Suggestions on Starting Commercial Website

General Forums Off-topic Chat
1

I have a rough plan to start a fan site for MMA (professional fighting). However, I know minimal web programming, and when I built my own website (which is just a few pages showing my presentations and computer models and things), it was very, very challenging for me. I used Joomla, which I now regret because the community was completely unhelpful in answering questions (unlike with Blender, GIMP, Inkscape, etc.) So I assume my best option for this site will be Wordpress (even though this site will be much larger and more elaborate than my simple site).

But beyond that, I would like some general advice on how to build it.

  1. Which software should I use? Joomla worked well, but the community was unhelpful, and most every template was very expensive. How does Wordpress compare to this?
  2. I hope to earn lots of web traffic. What should be done to prepare for this?
  3. I plan on monetizing the site. What is the best way to do this?
  4. How about templates? Assuming I use Wordpress, does anybody have any suggestions on inexpensive templates which are reliably updated for when the CMS gets updated?

If I follow through on this, I really want to be as diligent in my preparation as possible, because I don’t have the financial wiggle room to spend tons and tons of time on making tweaks and correcting bugs.

2

On No.2 - you will have to have a tons of incentives to lure that one in six hundy thousand inner net user. Most users will only hang around for a few weeks, but then you will get some dedicated folk who will stay on to be moderators.

On No.3 an idea is to have your site free, and then offer monetary incentives to up grade and so on. This is some big games companies cook in the kitchen.