I need a new website that is viewable on phones, but do not know which way to turn for ideas.

My current site is seriously outdated. A web guy I know is recommending that I choose a Joomla template and he'll customize it. It's written in PHP, which I know nothing about.

Joomla, from what I have researched, is NOT SEO friendly, which is a serious concern for me. Joomla is very responsive, however and apparently great for viewing on phones. Joomla apparently has many potential bugs, which also bothers me.

I do not have deep pockets. I currently have three domains that are plain HTML that are not viewable on phones very well.

My videos need to be viewable on phones, that is a biggie.

Any thoughts as to templates that I could customize that would fit the bill? I'm accustomed to taking care of my own site, which is another reason I don't like the Joomla idea.

On themeforest.net you have a lot of wordpress website themes that adapt themself automatically to any size screen (just search for "responsive" and "retina ready" and your up to date) and for a price of around 45 dollar that's realy cheap. I allready consider myself experienced in setting up these themes for my own use, if I have all the text's, images and videos online (like on vimeo) I am able to get a whole website up and running in a day. For video's the best option to secure playback on mobile devices is either vimeo or youtube.

The time that wordpress was a simple blogging platform is long gone, what website designers these day can do with wordpress is quite amazing.

Cyber Chimps has some great Wordpress templates with "responsive design" that adapt to mobile devices. I just dumped my outdated site and went with their iFeature Pro theme just a few months ago.

I love the Wordpress designs on each site you both recommend. Very good stuff, looks perfect, thanks a million.

I use Dreamweaver to edit my current site and is all I know. What tools do you use to update and manage content?

You will be working mainly from wordpress backend and it's pretty straightforward from there on. With each premium wordpress theme there is also a helpfile included to set the theme up, it basically means you don't need an external program to maintain your website. There are also tons of free plugins available to add functionality to your site.

You could tweak your websites theme but it requires you to have knowlegde of "php language" (or whatever it's called:) because once you start messing with the theme's original code things breack quickly if you don't know what you are doing.

Well designed wordpress themes work out of the box and there is always a support forum from the designer where you can post any problems you might have, if you report a bug they usually fix it quickly but if you want design changes they will charge you on an hour base.

Noa, thanks for the mini tutorial. I don't know html, but I have learned how to work within the contraints of Dreamweaver and I'm familiar enough with it to see issues with code here and there.

I seek a template with a spot on the home page for embedding videos, but can afford to use a designer to make any changes if needed. It seems, based on what you say it is do-able and learnable.

I went from knowing absolutely nothing about Wordpress to a fantastic looking site in less than 24 hours. The company I purchased the them from, Solostream, had numerous tutorials and help forums to help me figure everything out. As was previously mentioned, the key to gettig your site to look good on phones and tablets is to choose a "responsive" theme.

I would agree that wordpress is very user friendly. A lot of the themes you can buy are just plug and play, so you wouldn't need to know html in order to get a good looking website. We use wordpress for ours as well.

I know Joomla well & have used it to develop many websites. We chose it in preference to WordPress over six years ago because it was so much more functional than WordPress which then was a very basic blog platform. We revisited WordPress about 18 months ago & have used it for all the websites that we have developed since. Joomla (or Drupal) is still better for complex sites but WordPress is a very capable platform for the majority of straightforward websites like e.g. for a wedding video company. There are a load of fab themes at great prices on Premium WordPress Themes, Web Templates, Mobile Themes | ThemeForest (http://www.themeforest.com) Look at Cinematic Wedding Video Norfolk - Wedding Photography Norfolk (http://www.alicebarkerimages.com) we use a so-called fullscreen theme which is very dramatic but if I were to choose a new theme I would look at a so-called single page theme as the cool theme heavy on images isn't as good for SEO as having all your content effectively on a single page. Take a look at a single page responsive theme like this one WordPress - Zig Zag - Responsive WordPress Template | ThemeForest (http://themeforest.net/item/zig-zag-responsive-wordpress-template/1348607)

Nigel, is a one page website not bad for SEO since it doesn't load any other pages?

Like if I have a portfoliopage called www.website.be/portfolio with several images only and if they click on the image called "wedding_A" then a page opens up as www.website.be/wedding_A, if they click on the portfolio page an image with the name "wedding_B" again another page opens with the name www.website.be/wedding_B and so on.

This means I can add a seo title, meta description and tags per new post that opens up each time a user requests it. I can also write some additional text in each post that also will be picked up by google.

If you would have a portfolio page with all vimeo video embedded like you have on Alice Barker Images - Cinematic Wedding Video & Photography - Video Portfolio (http://www.alicebarkerimages.com/video-portfolio/) clicking a image only triggers a new embedded video to play but isn't this negative for seo as the page title, meta data and so on always remain the same?

Jeff I took a couple of templates from ElegantThemes and was able to use Dreamweaver CS4 to customize both of them. Dreamweaver opens those individual files and once inside it becomes intuitive how you deal with them. Go find a free template and use Dramweaver to open what's included, if you need some assurance before diving in. EleganTheses has a pretty good support section where most questions one could ask, were already asked and answered. If you find a theme supplier with a similar support forum/section, you'll do fine and be up with a great site for just time !!!

