Tony Backhouse is a musician and composer from NZ. He had a very outdated website that was built in Adobe Catalyst. That had to be migrated to WordPress before Adobe Catalyst expired. Jann (Tony’s business partner) came to Let’s Build a Website and attended the 1 on 1 Build a WordPress Website course.
This is what the website looked like before the training
The site was narrow and hard to read. And definitely not modern no mobile friendly, which is a big issue.
This is the new website – check it out!
It’s more modern and functional. As well as mobile responsive! Meaning it looks good on all devices. Which Google loves!
What we did in the training
First phase
- To set up WordPress on the web host.
- Next, to install the Divi theme (from elegantthemes.com).
- This is how we designed the look and feel of the site.
- Jann already had a design/layout she liked.
- So, we used this a guide to creating the new look.
Tony Backhouse wishlist
Included the following
- A Shop – to sell Tonys books, recordings and CDs.
- Blog – to bring traffic and give his readers some recent news.
- Calendar & Events – to provide his fans with the opportunity to go to his performances.
- Social Media – so users can follow Tony and receive his latest news.
- MailChimp – is a must! If you want to build up a database of emails to send out newsletters.
Second phase
- We started to build the site, by setting up all the pages.
- There were 12 main pages, a blog and a shop page.
- Jann copied over a lot of content from the old site.
- But we had to create completely new layouts for all pages.
- The amazing thing about Divi is it has a way to copy pages.
- Making building pages a little easier.
- The next task was to create a navigation menu.
- Lastly, to add the logo.
What plugins we used
Events
- To display Tony’s events on the page, we used a Events plugin.
- Even though it’s free it still has a lot of great options.
- Heres the plugin – https://en-au.wordpress.org/plugins/the-events-calendar/
- It’s a free one from wordpress.org
- We set this up and added some upcoming events.
- Jann learnt how to do this ongoing.
Shop
- For the shop, we used Woocommerce.
- The most popular WordPress shop plugin.
- Heres the plugin – https://en-au.wordpress.org/plugins/woocommerce/
- Setting up the plugin included adding the business details and payment options.
- The shipping was simple (luckily), so it was quick to set up.
- There was just a flat rate for Tony’s books.
Social Media
- For Social Media, we used Monarch. This is a premium plugin.
- Heres the plugin – https://www.elegantthemes.com/plugins/monarch/
- Setting up the plugin included adding the Follow icons and the URL.
- Then placing the Monarch Widget into the footer.
- This plugin also allows you to add Social Sharing.
- Social Sharing is necessary, so visitors can share your content.
- Every website should have these options.
MailChimp
- The plugin we used was Bloom. Another premium plugin from elegantthemes.com
- Heres the plugin – https://www.elegantthemes.com/plugins/
- We set this plugin up and connected it to MailChimp.
- Then add the signup box to slide in at the bottom of the footer.
- Visitors can now join Tony’s site and receive his latest news.
To sum up
Jann and Let’s Build a Website completed the website together in 3 x 3hr sessions. Therefore 9 hours in total! Not bad for building a new professional website. That works well on all devices. And most importantly that Jann and Tony can edit themselves ongoing. They were both very pleased with the end result.
