WordPress Website Building has Taken a Huge Leap Forward!
Hey Everyone!
Today I want to let you know about an update that we've just made to our SiteBuilder here at WA! The process of building a WordPress website on our SiteRubix network has just got a lot easier.
First though, I want to talk a little about our ideologies and goals in regard to building websites and what WE think a great website builder should be.When we started WealthyAffiliate back in 2005, we were a simple keyword list delivery site. Kyle and I hand-picked keyword lists after doing manual research and delivered them within the Wealthy Affiliate members area. Each week we would deliver a new keyword list. Folks were EXTREMELY happy with these lists because they were truly gems as far as Keyword lists go...things were good!
As our service evolved, it became evident that people were having an extremely hard time building websites...heck, we were spending a lot of our time building websites from scratch. WordPress was in its infancy, and had not really caught on, so we created our website builder and called it "SiteRubix" - it was pretty good for its time!!
That said, the SiteRubix website builder wasn't open source, and we wanted to focus on building the WA community into something AMAZING, so we gave up on our proprietary website building software and adopted WordPress.
This led to all kinds of opportunities for us...one of those opportunities was to create a truly EASY-TO-USE website installer that could get folks up and running with a website in just a few minutes. So, we went to the drawing board and created the first version of our website builder which was live and being used until just yesterday!
The idea of the website builder was to allow people to build both FREE websites on the SiteRubix.com sub domain, but also build sites on domains that have been registered. Hundreds of thousands of people built websites on this platform and it worked well...that said, we always see room for improvement and that's exactly what we've attempted to do with the latest version released just yesterday!
So, there is a brief history of our SiteBuilder WordPress Website installer that we build to install sites on our SiteRubix network.
Today I get to talk about the new and improved website installing process that we rolled out less than 24 hours ago!
A Live Website in Just 4 Focused Steps
...and 1 minute of your time
The idea behind the new design of our SiteBuilder is to allow for you to focus on each small task of installing a website. Although there are just a few steps that are extremely easy to complete, they can seem overwhelming if they are not presented as 4 easy-to-complete Steps.
Here is my explanation of the steps to build your WordPress website in under a minute!
Step 1: Choose a Type of Site to Build
Install your website on a FREE SiteRubix.com sub domain OR on a Domain that is Registered (one you may own). The other option is to go and register a new domain. Our SiteDomain registration process also uses the same method of a stacked step-through - super easy to follow!
Step 2: Choose a domain name for your website
Choose a domain name for your website. Again, really simple, and if you choose to install on a domain you own, you can also choose from a drop down if the domain has already been added to our hosting here at WA.
Step 3: Choose a name for your website
Choose a name for your website - this is just the TITLE of your site and it can be changed at any time
Step 4: Choose a design for your website
This process has also been totally redesigned. You can easily find beautiful themes, add themes to your favorites, see themes that you've previously installed, and view theme details directly from the theme designers themselves.
After a choosing your theme have a quick quick review, click the button that reads "Click Here to Build This Site!" button and you'll have your website installed and live on the Internet in just a few short moments!
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Our goal has always been to simplify complex technical processes and make them into easy to follow platforms that everyone can make use of! With this update to our WordPress Website Builder here at WA we've built an easy to use, fast, and fun system that will get you up and running with a powerful (and beautiful) website in a matter of minutes.
We already have many plans for this SiteBuilder platform and it's going to continue to evolve and improve over time. We would love to hear your feedback! If you haven't already built a website using our SiteBuilder here at WA, then give it a try, I would love to hear what you think!
Carson
Recent Comments
175
Very nice I like this ideal and upgrade you guys just keep coming up with great stuff and I am going to keep going with this, I might not have alot of time to do post and things of that nature cause of my other job but I know what I do now will pay off in the end.
This sounds really good, although I have several websites, I hadn't used your website builder until about a month ago, I couldn't believe how straightforward it was and this sounds even easier, if that's possible! I look forward to trying the new system out soon, thank you very much Carson.
Roy
Hi Carson. Another step up for WA. You guys really do care about your members and I love that you constantly strive to make things easier, more intuitive and simple to execute. I'll be heading home to change the theme of my current site and will give your new 6 step build process a go. Cheers!
Hi, Carson...
Is there a way to quickly find a particular theme you may be looking for as you build your new website, i.e. a search tool or a field to type in the theme name...
The reason I ask is twofold...
(1) First, I have seen free versions of the themes here on SiteRubix but to get all the features of that theme you have to upgrade to the paid version...
Nothing wrong with that, because often the free versions are fine for starting out with your new website. Later as you want to add more features available and see the website theme is working for you, you can upgrade...
