Blog it yourself
In this entry I’d like to talk about my thoughts on web design issues for a new webmaster, but firstly I’m going to talk about the reasons why I decided to do this blog entirely on my own.
Get in the ‘professionals’?
I could have taken the option to bring in outside professionals to help me design this site, but there’s a few reasons why I didn’t do this. Firstly, I have gathered from the few people I spoke to on this, that it would be anywhere in the region of $2000 to $5000 for a decent professional job per site.
Exercise control
Right now I really can’t afford to pay anyone that sort of money. Secondly, even if I had that money to spare, a part of me wants to exercise full control of this website, at least in its initial phases. That way, at least I learn more, and if I wish to adapt or change the website in the future, it should be easier.
Have fun fooling around
Lastly, although trying to figure out design issues can be a right pain at times, it still can be interesting and fun just playing around with this stuff on your own.
Use your strengths
While I certainly wouldn’t categorise myself as a web design expert, I do have the advantage of having some experience in that area and I am also aware of the importance of seo issues, and although I am new to blogging I’m an absolute battle hardened veteran when it comes to just about anything to do with online poker 
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Be open and ready for changes in the future
Anyway I still don’t rule out that I might bring in some outside help for a future project or maybe even to assist me in one or two tasks in this project, but right now it’s still a one-man-show.
Design and implement theme
When working on a website there are numerous challenges, but perhaps the two most difficult ones are choosing and implementing the design. It took me a few weeks of browsing the internet, checking out and playing around with various themes before I’ve settled on the Ikarus White theme from http://www.wpthemespress.com/.
Tweak the theme, feel the pain
As I said before I’m no web guru so it took me about a week of tweaking the Ikarus theme to get it to the state where I thought it was internet ready enough to be used for my site. It really can be quite a frustrating and tedious process.
Let me write please
The challenge of writing the material for the blog is actually far easier, especially when it’s a subject matter that you are genuinely interested in and enjoy writing about.
Doing it my way
Going it on my own I believe was the correct decision for me given current conditions, basically for the reasons stated above.
Internetify your goodself
I wouldn’t presume to tell others what to do when they start their own poker information websites, but I do think as a poker webmaster whether you bring in outside help or not, you should definitely work on your internet skills.
Y’all come back now ya here
If you wish to know more about how to create a good poker information website or in fact any website do come back here, as in the coming weeks I will be getting far more into talking about good web design practices both for poker websites, websites created in WordPress and websites in general, which I hope will prove very valuable for would be webmaster readers of this blog.
