The Creative Person's Website Builder by Alannah Moore
| The Creative Person's Website Builder by Alannah Moore | |
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| Category: Reference | |
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Reviewer: Sue Magee
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| Summary: If you want your own website without having to learn all the technical bits or pay a fortune to a web designer then this book might be your answer. | |
| Buy? Yes | Borrow? Yes |
| Pages: 176 | Date: November 2013 |
| Publisher: ILEX | |
| External links: Author's website | |
| ISBN: 978-1781571064 | |
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Creating a website is not difficult. Although some technical knowledge is a help - as is familiarity with your computer - you would be surprised at the speed with which you can have your own website and the sense of achievement which this will give you. If you're running a big business then you might want to go to a web designer but it is possible to have a site for very little in the way of expenditure. I know - we've done it and we've grown our little baby into a business. I was lucky to have the expertise of our first tech guy when we built Bookbag, but Alanah Moore has produced a book which could give you a reasonable start and a great deal of inspiration.
It starts from basics. If you have a computer the chances are that you will know enough to follow the book. I have my bible which I refer to for Bookbag, but this is text-heavy and requires more than a little knowledge before you can do very much - and requires systems-level installation. 'The Creative Person's Website Builder' is an entirely different animal. You could pick it up with little knowledge and follow the text and pictures to achieve something very quickly.
It does lean very heavily (well, just about exclusively) towards WordPress - with initial choice being between WordPress.com and self-hosting by WordPress - which ignores the fact that HTML coding is not difficult to learn (I'm a wrinkly and mastered it within two days to the point of being able to upload and run a basic site - that knowledge still stands me in good stead today.) Many people I know have WordPress sites and they regularly complain about how little they can do with them, but I do wonder if a close look at this book might give them a better idea of the themes and plugins which are available - there are pages of examples of what can be achieved.
Technical advice revolves around options for creating pages and the general navigation of the site. It really is worth paying a lot of attention to this point as a site with non-intuitive navigation can annoy the hell out of people. The advice is far reaching. It doesn't stop at uploading images but goes on to embedding, audio, video and other content.
If you're considering using the site for ecommerce you'll find chapter 9 - about selling online from the site - particularly informative as it's an area where you can quickly come an expensive cropper. There's also a good introduction to letting the world know about your site (it's basic SEO, but all good sound advice) and an introduction to social media - best read before you start on the sites.
For anyone wanting a website without learning all the technicalities of how to run a site WordPress - and this book - could be a Godsend. I'd like to thank the publishers for sending a copy to the Bookbag.
For more about the people behind WordPress you might find that The Year Without Pants: WordPress.Com and the Future of Work by Scott Berkun makes interesting reading.
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You can read more book reviews or buy The Creative Person's Website Builder by Alannah Moore at Amazon.co.uk Amazon currently charges £2.99 for standard delivery for orders under £20, over which delivery is free.
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