because you have TOO MANY options.

If you can be satisfied with what comes out of the box, then a WordPress site can be set up in 20 minutes.

Other Free Hosting Options

Compare that to another free host.

Set up is quick and easy. Pick a theme. There are only 20.

Write a post. Change the layout? No. Can’t do that.

Put the menu on the other side? No. Can’t do that.

You want to post video? No. Can’t do that either.

Podcast? Special functionality? Nope. None of that.

The Cost Of Free

You’ve spent the same 8 hours trying to do stuff and not being able to that you would have on WordPress.

The other free host is $100 cheaper and maybe that’s the difference for you.

It doesn’t look quite like you want it to and it doesn’t have quite the right functionality.

It’s harder to use and takes longer to post than WordPress.

If it takes 3 minutes longer and you make 20 posts, that’s an hour.

How many posts in a year?

Time Is Money

This reminds me of the difference between Windows and a Mac.

The Mac costs a bit more to start, but lasts twice a long, lets you work twice as fast, and makes it easier to do anything you want.

Which is a better deal?

How much is your time worth?

How much money do you have?

It’s all up to you, but if you have $100 to spend on a web site for a year, spend it on building a WordPress site.

You’ll thank me at the end of the year.

Special Offer

This page has gotten so much traffic that I’ve just added this offer.

Want Me To Set Up WordPress For You?

FOR FREE?

Doing the WordPress installation and set up can be a bit tricky, especially for people who are not technically inclined.

I get an affiliate fee from my web hosting company for every person I refer to them.

If you use the special link I provide below, which contains my affiliate code so they can pay me, I’m willing to do the complete WordPress installation for you, for free.

Get Web Hosting

They are charging $3.88 a month for hosting as I write this.

(That price could change, so check it out yourself.)

They have a 30 day money back guarantee.

I’ll Set It Up For You

I’ll install whatever theme and plugins that you want.

I have a list of plugins that I always install for my clients.

I’ll walk you through any configuration settings that you want and show you how to make it do what you want it to do.

I’ve done so many WordPress installations, it’s fast and easy for me.

I make a few bucks from PowWeb and I make another WordPress fan.

You get good, cheap web hosting for your own web site, with none of the technical hassle.

How cool is that?

NO OBLIGATION NOW

CLICK THIS LINK FOR MORE INFO:
http://www.powweb.com/?AffID=577083

After you click on that link and set up your hosting account, send me an email using my normal “contact us” page, and tell me that you want me to install WordPress for you.

As long as you use that link, you can buy the web hosting any time within the next 6 months and I’ll get the commission.

If you have any questions, please drop me an email and ask.

Looking forward to helping you get your web site set up.

What traffic are you missing?

As we drilled into the content part of it, I saw that no one, as in not one person, was looking through his portfolio pages. I realized that these pages have a smaller menu over to the side that people could easily miss.

Also, when I redesigned his site by bringing it into WordPress (of course), the top, main menu now has a different look and action than the original small portfolio menu. I used to just put a glow around the highlighted menu item and now I was doing the whole colored div background, which is much more apparent.

Now we have a menu that looks and functions differently and no one who ever clicks on them. HHHmmmm. What to do?

Next step, I put in the same style menu as the top, so they highlight the same. That should improve the click on those. We’ll be watching his stats to see what happens.

Read your Analytics pages today. What traffic are you missing?

They said they were about to update their web site. Their spouse had created it and they wanted to add some features and update the look. I suggested that they use WordPress. I sounded like the fan boy that I am.

They were pleasant, but said they already had hosting with GoDaddy and they would just use the web blog application that they provided as part of the hosting package. They had heard of WordPress and that it was good, but they would use what they had.

I continued on about how cool WordPress is. They were very nice, but had decided that they didn’t want to pay anything extra when they already had a blogging application included in their hosting package.

I checked it out on my own GoDaddy account. It sucked! It had a tenth of the functionality and the interface was horrible.

Did I mention that it's free?

Oh. That’s quite different. It’s free you say? You don’t have to buy it?

No! It’s FREE. You can download it, install it, pick a theme, put in some plug ins and have a complete, professional web site FOR FREE.

They said they would check it out. They thanked me profusely. Told me that I had motivated them to get going on their web site.

I have no idea if they will do anything on it at all, but I guess I was shocked that not everyone has the same understanding and knowledge and beliefs that I do. Silly me.

People seem to think that to get cool software, you have to spend money. If you don’t spend money, then you can have cool software. People can’t wrap their heads around the whole “open source” thing.

If you happen to not be aware, WordPress is free. There is no cost. You can download it and install it on any web server that’s running MySQL and Apache (which is almost every web server these days). You can control all aspects of it. You can build your own theme if you want. You can do anything with it.

Did I mention that it’s free?

You don’t need that. From the article: ” Many people I know are fine with a simple and professional Web page.” That’s what I advocate, a simple, professional web site for FREE!.

