HTML novice trying to get WP theme to look like website (no blog stuff)

  • Hi everyone,

    I am a complete dunce when it comes to HTML–I understand that “<b>text</b>” bolds text and what “alt text” is, and that’s about it. This will be long so please bear with me.

    Anyway, I need to create a portfolio website ASAP for job-applying purposes. I already have a domain bought and registered through BlueHost and it’s through that that I’ve been working on my WP website. The theme that I’m using is called “Minimalist 1” and can be found here: https://www.mediabistro.com/10000words/seven-free-wordpress-themes-for-journalists_b5191.

    Now, since I am such a dunce at HTML, I am at a complete loss as to how to change parts of this theme to get rid of the “blog” aspects and make it more like a website. I have read as much as I could to try to learn but have trouble applying things to the theme itself. I know I have to go into Appearances > Editor > Sidebar to make changes to the code, but as I’ve mentioned, I don’t know what exactly to do.

    Here’s what I want to happen:

    1) Change the left menu items from “Pages”, “Categories”, “Archives” etc. to say “About”, “Print Stories”, “Broadcast Stories”, “Photos”, “Resume”, “Contact”.

    2) Keep the drop-down feature that’s available for some of these menu items for Print/Broadcast Stories and Photos. These sub-pages would then each link to a new print, broadcast or photo story.

    3) Have the “About/Resume/Contact” parts be static.

    4) Change the title of the page to say my name, maybe have a banner photo of me at the top.

    5) Get rid of everything on the right from “Worth a Thousand Words” to “Hello world!”

    6) Embed videos of my broadcast stories so you can watch them right on the website. I have no idea what plug-in I would need for that. So it would look like this: Left menu says “Broadcast Stories” => drop-down provides list of stories => click on one and video appears to the right for you to watch

    I recognize this is a lot and I don’t expect people to be able to answer all the questions. Even some general tips would be helpful. I promise I’m not actually this stupid and will most likely be able to “get the hang of it” if I can just get on my feet.

    Thanks very much!

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  • Bing/google how to use wordpress

    There are a lot of tutorials for wordpress.

    There are so many things you can do with WordPress, and no easy way to just explain it. It would be best to just learn to use WordPress in general first. In learning how to use WordPress, you will likely be able to answer every one of your questions.

    To get started though, you’ll probably want to create a page to be your home page, then go to Settings > Reading and change your home page to show that static page, rather than your blog posts.

    You can then set another page to be the blog page if you want. You can also work in pages rather than posts if you want static content.

    Don’t get too stuck on one theme. If the theme you are using is being difficult to manage, consider looking for another one. There are hundreds or thousands of themes available for free.

Viewing 2 replies - 1 through 2 (of 2 total)
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