I Want To Start A Tutorial Site. I Need A Little Help Though...

Hello everyone, I would like to start out by saying that I have a VERY low budget for the type of site I am designing or planning to start. I have enough money currently to pay for the domain, three months of hosting and then an additional £15 ($24) I aim to see how well the site does in those three months to see if it would be worth maintaining with new content monthly or weekly. Free tutorials and such but I hope to make some form of revenue from the ads somehow. (I still need to look into how I can achieve that)

Now that has been said you will probably understand the rest of this post a little better. I have been trying to go over tutorials on YouTube and text based tutorials for HTML and CSS to make the site I have planned by myself to minimize the cost, I can design the site myself in Photoshop with no problems but I am by no means a web developer. I say this because I have been having trouble following along with some of these tutorials and often enough some tutorials will almost completely contradict other ones or present the same problem with multiple solutions that are not really explained. Perhaps I have just found poor quality tutorials. I also learn best via Video tutorials as opposed to text based, however I have tried going over some of those too, although I manage to complete these tutorials I come out with less, as I don't understand a lot about it and I still have tons of questions, not to mention the fact that I am having a hard time developing the features that I require. Now I will explain the site a little to help you understand fully; what I am trying to achieve.

I want to create a tutorial site, I know it sounds ironic. This tutorial site will have unique content solely based on Pixel Art, it is an idea I have been playing with for a very long time but I am now trying to put it into affect. Essentially I will be using YouTube to host my videos, I would like to have the website converted into a Wordpress theme but I have no idea how to go about that and I have yet to get the site functioning with HTML anyway. The other features include things like a full width page and a blog, all of the essential things to a tutorial site. Its getting fairly late here so I apologize for my poor effort to describe the site but from what I have typed up you should be able to at the very least get an idea.

My hopes when posting this thread is that someone with some experience with a similar site or an actual tutorial site may be able to give me some tips or point me in the right direction?

I know that there are a couple of tutorial site templates located at Themeforest for Wordpress but I don't think they look all that appealing and I don't know enough about how I could customize them if at all.. Are there any free templates for this kind of site that a noob could easily customize at least a little?

Maybe there is something I have overlooked?

I would greatly appreciate any advice, tips or info and thank you for it in advance!

 

I'm quite surprised that nobody has replied but perhaps the thread is a little long winded, or is this just the wrong section for this?

 

For a site like this I wouldn't recommend using anything that is free. I guess you just have to put together a team from different forums and see how it works out.

 

Thanks, I appreciate the response and yes I have had a little look at some of the free solutions to this and they don't seem all that great, but also beggars cannot be choosers and I cannot currently do any better on my own.

How much of a budget do you think I might need to get someone to provide a helping hand with this? are there any people out there that would lend a helping hand for free? Or are those times long gone...

I've tried posting on one other forum too but I have got no responses over on that, but I guess I just need to give it a little longer and hope that I get some replies soon.

 

The problem is I don't just want to use any old theme grabbed from the internet, something that fits the website in mind and probably something custom...

 

I can't stand people like this in this forum. The guy asked for help because he wants to do it himself. Didn't ask to be sold something. It really drives me nuts the way people do this all the time. These kind of users should be banned.

 

OP, I would suggest Wordpress and Studiopress framework. Find a studiopress theme that has the structure and functionality that you want and then customize the colors and add your own logo. If you need any help or have any questions, send me a message. I won't charge you or try to sell you something. Just give tips as requested in this thread.

Don't be discouraged by people like that guy trying to sell you something. Many people here will actually answer your questions and help you rather than try to sell you a service when your in a discussion forum asking for help and suggestions. Watch out for those guys, there are a lot of them.

 

Thanks... Most of the reason behind me wanting to get it done myself is to be unique and not pay for something I don't need or cannot afford as most of these web developers seem to look into developing something cool for their portfolio other than what you need at least in my experience anyway, I don't have enough money to hire someone to do it for me and I think that it would be more efficient for me to learn how to do it myself if that is at all possible within a reasonable time frame.


I am feeling more and more like I just want to give in and get a theme from somewhere and just start worrying about the content and producing it!!

I haven't really had much luck with this post or my post on another forum... Perhaps the title of the thread has something to do with that lol

 

Ah, ok. Thanks for the heads up!


I will look into that framework right now and I had Wordpress in mind as they have some nice plugins to assist with extra features for this kind of site.

If I have any questions I will be sure to PM you... Thanks again!


Kind Regards
The Piixel Monster

 

That would be the best option.

Ya, try out studiopress or Thesis (I recommend Studiopress). They are both really good.
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*notice that guy deleted his post because he knows I'm right.

 

have you thought about creating the site in the Joomla CMS environment. Loads of great free add ons for additional functionality and great support forum.

Good luck with the site.

 

Haha, wow he did too huh!


I am looking into the Studiopress framework right now and I will read up on that Thesis one you've mentioned too...

I had thought about Joomla a little while back but I feel that I am more comfortable with Wordpress, I like the sites that run off of Joomla but is that too extreme for what I want? I feel that it is.


I appreciate you taking the time to reply though and thank you for wishing me luck

 

My thoughts, for what they're worth:

That's the easy part: just slap contextual ads or CPAs on the site.

The way I see it is that you can take one of two routes: either you plan, develop and build beforehand or you get the site out there on a basic setup and see how it fares.

