When Animal Rights for Japan needed to update their old website, they knew that switching over to WordPress was the way to go. They managed the WP installation, chose a theme they liked and got to work with copying and pasting their content page-by-page from the old website to the new one. WordPress is great for that — it’s quick and easy for anyone to create pages and publish content. But it was at this point that they realized they might need some help to get the new website where they wanted it to be.
A budget-conscious non-profit organisation, Animal Rights for Japan was willing to do the bulk of the work themselves and hired ZPMNL for professional WordPress support. We stepped in to help with some specific website improvements, such as adding a Mailchimp signup form, share and follow social media icons, and a Facebook feed. We added functionality allowing visitors to submit their own stories which can then be reviewed and approved for publication. As a Netherlands-based advocacy group for animals rights in Japan, their website also needed to offer multi-language content in English, Dutch and Japanese.
Besides setting everything up on the backend, ready to be filled in with words and pictures, we also provided coaching on how to do little things like embedding YouTube videos and starting a new line of text without skipping a line (shift + return!). Finally we added some custom CSS to personalise their theme, including a cute background image.
Hiring ZPMNL for WordPress support is an ideal solution if you can’t quite afford the cost of having a custom website built for you, or if you’ve already got a WordPress website and want to add some bells and whistles. Here are some tips to keep in mind if you’re considering hiring us for support with a WordPress website you’re building/have built yourself:
- Get as far as you can on your own with the WP installation, creating new posts/pages and entering your content
- When copying and pasting from another website, don’t forget to check and update links — especially for images
- Make a list of everything you want to change or add and need help with, e.g. colours, fonts, layouts, functionality
- Collect the login info we need to work on your website. If you’re nervous about giving out your password, create a new admin user for us to use and then delete it or change the password after the work is done.
- We may also have some suggestions and recommendations for you regarding the security, speed, and scalability of your site. We’ll work with you to decide what can be done within your budget, and what tasks you might want to come back to when time and budget allow.