Making a website with Wordpress

Hey Ashtray

Hey all. I have a domain name that I want to direct to a wordpress blog, but I want to be able to just have an image take up the whole page rather than the wordpress blog layout. I can't figure out how to start from scratch, help me if you can.

Thanks!

bsjezz

i'm not sure i understand. in what way is it a wordpress blog if it's... just an image?

edit: do you mean, like, jezzisawesome.com shows a clickable image which redirects to the (functioning blog) jezzisawesome.wordpress.com?

Disrupter

Do you mean a blog hosted at wordpress or one that uses a download, personal installation of the wordpress software?

If its the latter-

You can create a custom page template for your theme. Simply go to wpcontent/themes/yourtheme and open the page.php file. Save it as 'intro.php' or something. Clear out all the code and simply put the html for your image. Then go into your admin, create a new page, set the template as your new template. Set that page as your home page* and walla.

*To set a new page as your home page log into your admin then on the left click settings-reading

At the top you should see Front page displays-

Select static page then for Front Page select your intro.php.

amateurhour

There's an option built into the wordpress dashboard settings to direct your site to whatever page you want. So for instance you could install wordpress @ yoursite.com/blog and have the wordpress install at www.yoursite.com/blog and then just make a static html page at yoursite.com and put that in the index_html directory, or whatever your home directory is.

Is that what you're looking to do?

Hey Ashtray

I guess I'm just trying to find the easiest way to get our domain name pointed somewhere. I don't know anything about finding hosts/servers so I figured if I could make our wordpress blog look the way I want, which is just one fullscreen image that has links, and pay the 20$ or whatever to link our domain to the wordpress, that'd be the easiest thing for me.

Disrupter I'll try what you're saying to change the format of the blog.

If you have better advice concerning what I want to do, let me know!

wmelon

if you're not terribly interested in worrying about hosts/servers, you could always sign up for a wordpress.com or squarespace.com account and point your domain there.

Hey Ashtray

Yeah that's what I want to do, I just can't figure out how to make a blank page rather than have all the word press shit on it, not sure if that's possible.

What other cheap sites are there where I link my domain name to it and have it easy to do basic coding.

Thanks!

amateurhour

If your traffic footprint is small you could always do a blogger blog and have that linked to a domain name. Or like melon said a wordpress.com account.

Server space is cheap though, like less than $80 a year cheap, and it usually includes a domain name. My host (ipower) even has a wordpress setup that installs it for your to any directory you want, so you could install to domain.com/blog and then just make a static page for domain.com with a click to the blog. It's easy to do.

Willeth

If you just want it to link to an image there's no need to use Wordpress. You might find something that fits your needs on Tumblr, though, which tends to have themes that are very image-heavy or toolbar-sparse, so you can just have one post with your image and leave it be.

You won't need to pay anything to have your domain redirected. URL forwarding is available in every domain package and you'll just need to put in your actual site's address. For example, my http://www.continueorquit.com domain is a simple forward to http://blog.willeth.com, but it keeps the original address in the URL bar for appearance's sake.

As a point of interest, http://www.willeth.com is similar to what you mentioned - an image with links embedded in it. This is just the most basic HTML page and there's not much else to the site. The only thing this requires is a web host, which is essentially a folder on the Internet where you put files. http://www.willeth.com knows where this folder is and points to it, and browsers automatically load index.html as the main page. Bam - no third-party software required, although the host isn't free.

EDIT: For what I mean by using Tumblr, take a look at this site. One post with your image, and the links down the left can be customised. Bam - one site.

Hey Ashtray

Willeth wrote: »

If you just want it to link to an image there's no need to use Wordpress. You might find something that fits your needs on Tumblr, though, which tends to have themes that are very image-heavy or toolbar-sparse, so you can just have one post with your image and leave it be.