Quoting from Small Business – We Don’t Need No Stinkin’ Web Sites By Gene Marks

Many people I know are fine with a simple and professional Web page.

But gee, many of the business owners I know — those incredible, pathetic, dismal, wretched losers who so shock the turtleneck-and-vest-wearing, greasy-haired crowd — don’t necessarily have those needs. They are gas station owners, restaurateurs, insurance agents, shopkeepers. They’re CPAs, architects, landscapers, plumbers, and electricians. They’re not selling books online or running auctions. They’re not distributing software or hosting phone services. They’re not complex. They’re investing elsewhere. They’re O.K. with no Web site.

A Vested Interest in the Debate

When was the last time I visited the site for the corner Exxon guy or the sub shop across from my office? To see the price of gas? To get nutrition info on ham on rye?

If you search the Web you’ll find lots of people writing about how small business owners must have a Web site. Dig a little further and guess what? Many of the people shouting how absolutely critical it is for a small business to have a Web site are — drum roll, please — in the business of helping small businesses create Web sites. Surprise! Despite what all the business experts — including the turtleneck-and-vest-wearing classes — may say, Web sites are not an absolute necessity.

Good business owners invest wisely and for the most return. They’re not in business to run a site just because it’s cool or hip. Many people I know are fine with a simple and professional Web page. Let the turtleneck-and-vest-wearing, greasy-haired geeks suck their fees from someone else.

Read the entire article at:
http://www.cio-today.com/story.xhtml?story_id=013001HJPXZ6&page=3&full_skip=1

Quoting from WordPress Sermons Plugin :: 4:14 evangelical christian theology blog

The Sermon Browser WordPress Plugin allows churches to simply upload sermons to their WordPress website, where they can be searched, listened to, and downloaded. It is easy to use with comprehensive help and tutorials. Features include:

1. Sermons can be searched by topic, preacher, bible passage or date.
2. Full podcasting capabilities, including custom podcasts for individual users.
3. Sermons uploaded in mp3 format can be played directly on your website using the 1PixelOut Audio Player.
4. An optional sidebar widget displays sermons on all of your posts or pages.
5. Embed videos from sites such as YouTube or Google Video.
6. Other file types can also be uploaded, including PDF, Powerpoint, Word, text and RTF. Multiple files can be attached to single sermons.
7. The full Bible text of the passage being preached on can be included on each sermon page (seven different versions, including ESV).
8. Files can be uploaded to your own site through the browser or via FTP. Alternatively you can use other free audio hosting sites such as Odeo.
9. Powerful templating function allows complete customisation to complement the look of your site.
10. Simple statistics show how often each sermon has been listened to.
11. Compatible with WordPress MU.
12. Extensive help and tutorial screencasts.

Read the entire article at:
http://www.4-14.org.uk/wordpress-plugins/sermon-browser

If you are involved with a church that does not have a web site, I can show you how to get one for free, using WordPress.com. All it takes is a little initiative on your part and you can have a web site. You don’t need a $300 site. You don’t need a $500 site. You can have a free web site for your church. Go to www.worpdress.com and follow the instructions.

Do it now. For the children.

Quoting from The Church In 2009 – KYPost.com

Close to half of the churches offer Web pages.

For example, local churches have caught up with the secular society in their use of computers and technology. In 1998, fewer than one in five U.S. congregations hosted Web sites; today, close to half of the churches offer Web pages to their members and local community. A friend of mine who ministers to a large Washington, D.C. Baptist congregation has a frequently updated interactive Web site whose volunteer editor works from India.

Read the entire article at:
http://www.kypost.com/content/middleblue3/story/The-Church-In-2009/o3oMerab5E2upfPeBvDqdg.cspx

Quoting from 5 Features That a Church Website Shouldn’t Be Without | Web Site Design Blog

A good church website needs to be informative, visually appealing and have a bit of interaction with the visitor. After all shouldn’t your church’s website inspire people to visit your church physically? It can be easy to forget that people not in your local community may be searching for a church to attend a worship service. What features do you look for when you are looking at a church website?

How do you get there? Sure an address is great, but a map or written directions would be better.

Driving Directions

How do you get there? Sure an address is great, but a map or written directions would be better. Make it as easy as possible for the website visitor to locate your church.

Service Times

When do you worship? Often more times than not the service times are not listed on most church websites. Be sure to place your worship times prominently on the homepage of the site.

Sunday School

Let’s say that your visitors have children. What do you suppose they would like to know about your church? Make it well known that you offer a Sunday school service to avoid any confusion with new guests to your church.

Events Calendar

What if a member of your congregation misses a Sunday, but would like to know about the youth soccer game in the park? By having an up-to-date events calendar you can let your church members know what is going on.

Pictures

Sure stock photography is great in some cases, but what about those great pictures from your church’s mission trip? Be sure to include real pictures of your church and congregation. This will give your site a more realistic and personal touch.

Read the entire article at:
http://blog.collinsinternet.com/27/5-features-that-a-church-website-shouldnt-be-without/