I am a graphic artist and have gotten many inquiries from knife makers regarding designing their website. None of them have panned out because most knife makers are quite happy with what they can get for free or almost free. I prefer to work for more than minimum wage but would like to help out in some way. So following is a brief tutorial on how to use WordPress to set up your own website to sell knives. To do so you will need to purchase hosting and a domain name.
Set Up Your Website Account
I use www.godaddy.com with all of my clients. In my five years as a graphic artist, I’ve been quite satisfied with their customer service and pricing. There are others out there but godaddy.com is the only one I can recommend. Under the Hosting tab at godaddy, you will notice a link called WordPress Hosting. The economy plan is sufficient for most knife makers needs. Add this to your cart, search for and purchase an appropriate domain name, and check out. Ignore everything that godaddy wants you to purchase in addition to your hosting and domain names. Godaddy will guide you through the WordPress setup.
Set Up Your Website
There are thousands of WordPress themes out there and you can choose any of them you like. I have modified a theme called Linquist that is basic but functional. It fits most knife maker needs and of course is free. If you would like to see a demo of this theme click here. Download the theme here. Save the theme to your desktop but don’t unzip it. When you set up your account with godaddy, you provided them with a username and password for your wordpress account. Type your website address in the address bar. You should arrive at a login page. Enter your login information. Don’t forget that it is case sensitive.
Switch to a New Theme
In the left sidebar click Appearance. Click Add New Theme Click Upload. Click choose file and upload the file you downloaded earlier. Click Install Now.
Click Themes and activate the theme called Linquist. Go to Linquist Options in the Appearance tab and replace yoursite with your site’s name in the footer section.
Set Up Your Blog
You can change the website name and tagline in the Settings tab.
Adding Statistics and a Contact Form
Click Plugins in the left sidebar. Click Add New. Search for statpress. Install and activate Statpress Reloaded. Search for contact form. Install and activate Contact Form 7. Click on the Contact tab in the left sidebar. Type your email address in the To section under the Mail section. Click Save. Highlight code in brackets at the top of the page.
Click Pages. Click Add New. Title it Contact. Insert the code you just copied and click Publish. You can add other pages in the same way.
Adding Knife Categories
Click Posts. Click Categories. Add categories. If you want some categories to appear as subcategories of a parent category, select a category parent. This will enable a drop down window with sub categories.
Adding Knives
Click Posts. Click Add New. Enter a Title. Click the box to the right of Upload/Insert.
Select the picture on your computer. VERY IMPORTANT: Under Link Url select File URL and insert into post.
THIS IS VERY IMPORTANT: Select the insert more tag.
Make sure the more tag comes after the picture but before the text. Enter a short description. Enter PayPal Buy Now Button short code for knives that are for sale (explained later). In the right sidebar select which categories the knife belongs to. Click Publish. Wash, Rinse, Repeat.
For the weekend warrior whose inventory is never large, the PayPal Buy Now button is quite sufficient. You need a PayPal account for this to work. Login to PayPal. Go to Merchant Services. Click Buy Now Button. Enter in product details including a product number. Make sure you set inventory limits in step two so that two customers can’t purchase the same knife. Click create button. Click Select Code. Copy the code and insert it beneath the price of your knife when you are creating the knife post.
You can add, edit and delete pages under the Pages tab. This is where you would put your about me section or custom orders page.
OK so there is the basics of creating a WordPress site to sell or display knives. For more detailed information visit www.wordpress.org. There are more visually appealing themes out there but this is the theme that seemed to be the most user friendly and least technical. It automatically resizes pictures for you and has a lightbox effect that enlarges the pictures when someone clicks on it. Best of all, it’s free. So no one has to pay "over-priced" artists such as myself. Best of luck.
Set Up Your Website Account
I use www.godaddy.com with all of my clients. In my five years as a graphic artist, I’ve been quite satisfied with their customer service and pricing. There are others out there but godaddy.com is the only one I can recommend. Under the Hosting tab at godaddy, you will notice a link called WordPress Hosting. The economy plan is sufficient for most knife makers needs. Add this to your cart, search for and purchase an appropriate domain name, and check out. Ignore everything that godaddy wants you to purchase in addition to your hosting and domain names. Godaddy will guide you through the WordPress setup.
Set Up Your Website
There are thousands of WordPress themes out there and you can choose any of them you like. I have modified a theme called Linquist that is basic but functional. It fits most knife maker needs and of course is free. If you would like to see a demo of this theme click here. Download the theme here. Save the theme to your desktop but don’t unzip it. When you set up your account with godaddy, you provided them with a username and password for your wordpress account. Type your website address in the address bar. You should arrive at a login page. Enter your login information. Don’t forget that it is case sensitive.
Switch to a New Theme
In the left sidebar click Appearance. Click Add New Theme Click Upload. Click choose file and upload the file you downloaded earlier. Click Install Now.
Click Themes and activate the theme called Linquist. Go to Linquist Options in the Appearance tab and replace yoursite with your site’s name in the footer section.
Set Up Your Blog
You can change the website name and tagline in the Settings tab.
Adding Statistics and a Contact Form
Click Plugins in the left sidebar. Click Add New. Search for statpress. Install and activate Statpress Reloaded. Search for contact form. Install and activate Contact Form 7. Click on the Contact tab in the left sidebar. Type your email address in the To section under the Mail section. Click Save. Highlight code in brackets at the top of the page.
Click Pages. Click Add New. Title it Contact. Insert the code you just copied and click Publish. You can add other pages in the same way.
Adding Knife Categories
Click Posts. Click Categories. Add categories. If you want some categories to appear as subcategories of a parent category, select a category parent. This will enable a drop down window with sub categories.
Adding Knives
Click Posts. Click Add New. Enter a Title. Click the box to the right of Upload/Insert.
THIS IS VERY IMPORTANT: Select the insert more tag.
For the weekend warrior whose inventory is never large, the PayPal Buy Now button is quite sufficient. You need a PayPal account for this to work. Login to PayPal. Go to Merchant Services. Click Buy Now Button. Enter in product details including a product number. Make sure you set inventory limits in step two so that two customers can’t purchase the same knife. Click create button. Click Select Code. Copy the code and insert it beneath the price of your knife when you are creating the knife post.
You can add, edit and delete pages under the Pages tab. This is where you would put your about me section or custom orders page.
OK so there is the basics of creating a WordPress site to sell or display knives. For more detailed information visit www.wordpress.org. There are more visually appealing themes out there but this is the theme that seemed to be the most user friendly and least technical. It automatically resizes pictures for you and has a lightbox effect that enlarges the pictures when someone clicks on it. Best of all, it’s free. So no one has to pay "over-priced" artists such as myself. Best of luck.
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