Should I use a basic stock Wordpress Theme until I start to succeed and then use a nice one?

jumper

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I have a financial background, and figured I should put it to good use. Is it ok to use a stock WordPress site, and when I get traffic convert it to a more appealing one?
 
jumper said:
I have a financial background, and figured I should put it to good use. Is it ok to use a stock WordPress site, and when I get traffic convert it to a more appealing one?
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From what I have seen of other comments and general advice, it's better to at least have *something* instead of spending all your time trying to perfect the theme/feel/look. Companies and websites rebrand all the time, so it's perfectly fine, imo, to be able to change it to a more appealing theme later on.
 
Clueless said:
From what I have seen of other comments and general advice, it's better to at least have *something* instead of spending all your time trying to perfect the theme/feel/look. Companies and websites rebrand all the time, so it's perfectly fine, imo, to be able to change it to a more appealing theme later on.
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I agree in a sense but I also think you should get your design done and put it away so you don't have to keep thinking about it. Every person I know that has a philosophy of "do it halfway now and then get it right later" end up doing nothing but spinning their wheels trying to close open loops, or never win because everything gets left in a half done state. Anything worth doing is worth doing right while you're doing it so it's complete and crossed off and in the past.

Another negative to redesigning is you scramble the HTML source code and then you cause Google to need to "re-analyze and re-calculate" it all, which can cause drops in rankings for a temporary period of time that may last longer that you want once you remember to redesign after you're making money.
 
jumper said:
I don't expect traffic for a number of months, and wondered if I should use a stock template in the beginning, or create a nice one? How do the experts start out at the beginning with their templates?
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A stock template like generate press is enough. Keep it simple and fast. Don't worry too much about it now.
 
Pagey said:
A stock template like generate press is enough. Keep it simple and fast. Don't worry too much about it now.
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I was given the same advice when I started this last year. It’s better to have a fast site and focus on the content than to stress about the layout of the site. Layout starts to matter when you actually have traffic.
 
Ryuzaki said:
I agree in a sense but I also think you should get your design done and put it away so you don't have to keep thinking about it. Every person I know that has a philosophy of "do it halfway now and then get it right later" end up doing nothing but spinning their wheels trying to close open loops, or never win because everything gets left in a half done state. Anything worth doing is worth doing right while you're doing it so it's complete and crossed off and in the past.

Another negative to redesigning is you scramble the HTML source code and then you cause Google to need to "re-analyze and re-calculate" it all, which can cause drops in rankings for a temporary period of time that may last longer that you want once you remember to redesign after you're making money.
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I agree with your approach as well! I think I was just sticking with the /r/juststart mentality. It's always a balance on how much effort should be put in. In terms of scrambling the HTML source code, is that when you just swap the theme over or if you actually go in to change the code of the theme? (If you're manually designing it yourself)

A quick question - do any of you guys have on your post a, 'last updated on /date/'? I know that the bigger sites tend to update the original article instead of creating a new one. I'm just curious as to this sort of practice.
 
I would use a basic theme and tweak it to the bare minimum. Just enough to not to look spammy and later on, I would improve it to give the site a more brandable image.
Regarding the last updated date on the posts, I use it on my only site but I have not seeing any real benefits since it’s more of a portfolio site.
 
Buy a theme designed by someone with a marketing background, maybe Matt Giovaniscis Carbonate:

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I haven't used it myself, but I see the idea in getting a simple them optimized for speed and marketing when you're starting out.
 
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jumper said:
I have a financial background, and figured I should put it to good use. Is it ok to use a stock WordPress site, and when I get traffic convert it to a more appealing one?
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I think it doesn't impact SEO. Just try to solve all technical issues, start creating great content and buy/generate some links
 
bernard said:
Buy a theme designed by someone with a marketing background, maybe Matt Giovaniscis Carbonate:

I haven't used it myself, but I see the idea in getting a simple them optimized for speed and marketing when you're starting out.
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Should we link to a place that steals people’s products and resells them cheaper? I might be wrong, but I don’t think those types of sites actually offer real discounts.
 
mikey3times said:
Should we link to a place that steals people’s products and resells them cheaper? I might be wrong, but I don’t think those types of sites actually offer real discounts.
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What?

Is it not his shop that I'm linking?

In that case, we definitely need to remove the link.

@Ryuzaki
 
jumper said:
I have a financial background, and figured I should put it to good use. Is it ok to use a stock WordPress site, and when I get traffic convert it to a more appealing one?
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WPAstra has a ton of free WordPress templates you can use that are super customizable. Anytime I want a 2 hr website, I just import a WordPress template from WPAstra and build out using that as my base. Super easy and it looks custom. Win, win, all around.
 
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