GoDaddy hosting and themes

Hi there. I work at GoDaddy, and am patient. ?? Let’s get you sorted. Quick question – do you know if you’re on the GoDaddy Managed WordPress service, or something else?

Thank you thank you THANK YOU!!!

I think it must be a GoDaddy Managed WordPress because I had to get to it from the GoDaddy website.

There are actually two different ways to get WordPress.

1) GoDaddy Managed WordPress (we managed pretty much everything):
2) cPanel hosting (where you install WordPress yourself)

The two links are different.

Here’s Managed WP: https://www.godaddy.com/hosting/wordpress-hosting.aspx
Here’s hosting: https://www.godaddy.com/hosting/web-hosting.aspx

Are you able to check which one you purchased?

Definitely the first one.

Cool. Can you check to see if you have the Video Tutorials installed on your installation? If you go into WP and look on the left side, it should be there. If you click on it, there’s a good intro to how to get around the theming system. You’ll know if you have it if you have the “Video Tutorials” link like this:
https://imgur.com/GuNRKyI

At about 5:50 mark in the Themes video, it gives some pointers on how to find other themes that might fit the bill for you. It goes through finding and adding other ones that might be more to your liking (and you may even find the original theme you had on your previous site).

If those video tutorials are there for you, can you take a peek at the Themes video and let me know if that gets you headed down a better path?

Thanks for that.

That solves part of the problem, but other themes still don’t give me options for changing fonts and font colours and so on and forth. So whatever theme I choose, I can’t really customise it beyond picking from about 6 colour choices for backgrounds. There are no background patterns to choose from, there are no fonts or font sizes to choose from. All of those things are on the free WordPress.com site, so I can’t understand why they aren’t on the GoDaddy managed version??

Or maybe they are there but I just can’t find them?

That goes for widgets as well! There are no little logos I can add to the main sidebar for links to my Twitter feed or FB feed, etc. There were options for those on the free WordPress.com site!

What was the URL / address of the site (when it was on WordPress.com)? We can see what’s out there that’s most similar to that particular experience. There are literally thousands of themes available for self-hosted sites like yours, and ditto for the widgets. If you can share what the old URL was, we might be able to see if there was something similar to it.

thebuttercupbaker.wordpress.com was the old one.

glutenfreebournemouth.com is the new one.

Gotcha. Since self-hosted WordPress is much more customizable and flexible than WP.com, you may need to drop in a social sharing plugin to do exactly what you want. (That “bare bones” aspect is the way WordPress comes in any self-hosted environment; it’s not a GoDaddy thing.)

Once you find a theme you like, happy to point you in the direction of how to get things set where you can add social sharing logos and widgets and the like.

If you go into the “Appearance” link on the left sidebar of the admin of your site, and then click on the “Add a theme” box (it should be in the lower right), you’ll have access to a large number of themes you might like. In looking at the former WordPress.com site above, searching on filters like “Right Sidebar” and “Custom Header” and “Custom Background” will likely pull up something you might like.

Once you get the theme you like, you can start to customize things. This includes adding on a plugin for social sharing. (Think of plugins as usually-free “add-ons” to WordPress that let you do additional things.)

UPDATE: Actually, it looks like you’re pretty close already on the “new” site. Looks like tweaking the social sharing widget on the right and removing the extra images, and you’ll be pretty close.

On the “old” site, what did you click to add the social sharing things like the Facebook widget on the right?

Ohhh I see!!!

Okay, so let me see if I’ve got this right. On WP.com, there is a much smaller range of customisation tools and widgets, so they can put them all right up front for you to choose from. But on self-hosted WP, there is a lot, lot more available, so you have to add what you want as plug-ins in order to use them. So, if I want different fonts, I have to install a plug-in for fonts. If I want to have the symbols for various social media sites, I have to find the plug-in for them. If I want a differently designed side-bar, I have to find the plug-in for it.

Please tell me that means I’m understanding it, because then I can finally go to bed!!!! Haha!

You got it! And I just looked at your “new” site, and it actually looks like you’ll be able to get pretty close. After further review, I would NOT recommend changing the theme — it looks like you’re mostly-already there!

If you know what you were clicking on in the “old” site to add things like the social widgets (it might be called something like “Social Sharing” or “Social icons” or something like that), I might be able to help track down what plugin you need for the social shares.

Oh my God you have NO idea just how excited and happy you’ve made me right now!! Hahaha!!! I’ve even managed to set myself up with Google Fonts and I’m picking it all out now.

THANK YOU so much for all your help!! I’ll have a bash tomorrow at finding the social media stuff, but if you don’t mind, I’ll let you know if I have any trouble with that?

In the meantime, I really can’t thank you enough. I’ve tried calling GoDaddy, I’ve tried Twittering them and not once have they been as helpful as you’ve been! They’re lucky to have you.

On WP.com, there is a much smaller range of customisation tools and widgets, so they can put them all right up front for you to choose from.

I do not use the Jetpack plugin myself, but you might take a look at that since you will likely recognize many things in that overall collection of features.

Thank you so much for the kind words!

And welcome to the incredibly fun, sometimes-frustrating, always-eventually-rewarding world of self-hosting. You’re going to rock it! ??

Closing!