I built USMCA.com easily thanks to GoDaddy’s wizard and Beaver Builder.
Last week I wrote about a problem with WordPress: it’s simply too difficult for the typical small business owner to figure out how to create a website using WordPress.
I mentioned that the best experience I’ve found for creating a WordPress site is GoDaddy’s managed WordPress hosting. The on-ramp has two key features that make it easy.
First, there’s a wizard that walks you through a quick start process that creates an initial site based on your industry.
Second, it uses Beaver Builder Lite to allow you to edit pre-designed templates to your liking without coding knowledge.
I created a site this way on USMCA.com over the weekend.
Last week the United States, Mexico and Canada announced a new trade agreement designed to replace NAFTA. It has a rather unimaginative name: United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement, or USMCA. Shortly after the news was announced I looked up USMCA.com and found that it had a buy now price in GoDaddy’s NameFind inventory. I bought it.
This weekend I created a site on USMCA.com using GoDaddy’s managed WordPress hosting.
Within 10 minutes I already had a decent looking site shell that only needed me to add content and make minor adjustments:
To make what you see in the graphic above, all I needed to do was:
1. Select my industry
2. Give my site a name
3. Select from a handful of child themes under GoDaddy’s Primer theme
4. Choose from stock photos relevant to the industry I selected
From there, it’s easy to use the built-in Beaver Builder to make changes to the content blocks. Beaver Builder works similarly to many of the website builders on the market. You can make a lot of site changes without understanding how to code and without inserting widgets.
I don’t know if this is easy enough for someone who hasn’t used WordPress before, but it’s a heck of a lot easier than figuring out how to download and install a theme or framework. This is the sort of experience that needs to be offered to non-technical people creating a website. Ideally, this is combined with some sort of “WordPress lite” that doesn’t include so many options until the user is ready to unlock them.
Vincent Jacques says
I like it too and created a website in a day for a newly acquired laundromat business this weekend as well! Soooo easy!
Andrew Allemann says
Do you mind sharing the domain? Would love to see what you created.
Vincent Jacques says
http://GTFOLaundry.com
Andrew Allemann says
Cool. Love the name, too.
Michel Payette says
Looks great! Congrats!
John says
Does one’s domain have to be registered at Go Daddy or can customers use it if a domain is registered somewhere else?
Andrew Allemann says
It can be registered elsewhere.
John says
Thanks. Your series on Dev tools has been a very good thing, especially your WP guest poster from a while ago.
MapleDots.ca says
Seriously? have you ever installed wordpress via cPanel, a few clicks and presto. I have it down to a T and simply copy my wordpress install to my next site. Go in change the name and done. Who needs any other service when a good hosting account with cPanel which gives you ALL the tools you will ever need.
Glenn Bossik says
I routinely install WordPress on GoDaddy through CPanel. It’s extremely easy. As for getting an instant design, there’s no such thing. You can buy a good template through StudioPress.com and import the demo content to get started, but it’s still necessary to modify the CSS.