How to Make a Website for Wedding

The domain name and hosting services are the two must-have components of every online website.

Without them both, you won’t have an online website.

In this lecture, we will talk about domain names and hosting, what are they and why do we need them.

Your website domain name is the address that visitors will need to enter in their browser window in order to visit your website.

For example danandamywedding.com.

A hosting service will let you host all your content such as pages, blog posts, articles, media, images, and videos on their servers and will serve it to your website’s visitors.

WordPress is the most popular and used CMS (Content Management System) platform in the world.

In fact, over 39% of all the world’s websites are built with WordPress.

In this lecture, we will install WordPress on our domain name in one click from inside our HostGator cPanel dashboard.

In this lecture, we will log in to the website’s WordPress dashboard and talk about the different menus: the admin panel and the sidebar.

Every fresh installation of WordPress comes pre-installed with some unnecessary plugins that we don’t need.

Deleting those plugins is recommended to keep the dashboard light and clean.

Themes are used to simplify the process of creating a website. It is a collection of templates and style sheets that define the appearance and display of the website.

Before the page builders era (we will talk about it in a later section), we had different requirements from our themes.

We needed our chosen theme to do everything for us includes sliders, headers, sidebars and etc.

Today, the situation is different, we can do everything with page builder plugins instead and therefore our requirements from the themes changed accordingly.

The Hello Elementor theme is the best theme for our needs because it was developed by the same company that created Elementor which is the page builder we’ll use. They work seamlessly with each other.

The default homepage of WordPress will display the latest blog posts in chronological order.

Fresh installation of WordPress comes with a sample post called ‘Hello World!’ and this what is been displayed on the homepage of a brand new website.

In this lecture, we will create a new homepage and also change the WordPress settings to display the new page instead of the blog posts.

We will also change the permalink settings of the website in case we will have more pages. By default, the permalink is set to website.com/date-here/page-name and we will simplify the URL by removing the date. That way, the page can be accessed by using the website.com/page-name URL.

WordPress plugins are extensions to expand the functionality of your website.

Think about plugins just like apps for a smartphone.

For example, out of the box, your new smartphone will not come with the Angry Birds game installed. However, you will be able to buy and download the game from the App Store or Google store and install it on your phone.

WordPress plugins are the same. The default version of WordPress comes with only a few plugins but you can get and download more plugins from the WordPress plugin repository.

In this lecture, we will download the Elementor page builder plugin.

Elementor is the most popular page builder plugin for WordPress and it enables us to make professional websites using a visual editor without any coding.

The ‘Hello Elementor’ theme comes with three different page attributes to choose from:

• Default - the body is limited to 960px and display the header, footer, and page title.

• Elementor canvas - the body is 100% full width, no header, footer, and page title.

• Elementor full width - the body is 100% full width, will display the header, footer, and page title.

In this lecture, we will talk about the different page titles and which one to choose for what purpose.

In this lecture, I will teach you how to use the Elementor page builder plugin.

We will talk about the components and differences between sections, columns, and elements (widgets).

We also talk about the various tabs that we can use to customize the components:

• Content - change things related to the content (for example text of the heading widget).

• Style - options related to the look of the component (colors, size, border, etc).

• Advanced - options related to the settings of the component (CSS ID, class, responsive, etc).

Each of them has its own unique purpose.

The section above the fold (before scrolling down the page) is also known as the Hero section and it’s one of the most important of any website.

In this lecture, we will use the knowledge we gained in the previous lecture about Elementor and make the hero section from scratch.

We will work with different kinds of widgets, background images, buttons, and etc.

There are a couple of reasons why to use pre-made templates with our website:

• Save time - you can build a full professional wedding website for only a few minutes when using a template.

• Design - the pre-made templates were designed by full-time graphic designers and therefore look very professional.

In this lecture, I will show you how to download a wedding template and use it as a good starting point to make the website.

After loading the template into our homepage, we shall now modify it to fit us and our partner.

We will walk through each of the sections and check what we can change for our benefit.

When the homepage is ready, we will publish it to the world and revisit our website to see what it looks like.

The wedding party will not be completed without guests! Integrating an RSVP form into your website is not required but definitely recommended.

A form like so will help you stay on top of who’s coming, canceling, or bringing a guest.

In this lecture, I will teach you how to create an RSVP form with the WPForms plugin and insert it into the homepage.

In this lecture, we will create the second page of the website.

This time, instead of using a full page template, I will teach you how to use a specific section template with texts and map widgets.

Frankly, you can create any page you desire instead or in addition to the directions page. The whole idea of this lecture is to show you how to add new pages and link to them from the menu in a later lecture.

Over 50% of your site visitors will use a mobile device such as smartphones or tablets to access your website.

In today’s world, making a website responsive for all screen sizes is not only recommended but required.

Luckily, all Elementor templates and sections are mobile-friendly and will look good on every screen.

In this lecture, I will teach you how to test our website on mobile devices and adjust the elements to look better.

In this lecture, we will create the menu of the website that containing the links to the pages we created.

We will learn how to add or remove pages from the menu and also linking to different sections by creating custom URLs with anchor links.

The header is the section that appears at the top of every page and containing a logo and a menu.

Instead of creating a header for each of the pages (takes a lot of time), we will create the header once and set a trigger to display it on the entire website.

In this lecture, I will teach you which plugin we should download to save the header as a template, how to make it, and display it on all pages.

If you would like to make the header transparent just like in the previous lecture, use the provided CSS.

The footer is the section that appears at the bottom of every page and usually contains links or a quote.

In this lecture, we will repeat the process we did in the last lecture, but this time, to make a footer.

In addition, we will learn how to hide some elements in mobile view if we only want to show them on a desktop.

Letting the wedding guests guess what you would like to get as a present may be a bad idea. On the other hand, telling them what you want may sound rude.

Creating a gift registry is the best solution because you saying what gifts you would like to receive but indirectly. Also, every attendee could choose what to get based on their budget.

In this lecture, I’ll teach you how to create a gift registry with Amazon and link the website to it.

For more wedding registry options, make sure to download the free booklet of this course.

In this lecture, we will talk about a couple of things we need to know about WordPress.

Because Elementor and WPForms were developed by big companies, it is very common to see available updates for these plugins.

In this lecture, I will show you how to perform an update for plugins and themes in case one is available.

In addition, I will show you how to use the PluginsForWP.com website to save over 90% off on any WordPress plugin or theme. This is a website that every web owner should know about!

I would like to congratulate you on getting married and would like to wish you a happy wedding!

Thank you very much for taking my course and let me be your coach for your big day.

If you have any questions, please don't hesitate and contact me here or through my Facebook page (https://facebook.com/siteborn) or through siteborn.com.

Thank you again and good luck in the future!