Hi,

I'm a new agent and I'm in the process of creating my website. I've read about the many advantages of using Wordpress to create a website, specifically around SEO, and therefore have chosen to go down this route. My question is how difficult is it to learn Wordpress? I do not have a technical background, aside from knowing how to use the typical Microsoft Office Applications - Excel, Powerpoint, Word etc. My goal is to be able to create a professional-looking website as well as be able to maintain it myself.

I would appreciate your thoughts and if you can share your own experience as well.

Thanks!

I am ahead of you by a few months, maybe 4 or 5. It was painless to begin. You should easily be able to get set up in one sitting. I know there is alot more I can learn. You will find plenty of threads and dozens upon dozens of helpful posts on the forum. Utilize the search feature to see what I mean. Good luck.

That's one of the many positives about Wordpress, the shallow learning curve. It doesn't take much to get started and the community is so active it's easy to access answers when you need them. Of course if you wanted to, you could really dig into Wordpress as well, learn all the php and MySQL technologies, but it's not a prerequisite.

If you want to know what Wordpress will look and act like before installing it on your own server, head over to Wordpress.com and sign up for a free account - what you see there will be nearly identical to how WP looks on your server.


We offer a few real estate specific free guides, check out signature for the links.

I just found that Wordpress has a forum rich with threads on working through the kinks. I imagine you could find answers to all of your questions there.

Thanks for sharing your experience Doin bpose. Are you happy with what you've created so far? Does it look like a professionally created website?

RT - thanks for your input. I've actually signed-up and opened an account with wordpress. My first impression is that there's a ton of info I need to absorb, I guess nothing good comes free and I've got my work cut out for me.

http://rrjank.wordpress.com/

There is the link if you want to check it out. No, it does not look like a professional website, but it serves some function for me. I use it to publisize some listings with an extra umpff. I use it to stay in front of my facebook people. I stay outside of RE with some of my topics so I don't barage people with business. It is in the fetal stages to be sure. I would check out some of the other big bloggers, like Perky. My traffic is certainly on the climb though. Each month it is larger. I get comments back from people in person, so I think it is accomplishing what I want it to do. I want to stay in front of my people and remind them who I am and what I do. That reminder might simply be the word REMAX at the end of a humor post I made. I do not blast every RE task I do like some agents do.

I have blended FB into this thread, sorry if I confused you.

The key to building a cost effective Wordpress website is finding the right theme, here's a couple sites I've worked on to show you what can be done with Wordpress:

http://showappeal.com/ Heavy theme customization
http://www.azsearchforhomes.com/ Minor theme customization

[quote=Doin' bpose][quote=Steely Dan]Thanks for sharing your experience Doin bpose. Are you happy with what you've created so far? Does it look like a professionally created website?
[/quote]


[url=http://rrjank.wordpress.com/]http://rrjank.wordpress.com/[/url]

There is the link if you want to check it out. No, it does not look like a professional website, but it serves some function for me. I use it to publisize some listings with an extra umpff. I use it to stay in front of my facebook people. I stay outside of RE with some of my topics so I don't barage people with business. It is in the fetal stages to be sure. I would check out some of the other big bloggers, like Perky. My traffic is certainly on the climb though. Each month it is larger. I get comments back from people in person, so I think it is accomplishing what I want it to do. I want to stay in front of my people and remind them who I am and what I do. That reminder might simply be the word REMAX at the end of a humor post I made. I do not blast every RE task I do like some agents do.

I have blended FB into this thread, sorry if I confused you. [/quote]

Look pretty good to me. Did you use any other tool aside from Wordpress (e.g. dreamweaver)? Did you build this using a theme you purchased? Also curious why you're not having it hosted yet with a provider like Bluehost?

[quote=RTChris][quote=Steely Dan]RT - thanks for your input. I've actually signed-up and opened an account with wordpress. My first impression is that there's a ton of info I need to absorb, I guess nothing good comes free and I've got my work cut out for me.[/quote]

The key to building a cost effective Wordpress website is finding the right theme, here's a couple sites I've worked on to show you what can be done with Wordpress:

[url]http://showappeal.com/[/url] Heavy theme customization
[url]http://www.azsearchforhomes.com/[/url] Minor theme customization [/quote]

Looks pretty cool - even the one with minor customization. I'll ask you the same question I asked Doin dpose - what other tools did you use (e.g. Dreamweaver) to create these websites?

Thanks!

Steely, actually the only code editor I use is Dreamweaver, although you can use Coda (Mac only) as a less expensive program, and TextWrangler (Mac only) as a free program.

Otherwise my primary host is HostGator - been pleased with them so far.

I also use Transmit (Mac only) as my FTP client to upload and download things from the server. Very cool software indeed.

There is a steep learning curve in mastering WordPress, but due to its functionality and SEO juice, it's well worth putting the time/effort (specially when compared to the options, which are typically considerably more costly).

When setting up a Wordpress account in order to blog, is one better off to use their own domain name or the wordpress domain? I have a domain name but wanted to use that on my official website when I get it. I'm not really sure how all this works. I am assuming that eventually I will have a website where I will put a link on the website to my Wordpress blog. Is this correct or can the Wordpress Blog be changed into my actual website when I become a realtor?

In my opinion, it is better to have ultimate control over your blog which is why you should have it on your own server - most webhosts these days automatically include a WP option. This way you have utter and complete control over your content all of the time.

WP can be tricky, not terribly hard if you have some coding experince w/ CSS, but the easiest thing to do to get started is to pick a template that you like and use it for your entire site.

If you do not have any experience w/ coding, it would probably be well worth your $$ to hire someone (who really knows what they are doing) to set it up for you. You really should not start until you have your license. You can start writing blogs now and saving them on your computer - then you will have a whole slew to get started and you can begin blogging with the ability to churn out 2 posts a week.

It's better to do it correctly NOW, before you get too busy, or you'll end up like me, trying to squeeze it in while handling closings and customers and other issues that come with being a busy agent.

[quote=Perky_REALTOR]In my opinion, it is better to have ultimate control over your blog which is why you should have it on your own server - most webhosts these days automatically include a WP option. This way you have utter and complete control over your content all of the time.

WP can be tricky, not terribly hard if you have some coding experince w/ CSS, but the easiest thing to do to get started is to pick a template that you like and use it for your entire site.

If you do not have any experience w/ coding, it would probably be well worth your $$ to hire someone (who really knows what they are doing) to set it up for you. You really should not start until you have your license. You can start writing blogs now and saving them on your computer - then you will have a whole slew to get started and you can begin blogging with the ability to churn out 2 posts a week. :)

It's better to do it correctly NOW, before you get too busy, or you'll end up like me, trying to squeeze it in while handling closings and customers and other issues that come with being a busy agent. [/quote]

Thanks for chiming in Perky - I hear you're the wordpress queen of this discussion board ;). I'll give it a try and if I find it too complicated and/or I get to the point were I get too busy, I might just outsource this task. As you suggested, I am planning on writing content for my website now and go live when I actually get my license.

I'm assuming the websites in your signature were all created using Wordpress?

OMG no. BLOGGING, I am pretty sharp with. Worpress...well I ain' tno queen. LOL

Well one of my blogs is a WP.com blog. I like that one. It works like it's supposed to! LOL. I am trying to do WP.org on my site now, and all seemed to be going well, I was customizing and all of that, but there is something screwed up on my server - either the database is corrupted or something, and I can't get anything to work. LOL. I'm about ready to delete the whole darn thing, give my new design to someone who specializes in WP, and just fork over the $$$ and be done with it.