This is my first post to a mailing list as well :)<br>And wow that's quite a story, lol, but understandably so. <br><br>One thing that makes Wordpress so great is the incredibly insane amount of Free resources, tutorials, themes, plugins, etc etc etc. If you were to just Google whatever it is that you want to know how to do, you would most likely find more than enough results posted on any one of the million sites that post things on WP, many which will be posts listing things like "<i>TOP 10 tips for ____ in Wordpress</i>", for example.<br>
<br>That's one tip I highly suggest, Google anything you need. And here's some invaluable links to get you started:<br><br><a href="http://codex.wordpress.org/Administration_Panels">http://codex.wordpress.org/Administration_Panels</a><br>
<a href="http://codex.wordpress.org/Using_Themes">http://codex.wordpress.org/Using_Themes</a><br><a href="http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/">http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/</a><br><br>I can't even choose from all the links I found for Wordpress just in quickly searching to get the url for these links, so I will just stop there, too many to pick from lol.<br>
<br>On my site, New2WP.com, there is information
posted about Wordpress categorized based on level of experience from beginner, intermediate, advanced. You may find some useful things there as well.<br><br>
(shameless plug :P)<br><br>Good luck, though shouldn't need it. Wordpress is extremely easy to learn, and use, once you understand it. Just takes a bit of reading about it.<br><br>--<br>Jared<br><a href="http://new2wp.com">http://new2wp.com</a><br>
<a href="http://tweeaks.com">http://tweeaks.com</a><br><br><br><br><div class="gmail_quote">On Tue, Mar 30, 2010 at 9:14 AM, Robert Hocking <span dir="ltr"><<a href="mailto:robertjhocking@gmail.com">robertjhocking@gmail.com</a>></span> wrote:<br>
<blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin: 0pt 0pt 0pt 0.8ex; border-left: 1px solid rgb(204, 204, 204); padding-left: 1ex;">
<div link="blue" vlink="purple" lang="EN-US">
<div>
<p class="MsoNormal">This is my first post, so I apologize in advance if I am not
following any mailing list protocols here that I am not aware of. I have
a web site that is hosted by <a href="http://powweb.com" target="_blank">powweb.com</a>. I have had it for about two
years now. I have my domain name registered at <a href="http://namecheap.com" target="_blank">namecheap.com</a>, and I also
subscribe to their whois protection. My web site is for my mobile
computer repair business that I started about two years ago. My first web
site was designed by myself using powweb’s templates, and it wasn’t
a blog.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal"> </p>
<p class="MsoNormal">I hired a web designer in my local area that convinced me to
get good SEO, that I needed to have him build me a blog web site, and he used
Wordpress. My web site address is: <a href="http://www.mobilecomputertechs.com" target="_blank">www.mobilecomputertechs.com</a>.
I paid him to design me a template that looked good, and would get me good
SEO. He explained to me that once he built the template, and got the web
site functional, that I would have to add content to the web site several times
a week, so that the web crawlers that search the internet each night, looking
for web sites that have new content, they would find my web site, with updated
content, and raise me up in the search engine’s results displayed when
someone was searching for me.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal"> </p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Well this hasn’t worked very well for me, mainly
because I am so unhappy with the look of my web site, that I completely lost
interest in adding content to my web site, to increase my SEO. Because
six months have gone by since my web site was created for me, the person who
created it won’t make any changes to make it look like what I would call
a professionally designed web site, and he wants to charge me to redesign it
again. The problem I have with that is I paid him once to design what I
thought was going to be a professionally designed web site, and if I didn’t
get what I wanted in the first place, I’m thinking I most likely won’t
get what I want again.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal"> </p>
<p class="MsoNormal">I decided to do some research on creating, or modifying my
existing Wordpress theme, and I stumbled upon what appears to be a great piece
of software called Artisteer. A lot of web sites that reviewed it gave it
high reviews, so I bought it yesterday. I installed and within several
hours I had a theme that I feel that I would be happy with. I had a
couple of glitches creating the theme that I thought looked good, and I
contacted the technical support department, and they answered most of my
questions, although a couple of them I answered myself, even though I wasn’t
able to find the answers in the user manual, or their online forums, or
searching Google.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal"> </p>
<p class="MsoNormal">So I figured that this was going to be really easy, I got
this theme saved, and I can just simply upload it to wherever and plop it in
place, and I’d be good to go. Well I did some research how to
upload the theme and apply it, and now I’m finding that it is not as easy
as I thought it would be. When I activate the theme, it doesn’t
look like it does when it is in Artisteer. After doing several hours of
