About a year ago I build my own website. It took me about 2 days as a total noob. I succesfully integrated a booking tool and everything.
I use:
– elementor pro (hosting not included)
– obviously wordpress
– calendly
However. I want to rebuild it now. I found a template I like on Etsy. I could buy that.
I thought about just deleting everything and starting with a blank page. I want to keep my hosting and domain name. The hosting Company is located in a neighbouring country, they still have live tech support in my own language (which isn’t English). And my domain name for obvious reasons.
You might say: just ask a website creator. Unfortunately I cannot afford one right now. In my country I wasn’t able to find one under €2800 and that’s without taxes (21% taxes) I’m just a small startup side business and that money is 2x my monthly income. It’s the total revenue of my entire side business over a year.
So. If anyone can send me in the right direction
– how to redesign my website
– is it better to just delete everything and start over
– would an Etsy template be an alternative (see link for example)
Thank you in advance
[ad_2]
I mean, how big is this website? Is the content mostly text/images? Or do you have advanced functionality? What do you mean when you say “rebuild”? Are you jut looking for a different layout/design (like a new coat of paint on a house)? Or are you looking to make significant functionality changes (like adding a second story to a house)?
I would not buy a template of etsy, if you like the design just try to copy it in elementor.
Do not delete everything and start over. Create a sub-domain or setup localWP and build out the new site with the same permalink structure.
Build new site on sub-domain / local. Make sure all functionality is working, permalinks the same.
Make backup of old site and download it to your computer.
Use a tool like all in one migration or duplicator to migrate your new site from sub-domain/local to your old site.
Ok, so here’s how I recommend approaching this:
1) check to see if your hosting company has a staging-site option. (“Staging” is an easy way to make a copy of your current site for testing or upgrades, and then when you’re ready you can copy back from your staging site to the live version.)
2) First grab the theme you like and install it on your staging-server copy through the WordPress interface. This should be easy and “non-destructive” since themes should only ever affect how a site looks, not how it functions.
3) Check to see how the new theme looks on the staging site. You’ll probably need to tinker with customization options to add your logo, select the menu, and possibly to select colors, fonts, and other visual elements.
4) If it’s a good theme then the content you built with Elementor should do a pretty good job of adjusting themselves to the new theme’s definitions. (E.g. fonts, colors, sizes, borders, etc.). If instead it’s a bad theme, or if you manually overrode the formatting in Elementor, then you may have more work to do.
5) Make any other minor tweaks to content and formats till you’re happy with the results
If/when you’re happy with the results you can then move changes you made on your staging copy back to the live version of your site.
If not — for instance if the theme you’re looking at only works if you import hordes of “demo content” then you may have more work to do. Possibly more work than you’ll want to do.
If that’s the case then maybe go back and see what adjustments you can make to your current theme to get the overall results you like from the theme you’re looking at now. Most good themes are pretty flexible that way. (And TBH I haven’t bought a new theme in 10+ years — most good “base” themes like Astra, OceanWP, Hello, Kadence, are almost infinitely configurable. Which makes theme almost interchangeable.)
Final note: make sure any theme you choose clearly say it’s suitable for page builders (e.g. Elementor, Gutenberg, Beaver Builder, etc.)
I went through the etsy template. It’s simple and pretty straightforward. Following is my recommendation:
1. Don’t buy any new templates. You can simply use your existing template astra or hello theme from elementor. Since you already have an elementor pro, such a page can be easily created with all fancy borders which you are able to see
2. Try to create it on your local PC first. Once you are satisfied, export the templates using elementor or use any plugin for site migration. You would be able to achieve it easily
Let me be very honest. I’m looking for a job. In case you are still open to hire, I’m more than happy to do this job at one-seventh of the price (~€400). You may visit my latest project on which I’m still working to judge my skills – dorotaslifestyle.com
Buy Bricks Builder, and then just recreate this template yourself using that. And if that sounds complicated or difficult, buy ACSS and Frames and bascially build it from that. Any template that I see online I recreate in Bricks.