SavingsPath Inc. | Spend Management Solutions (http://www.savingspathinc.com)
Sales2Inc | Just another WordPress site (http://www.sales2inc.com)

Nigel, Chip, everyone, much too much information here. Single vs multiple page sites, the choices are many. I will sort through your excellent suggestions and links and try and settle on something.

Nigel, is a one page website not bad for SEO since it doesn't load any other pages?

Like if I have a portfoliopage called www.website.be/portfolio with several images only and if they click on the image called "wedding_A" then a page opens up as www.website.be/wedding_A, if they click on the portfolio page an image with the name "wedding_B" again another page opens with the name www.website.be/wedding_B and so on.

This means I can add a seo title, meta description and tags per new post that opens up each time a user requests it. I can also write some additional text in each post that also will be picked up by google.

If you would have a portfolio page with all vimeo video embedded like you have on Alice Barker Images - Cinematic Wedding Video & Photography - Video Portfolio (http://www.alicebarkerimages.com/video-portfolio/) clicking a image only triggers a new embedded video to play but isn't this negative for seo as the page title, meta data and so on always remain the same?I agree re the video portfolio page. I need to redo the whole website as while it looks great it's very difficult to have any significant content on the home page & Google is very stupid so needs pointing in the right direction all the time.

A single page website is not strictly a single page as once you add a blog that can be other pages. It does however have the benefit that you have all your main content & keywords all on one page rather than being diluted over multiple pages. I think that there are Pros & Cons but as with so much to do with SEO most is just pure speculation as nobody really knows what is going on & Google is just arbitrary most of the time.

Noa, your point is well taken, so I googled the topic of multiple pages vs single page. There is no single easy answer for everyone, but for SEO the multiple page thing would seem to be the logical winner for SEO possibilities.

Like Nigel says blog pages can add depth to a site. I tend to agree with you, though, that multiple pages would seem to be a no-brainer, if done right, for SEO.

The advantages of the "coolness" of a well done single page could outweigh things if your conversion rate is higher.

Too much to consider, too many choices. I do love the look of a single page design, it's very cool.

I think if either is done well, which you choose would probably not matter in our tiny little niche markets.

I just despair of how arbitrary & illogical Google is at times. We have a lovely looking website & have done all the right things with regard to SEO although I am not convinced that the design of the theme does us any favours. We have lots of nice content & plenty of relevance but if you search on "wedding video Norfolk" which we target you will find that we are on Page 2 beneath a load of mostly less attractive looking sites that have a fraction of the relevant content. The number 1 hit uses a single page website Wedding Films / Videos - Wedding Cinematographers / Videographers based near London UK // Sugarfish Productions - (http://www.sugarfishproductions.com/) but is not Norfolk based nor apart from one instance of the word has anything to do with Norfolk that I can find even after I have delved down into the HTML source. It's an utter mystery to me why they are number one for "wedding video Norfolk".

On the other hand colleague who uses exactly the same WordPress theme is number one for his target keywords "wedding video Bucks" Mark Shipperley FilmsCinematic wedding videos (http://markshipperleyfilms.co.uk/) Go figure!

Nigel, your SEO struggle sounds VERY frustrating.

Let me say I am in love with your site, it's very very nice. I stumbled across it months ago, and immediately like it over most others I've seen. I'm very big on text for SEO, maybe you need more? I don't know.

For lack of any other ideas, try this link below if it might help. It has helped me clean up code a bit, haven't used it for ages, but it always seems to find something I can tweak a bit.

SiteReportCard: Web Site Optimization and Promotion Tools (http://www.sitereportcard.com/index.php)

i have a single page site which isn't finished and probably never will, I run out of time and patients every so often, the SEO is a complete mystery to me too, i wish i knew the secrets!
Because its a single page I think it looks ok on a phone or tablet tho.

The number 1 hit uses a single page website Wedding Films / Videos - Wedding Cinematographers / Videographers based near London UK // Sugarfish Productions - (http://www.sugarfishproductions.com/) but is not Norfolk based nor apart from one instance of the word has anything to do with Norfolk that I can find even after I have delved down into the HTML source. It's an utter mystery to me why they are number one for "wedding video Norfolk".


Hi Nigel,

When I search on Google for: "norfolk site:www.sugarfishproductions.com" I get 12 results. Search Google for: "norfolk site:www.alicebarkerimages.com" (your site) I get 424 results. Does seem strange. Perhaps there's some kind of structural issues at work with regard to SEO, but nothing obvious is apparent.

Because its a single page I think it looks ok on a phone or tablet tho.

A responsive multi-page website for wordpress look fine on a smartphone as well IF they have been designed well. You can easily test it by opening such a template on themeforest.net and just making the browser smaller untill it has the screen size of a smartphone, then you can see the website adapting itself in realtime to fit any size. Looks kinda cool :)

I use squarespace.com. It was easy to edit and provides great analytics. It's really customizable if you can write code too.

Here's what my site looks like. Great mobile site too:

Landmark Media (http://www.landmark207.com)