Building a community/content site from scratch.

[SomeNerd]

Hey everyone.

So, I am a total newbie going into this.

I have the following planned:

Create a wordpress based news/guide/content site that also contains a forum and other community features. I dont have any experience with wordpress or digital marketing.
I dont have any experience in writing content, but the niche I have chosen is one that I have great interest in myself. The niche is gaming related, but for a specific game.

Preparations I have made:
1. I registered the following accounts/pages at this point.
- Fresh Gmail for the project.
- Facebook Page.
- Twitter Account.
- Godaddy Account.

2. Purchased domain and hosting.

3. Setup a Google Drive with a few folders.
- Written down plans.
- Written down ideas for content.
- Started gathering content I can post on my site from third party sites.

4. Logo designed and paid.

Where I stand right now:
Wordpress is installed on my web server at godaddy and I have found what I believe to be the perfect theme. The only thing holding me back right now is just needing to purchase it.

Once I have purchased the theme, I need to set it up and customize it.
(Which will probably require a lot of Google searches).

I hope to be able to setup the menues, make the customization, categories and so on for the site before the end of this week.

Budget and Spending:
Logo + Social Media banners: $20
Domain: $5
Hosting: $2.50 (monthly)
Theme: $80

My budget for this project for now is only $150.
So I have $42.50 left.
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Any and all recommendations on how to do better and grow are very much welcome.
Ill post updates on a daily basis with progress.

 

[SomeNerd]

Day 2.

So, I purchased the theme last night and I installed it this morning.
But after some more checking, I could see I needed SSL setup and at Godaddy they wanted 50$ for a year.

So I had a look at Namecheap instead where they include it with the hosting.
Theme has now been setup on the namecheap server instead.
Domain has been pointed at namecheap server and SSL has been setup for the site as well.

Right now im writing everything down design wise.
I have tried a little to see if I could make my site perfect myself, but I have kinda given up already.
Im thinking of paying someone 5$ or 10$ on Fiverr to setup the design as I want it to release a bit of time for me and to make it perfect.

Might drop another update later.

 

[Gutoop878]

are you using wordpress plugins for forum/community features or using other forum software ?

 

[SomeNerd]

are you using wordpress plugins for forum/community features or using other forum software ?

I will be using BuddyPress to setup the forum part of the site.

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Overall, my biggest challenge is the design of the website.
I should be more than good when it comes to putting content onto the site.
Putting the menu's together and all that stuff is something I really aint good at.

 

[ProGIG]

Hey everyone.

So, I am a total newbie going into this.

I have the following planned:

Create a wordpress based news/guide/content site that also contains a forum and other community features. I dont have any experience with wordpress or digital marketing.
I dont have any experience in writing content, but the niche I have chosen is one that I have great interest in myself. The niche is gaming related, but for a specific game.

Preparations I have made:
1. I registered the following accounts/pages at this point.
- Fresh Gmail for the project.
- Facebook Page.
- Twitter Account.
- Godaddy Account.

2. Purchased domain and hosting.

3. Setup a Google Drive with a few folders.
- Written down plans.
- Written down ideas for content.
- Started gathering content I can post on my site from third party sites.

4. Logo designed and paid.

Where I stand right now:
Wordpress is installed on my web server at godaddy and I have found what I believe to be the perfect theme. The only thing holding me back right now is just needing to purchase it.

Once I have purchased the theme, I need to set it up and customize it.
(Which will probably require a lot of Google searches).

I hope to be able to setup the menues, make the customization, categories and so on for the site before the end of this week.

Budget and Spending:
Logo + Social Media banners: $20
Domain: $5
Hosting: $2.50 (monthly)
Theme: $80

My budget for this project for now is only $150.
So I have $42.50 left.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Any and all recommendations on how to do better and grow are very much welcome.
Ill post updates on a daily basis with progress.

Best Of Luck

 

[Deleted member 752298]

I will be using BuddyPress to setup the forum part of the site.

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Overall, my biggest challenge is the design of the website.
I should be more than good when it comes to putting content onto the site.
Putting the menu's together and all that stuff is something I really aint good at.

I have read your OP and I'd like to suggest you a BuddyPress theme for your gaming niche:
https://themeforest.net/item/buddyapp-mobile-first-community-wordpress-theme/12494864

This theme is really neat, can be modified to your gaming niche as well, pixel perfect design and compatible with BuddyPress

 

[SomeNerd]

I have read your OP and I'd like to suggest you a BuddyPress theme for your gaming niche:
https://themeforest.net/item/buddyapp-mobile-first-community-wordpress-theme/12494864

This theme is really neat, can be modified to your gaming niche as well, pixel perfect design and compatible with BuddyPress

Thanks for the suggestion, but the theme I have already has buddypress included and optimized for it.

Best Of Luck

Thanks

 

[SomeNerd]

Day 3, kinda.

I ran into a wall with the design and setup of the site but I went to work on other stuff instead.

I did the following:
- I setup Zapier for some automation from my blog.
- - Twitter, Facebook, Discord and Reddit has been setup for automation.

- Discord account and server has been setup.
- - Tweets, Reddit Posts, and blog posts are automatically posted in their own channel on Discord.
- - A rank has been added and a function will be setup on the rules page to allow users to add ranks to be notified of new published content from the blog via all channels.

- I added tags and categories to Wordpress for posts.
- I setup the background image and added the logo.

- I wrote down some advice from BHW earlier in my marketing notes.
- I created a document for content ideas and I wrote down 6 new blog post ideas with summary.
- - Almost wrote a full guide, the words were just flowing.

So, even though I am still stuck on the design part, then I got a ton of other work done instead.
Today was pretty good.

Its now 03:52AM, im dead tired.

May tomorrow be as productive as today.

 

[SomeNerd]

End of Day 4.

Today was indeed a productive way as well.

I got quite a few ideas written down for blog posts to write.
I also went through some threads here on BHW to figure out how people market their pages and content on facebook.

I found some good threads with helpful info, so I am looking forward to start doing marketing on facebook.

Previously I planned on getting help for the design of the website, but I played around with it a little today and it worked out quite well.
I got most of the menu's setup that I wanted. My frontpage is 95% and I got some more categories and pages setup for the site.

Overall, its been a good day with lots of writing and some website changes.

----------------------------------------------------

When would you guys suggest I should start marketing my website on facebook?
Are 6 articles enough?

 

[SomeNerd]

Its has been a while since last update.

But from then until now I have gotten some more content ready.
I havent gone live with the site yet as I am still perfecting it.

I have kinda realized that I wont be able to write all the content myself, and that I cant only repost content I find in other places.
So I have started to look for a partner that can help me publish content on my site.

Its kinda rough, as you need a fair bit of knowledge about a specific game.