Website hosted by Fasthosts and WordPress is a one-click-install on there. Have messed around with various tutorials but nothing is giving me what I'm after. I should also note I'm very unused to any kind of web design, but I'm a fast learner and willing to do whatever it takes.
I basically want a website that has –
- Header with logo and a few short menu items at the top – photo, video, and contact.
- Gallery on the homepage, with the ability to click on a selection of photos/videos and see them in full-res.
- On the "Photo" page is more photos, same again.
- On the video page is thumbnails of videos, hi res thumbnails at that, and you click on one and the video plays in full resolution.
- This should be entirely scalable for mobile/tablet.
- The site should have a dark theme.
- There should be customisable padding/gaps between images/thumbnails and this should be entirely customisable so mismatched image ratios can be displayed in a nice grid.
This might sound like I'm asking a lot, but Dropbox offers all of this without the option of a custom domain. Instead of a random Dropbox link, I just want to be able to send people to my website and them see some images and videos, and for it to look good. Simple, professional, let the photos/videos do the talking.
The biggest obstacle I've come across is there seems to be no current tutorials for how to do this, and WordPress has such an open source system I'm totally confused with what to do.
So far tonight (and it's now gone 5 am) I've made a fairly good approximation of what I want by customising the default 2024 theme, only to find none of the pages match up when I look at the actual site. I'm that clueless, I have no idea what the difference is between editing the theme, and how to make pages match up, and while I'd gladly learn via a tutorial, none I can find will walk me through it.
As an example, it's not like I can't be bothered – I learned colour grading using Davinci Resolve in a few weeks thanks to a Youtuber called Darren Mostyn. No one similar seems to exist in this instance, largely because there's a billion different ways to do it, and every website is so different.
Any help or guidance is massively appreciated. I don't want to do the tactic I did 10 years ago when learning photography of making multiple threads over and over again until someone helpful sees it (that worked, but it annoyed a lot of people) but it feels like I have no choice at the moment.
Hey! It sounds like you’re super close to getting what you need but just need a bit of direction. For what you’re describing, I’d recommend starting with a theme like **Astra** or **OceanWP**—both are lightweight, customizable, and responsive. You can pair that with **Elementor** (the free version should work, but the Pro gives you more options) for drag-and-drop page building.
For your gallery setup, check out **Envira Gallery** for both photos and videos—it’ll give you control over the layout, padding, and image ratios, which sounds perfect for what you want. Also, consider **WP Video Lightbox** for the videos, so they can play in full-res with a click.
Don’t worry about mobile/tablet scalability—both Elementor and WordPress themes handle that, and you can fine-tune the padding in **Elementor’s Responsive Mode**. For the dark theme and customizable padding, you can handle that via **Appearance > Customize** in WordPress.
And connecting your domain from Fasthosts to WordPress is pretty straightforward. Just update the DNS settings in your Fasthosts account.
You’re definitely on the right track—give these plugins and tips a go, and I’m sure your site will come together! 🙂
Sound great.I would assist you to build your requiementa base website.
As a fullstack developer this looks really simple and I’d recommend you make it urself. If you need any help I’m here to guide you, you can always send me a dm