advice for a complete novice about wordpress and hosting

[northcountrygirl]

Hi, I've had a wix website for a year or so to showcase my gig photos, which, whilst is really easy to use, I'm pretty embarrassed by as it looks a bit amateurish (so I'm not posting it here! ) I'm photographing more gigs now and I'm also wanting a blog which, at present wix html5 doesn't support.

I've done a bit of research and the photo websites which I like are usually wordpress ones. I've had a look at some of the cheapish templates such as Novelty, photocrati and photographer which will probably meet my needs.

Apart from this I don't have a clue where to start. Do I sort out a domain name and hosting first? Should I get these from the same company? I've heard tsohost is highly recommended. Would their £14.99 per year hosting be enough?

Am I right in thinking I'll need to download wordpress.org not wordpress.com.

Sorry for all the questions!

 

[dankellys]

I've had a look at some of the cheapish templates such as Novelty, photocrati and photographer which will probably meet my needs.

There are thousands of 'Themes' as wordpress calls them available if you are looking to self host a wordpress site. A good place for portfolio style themes is here: http://themeforest.net/category/site-templates/creative/portfolio or if you dont want to pay for a theme just yet, try googling 'Free wordpress portfolio themes' or 'free wordpress gallery themes'.

Apart from this I don't have a clue where to start. Do I sort out a domain name and hosting first?

Yes and Yes.

Should I get these from the same company? I've heard tsohost is highly recommended.

I would recommend looking at hostgator.com. I currently have a reseller account with them (as I am a web designer) and they are excellent. I believe they are also on Wordpress' list of recommended hosts. They have a '1-click' wordpress install button too, which makes life a little easier, as it means you dont have to download wordpress to you PC, then upload it via FTP to your host.

Would their £14.99 per year hosting be enough?

If you go with hostgator, I would recommend going with their Hatchling Plan, which is $3.96 (about £2.62) a month which includes your hosting, a domain name and cPanel as standard.

Am I right in thinking I'll need to download wordpress.org not wordpress.com.

If you go with a host that doesnt do the easy 1-click install, then yes, you will need to download the files from wordpress.org, then upload them using FTP to you hosting.

Sorry for all the questions!

No problem at all, feel free to ask any more that you may have and I hope everything I have said above makes sense.

EDIT: Also, hostgator have excellent support, especially with their 'online chat' option. Only ever had to use them twice, in 4 years, and both times my issue has been resolved within about 10 minute.

 

[Bigmp]

Do I sort out a domain name and hosting first?

You don't have to. Wordpress allows you to change the domain name of your blog whenever, so if you want to get your blog up and running before getting your domain sorted then you can.
However changing the domains is an unnecessary hassle in my eyes so I would sort hosting and domains first.

Martin

 

[Harlequin565]

Apart from this I don't have a clue where to start. Do I sort out a domain name and hosting first? Should I get these from the same company?

I keep my domain name registration and my hosting separate. That way if I have any issues with my host I can just tell my domain name provider to point my traffic elsewhere. I learnt this from an extremely bad experience with Streamline.net who had both my domain name and my hosting. When they started playing silly beggars with me I couldn't even re-route my traffic.

I did write a blog post about this a couple of years ago here. It's a bit out of date now I think, but the concepts are the same. There's also a 10% discount code for Vidahost there too who I've used for the last three years without a whiff of trouble.

Good luck with your site!

Ian.

 

[gramps]

I keep my domain name registration and my hosting separate. That way if I have any issues with my host I can just tell my domain name provider to point my traffic elsewhere.

I would say that this is essential.

 

[Tizer]

Most good hosts give you a control panel to change your domain details anyway, fact of the matter is, if you pick a crap host in the first place, you get crap support and service.

 

[scottwyden]

Hi, I work for Photocrati and would happily answer any questions I can. Feel free to email me anytime at scott(at)photocrati.com. We are in different time zones, but I will answer as quick as possible.

 

[PeterF80]

Worth adding. When looking at a hosting package for wordpress, you need a Linux one, not an MS one. Additionally, although uploading wordpress manually is difficult and requires a bit of getting used to, I would still advocate doing it in that way. Not all one click installs work terribly well, and are not always compatible with the various functions (such as shortcodes) that your theme may contain.

Generally I would suggest using a paid theme form a reputable source. Many of the free ones have malware embedded in them. Tripwire magazine is a good source for reviews.

http://www.tripwiremagazine.com/category/blogging/wordpress

 

[TCR4x4]

I've just set up an account with TSO host about a week ago. and I now have my Wordpress site running on it. I'm on the £4.99 a month package.


I have set up Wordpress before, but did it manually back then. TSO has a 1 click install which is incredibly easy. It sets up all the mySQL databases for you, all you need to do is note some things down and then edit 1 file.

I buy my domain names through 123reg, but if you buy certain hosting packages from TSO you get a free domain name anyway.

 

[boliston]

I keep my domain name registration and my hosting separate. That way if I have any issues with my host I can just tell my domain name provider to point my traffic elsewhere....

Definitely keep them separate - A lot of web hosts seem to want to host your DNS records, but I'd rather they had nothing to do with email for my domain, I want my webhost to host only my website not my domain email.

 

[northcountrygirl]

Sorry for the belated reply. I've got the hosting set up with tso host (linux). Finally found a wordpress template and am uploading content to the site. I'm finding wordpress a really steep learning curve, but slowly getting there I think!