Last night on the PCMech LIVE show there was someone in chat who was having a not-so glorious time with Thesis, a theme for WordPress. This theme costs $87 so it’s not cheap. Actually, not-so glorious really doesn’t accurately describe his experience. He hated it. Why? Because when he tried it, it didn’t work.

Unfortunately it’s very difficult to give any advice when it comes to custom themes for WordPress because you have to give the auto mechanic’s answer as to why it didn’t work: "Could be anything." That is in fact the best answer you can give because there are any number of things that can go with with WordPress, your web host provider, other WP plugins that may be "getting in the way", etc.

Dave on his own site recently did a video on the Headway theme, an alternative to Thesis. But even with that there will probably be those who consider it difficult to use, even though it was designed to be easy.

Of course, there are those who will read this and have absolutely no clue how any of this stuff works at all, and that’s the problem. Web sites still to this day have never gotten to the point of being easy.

Here’s the basic way of how web sites work in very generic terms:

1. Domain is registered with domain registrar.

Even at step 1, people get confused. "Domain? What the f!#ck is a domain?" I explain this to people as "your dot-com".

"Oh, okay. So a domain is the actual dot-com name thingy."

Yes.

But then the confusion goes further because there are many different registrars. I use Dotster but I usually just tell most people to use GoDaddy because they’ve seen it on TV before.

2. Host the domain at a web host provider.

From here it goes all downhill. The person who’s trying to get his or her web site online was a little confused before, and now they’re totally confused.

"Wait.. I just paid for the domain thing. Now I have to pay again to host it? Why? I just paid for the name!"

The domain registrar fee you paid is for the domain registration only and not the hosting. A domain name does not magically serve itself to the internet. It must be hosted somewhere. To do this, specific name servers must be specified.

You can guess the next question.

"What the f!#k is a name server?"

So then I have to explain that when you type in a dub dub dub dot whatever dot com, your browser makes a network request to the internet. The internet identifies a domain as pointing to a specific name server (that being the one belonging to your web host provider), goes there and serves the web page to your browser. Name servers are specified at the domain registrar level.

3. Install a content publishing system.

If you thought it went all downhill before, now you’re thoroughly doomed.

The entire reason to install a content publishing system is so that it makes it easier for you, the web site owner, to publish your content on the internet. Content engines such as WordPress allow you to do this. However in order to get it actually installed is an absolute nightmare for those who have never done it.

This is why:

You must know how to upload the system to your web server provided by your web host provider via FTP.

Fortunately FTP isn’t too hard to figure out with programs like FileZilla, but the hard part comes in knowing where to upload your stuff. You need to know the server name to connect to and the specific directory to put your files. Is it public_html? Is it www? Is it something different entirely?

Guess what? It’s different per web host provider, so I can’t say "upload x to y". This is irritating not only for the guy who’s trying to explain it (me) but for the person who’s actually trying to do it (you).

You must know how to create and activate a MySQL database.

We’ve got phpMyAdmin for this and that takes away a lot of hassle and it is usually provided with any web hosting account one would purchase, but.. and you knew there was a but.. for those that know it, do you remember the first time you use phpMyAdmin? Remember how frustrating it was even though you already knew MySQL? And remember how it took you a while before you learned how phpMyAdmin does things? Sure, now you can go in there and get things done easily, but it wasn’t a 1-2-3, right?

Imagine being thrown into phpMyAdmin with no MySQL experience whatsoever.

It’s not pretty.

It is a 1-2-3, but with a lot of crap in between

Even with the 1-2-3 above, this didn’t even cover themes, custom plugins, custom PHP code and probably a million other things besides that.

I do empathize with anybody who is doing the whole web site shtick that hasn’t before. It can be terribly difficult if for nothing that nobody explains what the terms actually mean.

This is why I tell people to use www.wordpress.com or www.blogger.com because both of those allow you to "attach" a domain (your dot-com) much easier than hosting it yourself. In addition you can try before you buy; you can’t do that with web hosting ordinarily. Granted, you don’t get the customization options of self-hosting, but it’s a whole lot easier to deal with.

How do you explain how a web site works to someone?

Have you ever tried? Was it successful or did it frustrate you beyond belief trying to explain how things work with domains, domain registrars, web host providers, content engines, etc?

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