The above is a lyrics from a funny song titled «Here comes another bubble», regarding «the american dream» in the web. The point is clear, your webmaster likes pizza and coffee, and this should be enough for him to survive :P. All right, just kidding. Still, it’s important for you to remember, if you don’t know anything about building websites, then you have to find someone who does. Or you can learn everything on your own. I suggest looking around first. Also, it’s better to pay someone for job well done, than to create crappy website on your own.
So look around, among your friends first, then among friends of your friends, maybe you will find someone with skills and interest in paranormal on some discussion board related to supernatural topics. If not, just use Job Boards to hire a freelancer and voila!
Layout
Take a look at these websites: Digg.com, Flickr.com, Delicious.com, CNN.com, Facebook.com — what can you see? White! There is a lot of bright and clean colors on these websites, and a lot of so called «white-space» or emptiness. It’s because these websites are designed to be very user-friendly. Websites cannot be too dark, but more than that there can not be white font on black background. Dark websites are hard to read because each and every display is glowing (except advanced NASA technology and e-paper), and emitting light, which makes your eyes tired very quickly. Black on white is good, but white on black isn’t.
Let’s not get into technical details, we’re not creating a designer’s or artist’s portfolio here, we want to create a website which is going to be read by people. Picking up the wrong colors and people will get easily tired, wordpress themes and wordpress themes it is possible they will look for something better than your website.
Another issue of the dark
Another important thing regarding this technical issue is the fact that when you’re creating a dark website, you automatically want to say «Ooo, this is spooky and scary» (can you hear this Irish accent, like Conan O’Brian’s?). This is OK, as long as you’re making a website for 14-years old kids who can’t fit into school’s society… If you want to reach normal people interested in paranormal or those looking for more reliable informations on the subject, you can not create dark website «cause it’s cool», because it will throw most people away. Black is bad, dark is nice but if you won’t pay your professional designer minimum $1500 USD, then your dark layout will look awful too. This is caused because creating dark template/layout requires a lot of skills (I mean it, a lot), woocommerce and those who can do this know they can’t charge too little for such hard work.
Grunge and Vintage styles
A lot of dirt, some vintage photos, hand-drawen buttons etc., and yes, a grunge style in web design is very nice.It fits the paranormal subject, wordpress plugins but you have to remember a few things about it. First, creating a good looking grunge layout isn’t an easy task, so it will probably cost you a few dollars. Secondly, not every website should use grunge style, woocommerce plugins simply because it won’t fit. Simple example : a website for your investigators team can use nice grunge layout, but your huge vortal about paranormal phenomenon should stick with something much cleaner. It’s not set-in-stone rule, more like a guideline and it depends on your designer’ skills, but basically you should stick to it :).
If you don’t know any designer and you don’t like free themes, you can look on <a rel="nofollow" website Forest to find some cool cheap premium themes.
Ghost comic images and animated GIF’s
Put an animated ghost GIF image on your super-scientific website and I will surely define you as a 16-year old girl who loves pink and has an emotional problems. No, seriously, what do you want to achieve by placing such animations on your website? No, it’s not cool, it’s not spooky, it’s stupid, childish and completely insane. You want people to consider you as serious paranormal investigator and you’re placing animated ghosts on your websites? No one will take you seriously, and what worries me the most are the called «investigators» with such elements on their websites. No! No animated gifs or any «cool» or «spooky» images on your paranormal website!
Look around the web — useful things you can find
Even without technical skills, you can still make your own paranormal website, all you have to do is to look around the web and find useful stuff. Like templates and layouts for your website. There’s a plenty of these and all you have to do is to spent some time on googling themes.
And you can find a CMS. CMS stands for Content Management System. It’s a special script, or maybe it’s better to say, an engine you will use to easily manage the content on your website. 90% of sites you want to create can be created using the best CMS ever : <a rel="nofollow" website Publishing Platform. It's easy to install, has thousands of useful plugins, expanding script capabilities, and it's damn well supported so there's no way for you to get stuck without being able to find any help. If you're not a programmer nor a designer, WordPress is your best friend, learn it well. With a little bit of work and reading and learning, you will be able to create a nice "magazine-like" website using the capabilities of this CMS. And if you're looking for some WordPress themes you're willing to pay for, check
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Alisa Navarrete
6 months ago
thank you for all the info on this subject and I promis no animated ghosts of gifs I agree that I don’t take those sites seriously when I am looking for woocommerce plugins real serious information. I was wondering if you had any advice on a site that will allow my to place my podcast on it? please and thank you
Alan
5 years ago
How can I makeover my site website to the best WP paranormal theme?
filedunderstrange
7 years ago
Hi Nathan,
I’d like to get in touch with you about this topic, as I’m trying to form ideas such as this to create a paranormal website. If you would be willing to hear me out, that would be great, thanks!
Tim Doyon
10 years ago
Hi Nathan! I couldn’t agree more with you… there are a lot of bad paranormal sites out there. Mine is fairly new, and has been an incredible amount of work trying to make it stand apart from the rest, but I’m happy to say, I have no animated ghost gifs! lol Anyways, keep up the great work and I will be watching you in the future to see what other useful information you have to share!