The reason I want to do this is because most people charge a fortune to put a site together.

I have a site that somebody put together for me in the UK and the total for this was just ￡300, all in, but it did only take the guy three hours create it from start to finish as it is a fairly simple site and I gave him links to a site that I wanted him to base mine one so easy.

However, I need some changes making to my site with a new home/landing page with an extra ‘portfolio’ page with a few sub-pages for carousel slideshows of my work.

To my amazement the gentleman who built my original site wants four times the price he charged to build my site from the ground up from the beginning. I expected it to be less than the original ￡300 as he is only adding pages and making a few tweaks here and there, or so I thought, but it would appear there is more building from the ground up, but I still can’t understand the very high price hence my figuring I’d just buy a few books on WordPress and Javascript and SQL databasing from Amazon and spend a month or two figuring it out myself.

As for my knowledge, I have build websites using WIX templates on the WIX site in the past, which is hardly Java, admittedly, but I also know HTML, who doesn’t, and I am a creative guy who can probably learn this.

I know the best compression formats for image types etc and I can go into a ready-made HTML site and make changes and tweak things etc, as I can go into the back-end of my WordPress sight and change images and text etc.

Because I don’t have pots of money I figured I’d learn the necessary skills in coding to do WordPress, Javascript, and whatever else I need to know to learn about connecting it to my Ionos service provider and my existing SQL database. I mean, how hard can it be?

So my question is, is it difficult to learn this stuff or do I have to spend three years working at NASA or under Mark Zuckerberg to get my head around it? Is it rocket science?

Fact is, I can’t afford to pay somebody ￡1,350 to do this for me when the site just isn’t that complicated and I’m sure, with the right books and online tutorials and a bit of forum help and even one-to-one help from some folk dotted around the net I could nail it without the high fees that web developers charge.

Any advice?

Any recommendations for books I can buy off Amazon?

[offer to pay redacted]

I’m in my 50s so I’m realistic, but have a good brain, am super creative and don’t see that I’ll have too much of a problem getting my head around this stuff with some books, guidance etc, this way I’ll be able to maintain and deal with my site on my own in future rather than having to pay every time I need something major changing.

Thanks.

This is the year I go from basically skinning WordPress to groking what can be done. Last month I learned to recognize the basics of custom post types. This month I want to begin to get a good look at what can be done with custom fields and user panels. In the process, I want to really learn me some php. Faking it with bits of familiar php is fun, but not powerful enough to get creative.

I’d love to knock heads with anyone out there who is on the same path.

1. I am having a tough time changing the font from bold to regular. The bold button just doesn’t seem to work on a lot of the pages, although it seems to work to make things bold – just not the other way. Any idea why?

2. I have a tough time with the fonts in general. I notice they have a ‘Paste from Word’ button. Should I just do all my writing in Word and try to copy and paste it in?

3. Can you center the pages in the screen instead of scrunching them on the left side. Can they also be widened to cover a lot more of the screen?

4. Can you remove the widget side bar with the about me words and testimonials from all pages except the home page?

5. Can the text on the home page below the widget sidebar go the full width of the page – in other words not just stop where the text next to the sidebar stops?

6. Is it possible to have a page with an excel spreadsheet on the page that would be password protected? That way people who don’t have excel on their computer could use it. I have the spreadsheet – I would just need to upload it to the website. I found a free service that does this, but they will not upload spreadsheets that are protected at all.

7. Could you (or I) put a background color other than white in the box that says “My Readers Say It Best”?

8. Can you get rid of the headlines (“Everything you ever wanted…to…Hassle Free”) on every page except the Home Page?

Jim