Switching from my old webpage theme (quite a basic webpress blog theme) to this current one was quite a task though. Thankfully the built-in functions in Wordpress are quite user-friendly and well-organized. The “Theme Editor” function was indeed very helpful.

Other than that, Guzel Control Panel available together with this theme makes it easier as well to manage the posts, etc. If it is not because of the Guzel Control Panel, I am sure I will be even more at a lost in setting up this theme here.

Here’s a thumbnail picture of how does it look like inside the Guzel Control Panel. Click on the image below to enlarge it.

Now, all I need is a nice header for this site. And yes, of course I would still need to do some tweaking to the sidebar to properly adjust the contents there. But that’s no biggie I guess. Hmm… I foresee I’m gonna like this theme so much that I’m going to use it for a little long than the previous one.

Well, anyway. Just thought of sharing some of the things that I discovered. Yeah, in a way this post can be used as a storage and mini reminder to things that I wanted to do but haven’t gotten the chance to do it.

Here’s an interesting article that I found: Make your Own Wordpress Theme - Part 1. The presentation is neat and easy to understand. I have yet to read Part 2 and the rest of the parts here though. Shall keep this link for future reading & learning…

Anyway, there is always an easier way to creating my own Wordpress Theme. Yup, by using the Wordpress Theme Generator. It’s simple & easy to use. Just change the colour and other settings in the relevant boxes, save it, download & upload! It does look easy. Will explore this more…

And of course, the easiest way, is to use a ready-made theme. Hehe. Found a site with a lot of neat & professional looking Wordpress Theme –> ThemeLab. Yup, I love most of the themes there and the best thing is, it’s free!

One day (when I’ve learnt enough or by experimenting), I want to have my own creation of Wordpress Themes as well and of course I will make it free for download. Heh… Yeah, just have to figure out how to work out the “Live Demo” application to enable live view of the theme though.

However, as my site is still quite new with not that many posts, it is not suitable to use the Guzel Magazine Theme as yet. Yeah, there are a lot of empty spaces here and there. Haha.

That’s one really nice theme, I would say. And the best thing is that the theme comes with a built in Control Panel. Because of that, everything is so easy! It’s really like filing in an empty form and hey presto, your new look is waiting for you. Customthemedesign is really so kind to allow free access to this wonderful theme.

Well, if any of you are interested to download the Guzel Magazine Pro theme, you can either go here to download it from Gabfire website, or alternatively, you can directly download it by clicking HERE.

Enjoy!

Domain Name & Hosting Registration

First, check the availability of the domain name that you wish to register. There are many ways to check that. I used ecommercemastery. It’s simple. Just enter the name that you wish to register, enter the verification letters in the box underneath, and click “Lookup”. A list will be shown to inform you whether the name.com is available. If it is not, then you can proceed to click the other check boxes to see whether that name is available in .net, .org, .biz & .info.

Here’s how the search will look like:

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Besides the name of the available domain, there is a drop-down box that says 1 year/s @ RM30.00 MYR. If you wish to have that domain name registered, click the check-box next to the desired domain name and press the “Order Now >>” button.

Yup, it’s as simple as that. And yes, the domain name is as cheap as RM30 per year.

How do you pay for the domain name? Well, if you choose to buy it from that same site, payments can be made via credit card or credit transfer through various banks, e.g. Maybank, Public Bank, Bank Islam, etc. I chose to pay via Maybank2u online. It’s fast and hassle free.

Oh, wait… Before that, you can’t run your website with only domain name registered. You must have a hosting as well.

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Yup, if you haven’t got a hosting for your website yet, you will receive this notification in red “No Hosting! Click to Add“. Yup, click that, and you will be given some options of hosting available through ecommercemastery. To help you decide on which hosting to choose from, you can open a new window to check the available hosting packages here. Or, if you are in doubt and unsure whether this is really the best for you, you can try the cheapest package there first. For only RM50 per year, you can try out whether the services provided for is up to your expectation. Or, for those who are unsure whether having your own website is what you really want now, I would suggest you to try the cheapest package first. Yup, you can go HERE for that. Basically, it’s an experimental hosting for you to try-out first.

So, if you choose to have this package, that’ll be RM50 (hosting) + RM30 (domain name) = Only RM80 per year. A worthwile investment, I would say.

And yes, it’s that easy. You just need to follow the step-by-step procedures there, and once payment has been made, in less than 24 hour, when you wake up the next morning, you already have your own registered domain name! In a simpler term, you have your own website!!! [But of course it will still be empty lah now]

If you ask me which package I chose, it’s the “Effective” package. Why? Simply random… To be honest, I should have tried out the RM50 package first. But I didn’t notice that package in the first place. Anyway, so far, I have no regrets. Hopefully this is a correct choice that I’ve made.

Of course there are other available hosting packages & domain name registration offered by other sites as well. There’s Malaysian Hosts, Exabytes, EternalSolutions and lots others if you’re looking for a host from Malaysia. For an international hosting site, you can try GoDaddy, BlueHost, NameCheap and lots others. Of curse, the option of checking the availability of domain names are provided in most of these sites as well.

If you ask me which of these sites are the best, I would say, “I don’t know”. There is a list provided here. But then, I would say that it depends on us, ourselves. Some would prefer a ‘cheap’ hosting package that is ‘considerably good’. Some wouldn’t mind paying as high as a few thousand ringgit per year to have the ‘best’ hosting package. Well, it depends on our own preference and the needs of the website to be hosted. If it is merely a weblog like mine, there is no need to have a big space for the hosting.

But then again, this is my first try-out and yes, of course I will be assessing the server that I am on now from time to time. If I am happy with it, I will continue using ecommercemastery. So far, everything is running well. I got this domain name registered in less than 24 hour. And when I have a query, I will have an answer sent to my email in less than 5 hours. So far, I am happy with the good service and efficiency.

How to have your site up & running?

Well, as I have stated in my previous post, this site is powered by Wordpress, hence the convenience in setting up mostly everything in this site.

When you have your domain name & hosting registered, you will have an access to your control panel. In my case, my hosting comes with a cPanel. In the cPanel, you can see a lot of other options to go to. The easiest way to get a site up and running in a few hours would be this - through Fantastico De Luxe.

So, assuming that you have cPanel & Fantastico De Luxe pre-installed, follow this step by step method -

1. Go to your cPanel (The link will be provided upon successful registration of your domain name and hosting.)
2. Go to your Fantastico De Luxe (It should be under the heading of “Software/Services”).
3. Go to the heading that says “Blogs”.
4. Click on “Wordpress”.
5. Click “New Installation”.
6. Go to your website (i.e. the domain name that you registered)
7. Start posting!!!

Yup, it’s that easy!!! Wordpress makes everything so easy. If you wish to modify the Themes, you can choose from the various selections available from Wordpress, or even o\from other sites like Custom Theme Design. On the other hand, if you do not want to use the custom-made or ready-made theme, you can just stick to the classic theme provided by Wordpress and modify the same by using widget and plugins available in Wordpress. Building a website/blog is never as simple as this, thanks to Wordpress!

At the same time, if you wish to have your design without relying on other external sources, you can do so, provided that you are good with all the computer languages/codings like php, html, css, etc. For me, I have no time for all that. Well, not now at least. So yup, I prefer to have this site powered by Wordpress.