If you do the former, you're investing a LOT of time and effort into something that might fall flat on its face because there are already plenty of tutorial sites around. And that's investment on top of all the keyword research, SEO and everything else you'll put in once the site's open. I'd want to be pretty darned sure that the market's there waiting before I did that, to be blunt.

If you do the latter, you test the waters by putting in a lot less time on dev, though you still invest time and effort in keyword research, SEO and so on. The down-side is that you're not presenting the best possible face to your visitors: they get a basic WP interface (for example). Now, the big question - for me - is whether the content or the UI is the important bit. Personally, I'd say the content is, every time (especially with tutorials) but we all know it's not quite so simple! Having a pretty site is also important and the interface is vital (i.e. how easy it is to find and view tutorials, how you keep people on-site, etc.).

Honestly, I'd go for more of the latter and less of the former. Use your design talents on the elements of the site but make do with a WP setup to reduce your time/effort investment.

I saw one at Site5 called "All Tutorials". Don't know if that suits. It's here. And it's free, of course.

As far as customisations go, I've always found PageLines' frameworks really nice (Platform and the eponymous PageLines themes). They're incredibly flexible through the built-in options pages (unlike a lot of themes where you have to code-dive a lot) and they're free through the normal WP Themes pages. There are premium versions as well, though I've never needed them, and the branding in the free ones is very subtle (basically an icon in the footer).


Hope it helps.

 

There are quite a lot of tutorial sites out there, but there are none that specifically target Pixel Art for games... Which is what I am targeting, at least there are none that I know of. There have been a couple here and there on YouTube and one other place that has recently produced some pixel art related training but I have had this idea for a while now, I have just not had the time to commit to the project until recently. I think the content is the most important but I wanted the site to look at least a little pretty and make sure that it worked well for the site. The tutorials will also be full step by step video tutorials and none of that explanation after the fact stuff! Most tutorials out there for this kind of thing are mainly text/image tutorials...


I liked the look of the Genesis framework that was brought to my attention earlier but I will look into this one that you have just mentioned too and compare them.

I like the look of that WP theme you have shared with me, its a nice place to start although later I would like to change it, the best part about that is its free too. I may do what you have suggested and work on seeing if the site will actually do well or be used even, while using that theme and then once I find out. If I wish to go ahead with the site I can look further into using one of those frameworks and such!

I seriously appreciate the time that you have taken to type up that response it has helped me greatly and I have been meaning to look into that keyword SEO stuff, I truly understand next to nothing about that kind of stuff right now...

Both you and Indyonline have helped me a great deal!!


Kind Regards
The Piixel Monster

 

Ah, right - sorry, my brain must have skipped that bit in your post because I know absolutely nothing about it.

Another reason why WP is such a good choice: you can easily change the front end without losing everything or recoding or whatever. Install theme, new look, sorted! (Edit: it's also really easy to move a WP installation from free hosting to a VPS if traffic demands... done that about a dozen times myself and it's pleasantly simple!)

The basics are actually very simple. It's the variations and implementation that are a pain in the proverbial body part! Make sure you research before you prepare your content, though - choosing the right keywords is horribly important.

 

Hmm, last time I checked neither Thesis or Studiopress/Genesis were free either. If you want to design it yourself, you can continue in Photoshop then use a PSD to template service, there are many of these out there too, but again this is not a free option.

So to keep your costs low I would suggest continuing trying some worpdress theme tutorials and code it yourself.

 

The Genesis framework is only $59 though so it may not be free but it's a pretty low cost solution without spending forever learning to code the site from scratch on my own, I had tried to follow some tutorials but chances are I just found some poorly constructed ones or incomplete tuts. I don't mind putting the time into learning to do it myself but I don't plan on using those skills for anything beyond this site so I don;t think it would be worth investing the time it would take to learn them at this stage.


I will do what was suggested TIEro and use the alltuts theme and go from there depending on how well the site does, if there is a decent following once I have a reasonable amount of content I will decide whether I am going to go all out and learn to code a better theme myself or whether I am going to grab a framework and work on it from that standpoint, either way I will probably be learning to do it but with the frameworks at least I will have a boost or be jump started with a foundation.

 

Genesis is well worth the investment. I still stand by that. Coding it yourself don't sound like a good idea unless you have a lot of knowledge about it already.
Paglines is nice but I still recommend Genesis. Always remember, you get what you pay for. If it's free there is a reason. Last Pagelines theme I used didn't have as much functionality unless you paid for the upgrade and a link to the designers site had to remain in the footer and I refuse to do that myself.

 

Well Genesis appears to be well worth the cost, its a low price and VERY powerful at least thats what I see and hear.


I don't agree with the statement "if it's free there is a reason" I mean of course there would be a reason lol but the way I read that was like you were saying things that are free suck, so to speak.

Although this may be true in some instances there are free things out there that are like gems amongst the free and open source stuff. Like the 3D application Blender... That beats half of the top of the line 3D applications that cost upwards of 5k and it's 100% free... Sorry for the rambling rant lol

PageLines looks good but the pricetag is a little steep.

I will be getting that Genesis framework. its just a matter of when... So thank you for letting me know about it Indyonline!

 

No, that's not what I'm saying at all. But you gotta look at WHY it's free. Could be a marketing tactic to give things away, or they could be giving a free version with limited functionality and try to talk you into buying the full premium version. With Pagelines Whitehouse theme, that is the case. Nice theme but if you want all the functions that are in the demo you have to upgrade.