(2) Secondly, I do research to build lists of themes for missions at hand (varies by what I am looking to build), and if I want to find that theme here, to now I have no way of doing so quickly (I am all about quick hehe)...
An example...
If I decide to build a website needing a membership theme, I will look at my spreadsheet of themes...I find one and then I have to try and find the theme here...
If not, I go back to the spreadsheet, which has the external site/link to get the theme...
I could download the free or paid version as I continue to build and add to this list, so I guess doing so would omit this possible step, but I really don't need 50 themes on my hard drive plus they are updated all the time, so the version I download then may not work now with the latest versions of WordPress...
So this is an extra step to now, but not a big one...Having a search tool here for finding a particular theme would avoid this...It may help others who also are looking for one particular theme...
But...
This may have changed and I am going to experiment right now with the changes you have added to see how they look and work...
Bottom Line...
I do appreciate your and Kyle's constant efforts to update what is offered here...Innovate or suffocate is my motto! You and Kyle are breathing deeply with your constant search for excellence!
Cheers!
Dave : )
UPDATE:
I just went through the website builder tool and I see a search window, and some themes came up while others did not...
I do like that I can quickly find out whether I need to go back to my spreadsheet and external link to get the theme I want to use....
The system works flawlessly and is a good upgrade!
Two thumbs up!
: )
Hey Dave.
Just as a quick workaround, and to save you downloading and storing themes, use any theme at the time of creating your site, and then in Appearance > Themes click on the blank theme square with a + sign in it and Add New Theme.
You can then use the Wordpress theme search (top far right) to find the actual theme you want to use, select that and then delete the temporary theme you used to set up the website. :)
Rich.
Yes, I have used this procedure in the past, thanks....Sometimes I will go with just a WordPress setup without a particular theme at all, then added the theme I needed too (Not with SiteRubix)...Cheers! Dave : )
Thanks Carson,
I noticed the changes yesterday as I happened to be making a new blog about Japanese Mahjong.
It is part of a process of moving all my old sites over to WA. :)
A couple of things:
1. I had to select "Other" in the website categories panel because mahjong is a table-top game, not a video game etc etc.
2. I wanted to search for a specific layout rather than scroll through the designs. I ended up searching for specific themes that matched my criteria directly on Wordpress, then entered the theme name in the search panel on the WP theme panel on SiteRebux.
No big deal. The whole process of creating beautiful blogs is so much easier nowadays.
Keep up the good work!
David Hurley
It's just amazing how much work you & Kyle put into WA. What's also unbelievable is the constant improvements that are being made, the fantastic support & at a price I can actually afford.
I've used SiteRubix. Unbelievable how easy it was to use. I didn't think it was possible to make more improvements on it but you have. Thank you so much.
Hi Carson!
Ever changing, ever evolving for the better of entrepreneurs!
What another amazing improvement to help pay it forward!
Thank you so much Carson and Kyle for ALL the hard work and oodles of effort you put into making this a viable and workable platform for us to build solid and lasting websites.
Much appreciated!
You guys are amazing!
Edu
I definitely remember those days. Used to spend all my time building every page, making buttons, making it all work and trying to be fancy. Needless to say, it wasn't until WordPress when I actually began making money. I didn't like change at first, but how awesome it is now to Bam Bam Bam - there it is! What can be done now in those six clicks literally took weeks to build the hand-coding way!
I remember the day I built Yabba-Dabba-Dooo with the old Site Rubix, using the modules. Heck, that was lightening fast compared to using web page editors.
Wow, can't believe you have made it even easier, I wouldn't have thought it could be easier....I remember years ago having to go through all the filezilla installing etc it took me hours! I think I still have a notebook with pages of notes on how to do this!
I have one or two (ok maybe 3!) domains waiting to be set up so excited to try this new easier system! And I'll add categories to my current websites. Thanks WA for constantly improving for us!
Hey Jennie - the days of FileZilla and installing Databases, then creating Database users, then manually uploading WordPress zip files, then going through their installing process - took hours for someone who is seasoned!
This is the kind of problem that we love to solve and we feel pretty good about solving the extremely time consuming and technically challenging process of building a new website!
Let me know what you think when you get your sites installed!
Thanks for the comment and for reminiscing about the (not so good) old days of building websites ;)
Carson
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Very impressive and although I am working on a site and building it up it is my intention to have two sites to work at eventually. So this will help me tremendously when I start the second site because by then I will have "completely" forgotten what I did to start the first one anyway so simple is going to be good then lol.....just saying tks, it's worth the price of premium just to be a part of all this and a great community of helpful friends too boot....Duane.
Hey Duane - the new SiteBuilder will be all ready to go when you build your second site! I hope you find it easy, intuitive, and fun!