You won't need to pay anything to have your domain redirected. URL forwarding is available in every domain package and you'll just need to put in your actual site's address. For example, my http://www.continueorquit.com domain is a simple forward to http://blog.willeth.com, but it keeps the original address in the URL bar for appearance's sake.

As a point of interest, http://www.willeth.com is similar to what you mentioned - an image with links embedded in it. This is just the most basic HTML page and there's not much else to the site. The only thing this requires is a web host, which is essentially a folder on the Internet where you put files. http://www.willeth.com knows where this folder is and points to it, and browsers automatically load index.html as the main page. Bam - no third-party software required, although the host isn't free.

EDIT: For what I mean by using Tumblr, take a look at this site. One post with your image, and the links down the left can be customised. Bam - one site.

Yeah, that Willeth is basically what I'm looking for. So how do I get that hosted? The only thing I want different is that the image takes up the whole screen regardless of browser and resolution, and there's no scroll bars. Is that tough?

Willeth

If you want that, it either can't be an image, or you want to use some crazy scripting (or Flash, ugh) which won't work for all users. There's a reason websites use CSS to define content, where images are static parts of that content. Honestly, my site is a poor example of how to make a site that's useful - I mentioned it because it's similar to what you want.

If you post your site idea and image I'm sure we can help you rethink it to match what you want it to do. A big ol' image isn't the only way to do what you want, I guarantee it.

Hey Ashtray

Ok awesome. Yeah, I've been thinking the same thing. I think I might just go with someone who knows how to do this and pay the money to get it done right. Too much has changed since I used to know HTML haha.

streever

Hey Ashtray wrote: »

Ok awesome. Yeah, I've been thinking the same thing. I think I might just go with someone who knows how to do this and pay the money to get it done right. Too much has changed since I used to know HTML haha.

Double plus good idea

Wordpress has free themes/templates to choose from. It sounds like you might not have much of a budget, so I'd look at getting someone young/smart/technical to just modify a free theme for you.

amateurhour

I don't know if it's against the rules but if you don't want to mess with craigslist you could probably find a host of talented young web developers in the technology tavern that would be willing to work for a reasonable rate.

Disrupter

Well, for your little intro page of one big image, what youd likely need to do is either make the image super big, then use javascript to change the width property of the img tag to match the resolution of the users browser.

Or have different image sizes for different resolution then use javascript to write/edit the img tag pointing the src attribute to the correct image based on the user resolution.

Since the use can resize his window to whatever he wants, the former option is probably better.


below is a quick page I wrote that would do the same. Simply paste it into word save it as a .html file. Open it up in any browser and it should work.

Swap out the img url and href url with ones of your own and walla.

<html>
<head>
<script type="text/javascript" src="http://ajax.googleapis.com/ajax/libs/jquery/1.4.2/jquery.min.js"></script&gt;
<script>
function resize_image()
{
var width=$(window).width();
$('#fullscreen').width(width);
}
$(document).ready(function(){
resize_image();
$(window).resize(function() {
resize_image();
});
});

</script>
</head>
<body>
<a href="http://google.com"><img id="fullscreen" src="http://www.psdgraphics.com/file/world-map-background.jpg&quot; /></a>
</body>
</html>

Hey Ashtray

Hey man thanks! Only problem is when I open the .htm file it just displays the code in my browser, doesn't actually do what it says.

Disrupter

Hmm, firefox should open up html pages properly. Not sure if you save it as htm, i dont think it matters. Also not sure about how other browsers open it up.

Hey Ashtray

Cool, I'll fiddle around. I'm on a mac using firefox.

streever

Ashtray, I suspect the problem is you used Word: try using a plain text editor, copy and paste his code above fresh into it.

Word will put in other code, and make it not display properly.

Also, if you have Firefox, try getting Firebug (which will help you troubleshoot display problems).

Disrupter

Yeah, my bad, I said "word" i meant "wordpad" i dont even have office on my PC, so I forget word exists

Wordpad should suffice.