Firstly lets look at two of my sites: Martins Boots & Mens Boxer Shorts (they can do with some improvement but are more than suitable for my needs)

Both i have created myself using two basic tools; Headway Theme & Easy Content Units

I am not a coder but believe that i have found a perfect combination with these two products. I hope i have helped you find it too.

Remove dates? huh, mere click of a button, no php required.

Thanks for your feedback and welcome to the site.

Yep, don’t think I’d use anything else unless it was a custom build.

I started off using HTML and doing them by hand for my smaller sites but now I just use WordPress with a theme a made myself.

The site looks like a normal website but I have the WordPress CMS in the background so adding content is very quick and easy.

An example would be this site I am starting: http://triathlonwetsuit.org.uk/

Joe

I’m one of the docs who hasn’t “really hit the mark because they are so experienced!”

Allow me to sum up my technical experience:

I used to use Yahoo Geocities WYSIWYG editor to create basic looking sites. I now use WordPress.

I know how to create a text link.
I know how to make stuff bold
I know how to centre stuff.

Erm.. that’s about it.

What I love about WordPress is that you can upload it, add your content and be done if you want, or you can open up the bonnet and play (which even I, as a total non-techie feel comfortable doing).

You want to remove the dates? No worries.. I’ve done that – Open up the relevant php file, find the bit that corresponds to the date (just search for the text around it – “Posted by… on” etc to find it) and delete part of the code – as long as you keep a backup of the original file, you can hack away at it and see what effect your changes have – it’s no hassle to undo your changes if they bugger things up – just re-upload your backup file.

In short, WP can be 100% hands-off, with the only customisation being different themes, or you can tweak it and play with things without too much technical know how.

@Mark absolutely. I’m still stumbling across new theme sites and amazed at just how many themes there are out there. I’m still not comfortable on ripping the themes apart yet!, but I’ve got some of basics already.

@Paul – I’m not going to speak on behalf of the docs, but I’m sure one or two will pop on to tell you otherwise. Yes, they’re experienced in Affiliate Marketing/Marketing, but not every one of them is a techie, far from it.

The main point is that WordPress is about as close to a non-techie based platform as you can get. I’m not a techie either and know bugger all about code! But you can make WordPress as complicated or as simple as you like (plugins can do a lot of the complicated stuff).

Just make sure you select the theme you feel fits the job, and if you’re worried about support or need some help, it’s worth investing in a theme that comes with free support. Mark’s mentioned a theme site above, and another example is the hugely popular WP theme developer http://www.studiopress.com.

You’ll be hard pushed to make a go of things if you want an ‘easy life’, but if you’re looking to create sites that have content that you plan to leave (i.e. static), you can create pages instead of posts (they aren’t timestamped).

If a new affiliate isn’t prepared to risk the minimal outlay of domain name/site (WP/whatever)/hosting, then they’re in the wrong game. You’d be hard pushed to find another potential business with such low startup costs.

@Nick I do the same. £20+ investment for a theme is a bargain for what you get.

The vast majority of WordPress themes put the date all over the place, last post, popular post etc. There are a few exceptions.

As a newbie when you see WordPress from the beginning all you see is date stamps all over the place and think of it as a blogging tool needing to be fed content to feel alive.

If your last post was written jan 09 looks to a visitor as if the site is defunct and they won’t stay too long. And you don’t want to be constantly republishing all the time to make it look up to date, if you want and easy life you just want it to sit there and not need any maintenance whilst you launch another 30 thin sites!

But the answer which the Doctors mention is you need to look at the theme a starting point and realise the date can be stripped off all the posts and headers etc , things can be shifted all over the place to make it look more like a site than a blog.

But, it’s amazing how many top affiliates from IT backgrounds assume people can attempt any sort of code themselves. There’s a huge ammount who are clueless about code and intend to remain so. They may be skilled at ideas, or have expertise in a niche but they will never code.

The downside for these people is the extra investment in getting some tweaks done. This costs from £15 for a whizz kid graduate to £60 per hour for a pro. Then add on top the cost of the theme if it’s a premium one.

So if the site doesn’t earn they may not recoup their investment in which case they need to look at something that isn’t WordPress.

It’s easy to customise, theres plenty of really professional looking themes out there and its super easy to update (from any computer in the world!).

I’m not that techy, but I find myself ripping apart the files that come with the themes. Once you work out how to do it once you can do it over and over (if that makes sense!?).

A particularly good free themes site – http://www.skinpress.com/category/wordpress/

Mark