research and digging into the wp-admin panel for my web site, I am finding that
there is a lot in there that I have no clue what it does, or how to use it.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal"> </p>
<p class="MsoNormal">My wife does programming for Ford, and she works with web
sites there, and she has been trying to help me get my web site cleaned up, and
looking good, and then eventually she is either going to start adding content
to my web site that I provide for her, or she will show me how to add content
to my web site myself. She is a basic to intermediate user of html, and I
thought she would be able to get my web site straightened around in a short
period of time. She went out and bought a Wordpress book, and has been
working on the web site for about a month now, and hasn’t got very far
with getting it finished.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal"> </p>
<p class="MsoNormal">About a week ago, the person/company who I paid to design my
web site had a training class on how to use Wordpress, in regards to the web
sites that he designed for his clientele. I signed my wife up for this
four hour class, and I thought in that four hours she would have a good start
on getting my web site redesigned, and content finally added to it. The
class ended up running over four hours, because each person in the class had
issues with their own web site/blog, and by the time he tried to answer each
person’s issues, he was all over the place, and there really wasn’t
an syllabus that was followed, to guarantee that all the content that he wanted
to teach, got taught.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal"> </p>
<p class="MsoNormal">So I decided to jump into this project. I am a Systems
Administrator for Chrysler (yes I still have a job) and I work on computers for
a living. Many years ago, I decided that I wasn’t going to do web
sites, because I had so many people asking me for help with theirs, that I
already had the area of IT established that I was interested in working in, and
working on web sites was not on that list. Maybe now I’m seeing
that was a mistake to choose not to learn basic web site creation and
maintenance.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal"> </p>
<p class="MsoNormal">So now that you got a background of where my wife’s
experience are, and what I need help with, here is my request. I want to
hire someone to remotely train us how to use Wordpress, how to create themes,
how to get a web site working using Wordpress, how to add content, how to do
all of this, and end up with a professional looking web site, that gets good
SEO. I’d love to find someone local to us, but I definitely consider
doing this remotely, where the coach/consultant would remote control my
desktop, while my wife and I watch, and then conversation is done using phone.
I have the remote control software we can use.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal"> </p>
<p class="MsoNormal">My primary goal is to get my web site redesigned and looking
professional, and then for us to understand how to add content, so I can get
good SEO for anyone in my local area looking for computer repair. It
would be great if my wife walked away with the basic knowledge on how to create
a Wordpress theme, and deploy a new web site for someone, as I have had my
clients ask if I could create a web site for them, and so far I have turned
them down.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal"> </p>
<p class="MsoNormal">I envision this training taking a while, and not having any
clue how long something like this would take, I could see it being ten or more
hours, spread out over several sessions. I’m really not looking for
someone who does this as their full-time business, my perfect coach/consultant
would be someone who is very familiar with all the ins and outs of creating a
Wordpress blog web site, because they do it at work, or they just love doing
it, and they are looking to make some extra income. If I had to pay what
the person who designed my web site to train me, I would not be able to afford
the training, as it would not be cost effective, because it would be cheaper to
just have him redesign the web site for me.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal"> </p>
<p class="MsoNormal">We are in the Detroit metropolitan area, and if you would prefer
to do this in person, and you are a reasonable driving distance away, we would
consider driving to you, otherwise I think the remote connection solution would
work out well. I hope this is the right forum to ask for the
coaching/training that we are looking for.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal"> </p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="color: black;">Best Regards,</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="color: black;"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="color: black;">Robert Hocking</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"> </p>
</div>
</div>
<br>_______________________________________________<br>
wp-pro mailing list<br>
<a href="mailto:wp-pro@lists.automattic.com">wp-pro@lists.automattic.com</a><br>
<a href="http://lists.automattic.com/mailman/listinfo/wp-pro" target="_blank">http://lists.automattic.com/mailman/listinfo/wp-pro</a><br>
<br></blockquote></div><br><br clear="all"><br>-- <br>Thank you,<br><br>Jared Williams<br>Web/Graphic Designer<br>Tweeaks.com | New2WP.com<br>Portfolio:<br><a href="http://Tweeaks.com/portfolio">http://Tweeaks.com/portfolio</a><br>
<br><br>