My WordPress Site

The first thing I had to do, even before beginning a website, was to choose a name, check with a domain selling vendor to see if was available. I checked with NameCheap.com, and penrygenealogy.com was available. I pay $15.16 per year to use the name. It has to be renewed annually.

There are many programs to build Websites. As in all programs, you can find several articles on the web that compare the programs. They never agree. Why? It is because either the person doing the review is using one and naturally favors it, or the comparison is being done by one of the programs being compared, or is being funded by one of the programs. I look at the comparisons and promptly ignore them.

I chose WordPress because of a non-biased review in Forbes. It mentioned that WordPress has vast customization capabilities. It did point out that WordPress has a steep learning curve. Yes it does, but I found that it was well worth the effort. It is free and does not require html experience. It is pretty much WYSIWYG.

Once I choose WordPress, I needed to pick a theme. A theme is the visual appearance of the site, and the content builds around the theme. If you were doing website about dairy farms, you would want a rural theme. There are hundreds of themes available. I choose Astra Theme. It has a clean look and is very popular. The way this website looks, it headings, colors, arrangement of material, is all built around the Astra Theme. I wanted to build a website that resembled a book, and Astra works for me. The following images show a few of the hundreds of possible themes. I paid $59.00 for Astra.

After choosing a theme, I had to decide what to use as an editor. There was one built in to the program, but there are better ones. I chose Elementor Pro. It has hundreds of inserts, we call widgets, such as headers, text, icons, buttons, anchor points, maps, dividers, flip charts, animated headlines, image galleries, etc. Many of the widgets also allow bold, underline, italics, typeface and colors. Elementor Pro has nearly 100 widgets. Elementor Pro costs $99.00 per year. In addition to the widgets there are plugins. A plugin usually comes from a third-party vendor and adds additional features such as fancy menus, calendars, appointment booking, popups, special forms for business, security, condensing to save space, e-mail, Facebook, or folders for images, carousels, etc. The images you see moving above are because they are in a carousel. There are over 1000 plugins available, If you login and see lots of images that will waste hours of your time, those are created with a plugin. Some plugins are free, some can be expensive. wpDataTables to manage Tables and Charts cost $299! A cost estimation plugin is $69. My Folders Pro plugin costs $49.00. Before building a website, note that is not free. My costs so far:

Domain – $15 per year, WordPress – Free, Astra Theme – $59, Elementor Pro Editor – $99 per year, Folders Pro Plugin $49, WP Carousel Pro Plugin – $39.00. My total startup cost was $261. My annual cost to maintain the website $114.

Moral of story. Unless you are serious about having a website and willing to maintain it, save your money! Below are some images that show the names of some of the widgets in Elementor, and some images showing the names and samples from plugins.