How to Get Started with Responsive Web Design and WordPress CMS
Responsive web design (RWD) is a technique used to create websites that look the same on every device (phone, tablet, laptop, etc.). This framework makes building and maintaining a website easier because you don’t need to worry about the design looking different on each device. Pretty neat, huh?
With WordPress, you can easily create a professional-looking, mobile-optimized website that will perform well on all devices.
Why Use a CMS for Your Website’s Content?
If you’re reading this, it’s probably because you’re thinking about creating a website and you don’t know where to begin. Maybe you’ve already built a website but you want to take it up a notch by adding more features and content. Or maybe you’re just looking for an easy way to keep your content organized and accessible from any device.
A content management system (CMS) is software that can be used to create and maintain websites. A CMS makes creating and updating a website easy because all the content is stored in a database, which can be accessed and edited through a web browser. A CMS also makes adding new content and pages easy because all the software has built-in content management functionality.
WordPress is the most popular CMS because it’s free and open-source software (GPLv3 license) that can be used to build anything from a simple blog to a complex business website. With WordPress, you can install a variety of premium plugins that can be used to enhance your site’s functionality and appearance. Plus, you can download the entire WordPress code and start building your site from the ground up!
Installing WordPress
WordPress is a popular choice when it comes to CMSs because it’s so easy to install and configure. Once you’ve downloaded the software, you can follow the setup wizard to install WordPress as either a standalone blog or as the basis for a more complex business website. Once you’ve finished installing WordPress, you can log in to your web space’s dashboard.
From your Dashboard, you can click on “Tools” in the menu bar, then click on “Plugins” to access the WordPress plugins directory. Here, you can browse a directory of free and premium plugins that can be used to enhance your site’s functionality and appearance. To activate a plugin, simply click on the “Activate” button next to it. Once you’ve activated a plugin, you can click on it’s directory in the menu bar to access its features.
Creating Your Blog
A basic WordPress blog can be created with just a few clicks. From your Dashboard, click on “Tools” then click on “Blog” to create a new blog. Once you’ve created a new blog, you can add content by clicking on the “Write” button in the top right corner of the Dashboard.
To edit the content of your blog, simply click on the “Edit” button next to the blog post you want to edit. You’ll be guided through a series of screens where you can make changes to the template blog post.
Creating a More Complex Website
If you want to create a business website, you’re going to need something more than a basic blog. A WordPress business website can be configured with all the main features you’d need to create a fully-fledged commercial website. To get started, log in to your Dashboard and click on “Tools,” then “Customise” to open the Customise screen.
On the Customise screen, you can click on “Theme” then “Select Theme” to choose your blog’s theme. Once you’ve selected a theme, you can click on the “Appearance” tab to configure the template files.
Getting Started With Responsive Web Design And WordPress
Now that you know the basics of creating a WordPress blog, you can get started designing your site. To do this, click on the logo in the top right corner of your Dashboard to open the WordPress website’s preview. Once open, you can click on the “Responsive” icon on the top toolbar to open the Responsive design template.
You can use this tool to test your site’s layout and whether or not it looks good on mobile devices. To edit the template, simply click on the “Edit” button next to it. You’ll be taken to the template’s dashboard where you can make changes to the code.
WordPress Bootstrap
As we mentioned earlier, WordPress comes with a lot of great features out of the box. A lot of those features are built on the popular Twitter Bootstrap framework. So if you want to take advantage of the Bootstrap capabilities in WordPress, you can! Simply install the Twitter Bootstrap plugin and you’ll be able to use all the Twitter Bootstrap templates in your site. These templates can be found under the “Theme” section of your WordPress Dashboard.
The Twitter Bootstrap plugin will also allow you to easily import and export all your theme’s stylesheets (which are basically CSS files) so you don’t have to keep rebuilding them as your site changes. This makes updating a theme much easier because all the CSS is in one place, and you don’t have to worry about losing any of your customizations. This feature alone makes the Twitter Bootstrap plugin worth it.
WordPress is a great choice for anyone who is looking for a CMS to use for their website. It’s incredibly simple to use and configure, and the community is always willing to help if you need it (which is great because you can’t always rely on software to do the hard work for you).