She's exactly the same age as Joomla. She had an Instagram account, and a shop on Etsy, but 16 year old Lena wanted more: her own website, with her own design and her own content, where she could show all the creative things she does. With a little help from her mother, she managed to get it up and running in just two weeks. They had a lot of fun creating it, and Lena was surprised about how easy it was to build a Joomla website: “I thought making a website was way more difficult.”

Congratulations on your beautiful website, Lena! Before we get to talking about that, could you tell us a little about yourself?

So my name is Lena, I live in Klosterneuburg, that’s next to Vienna in Austria.

Daily life is a combination of school and training (I train diving), in my free time I read, bake. I also sew, crochet, draw a bit, journaling, and many, many more things, so all sorts of creative stuff.

How did the idea come up to make a website about this?

On Instagram I follow some accounts of girls of my age, who also do stuff like I do and some of them have their own website. I had my Instagram and my Etsy shop but I wanted to have something that I can create completely by myself because in Etsy you have templates and you can’t change them. So I thought about doing a website where I could show what I do and that I could design however I wanted to.

Why did you choose Joomla for this website?

I made this website with my mom and she makes Joomla websites so I really hadn’t thought about anything else.

What did you do first, and after that?

The very first thing we did was to buy a domain (www.klenativ.at)

The next thing was that I looked at some other websites to see what I want to have, what I liked and what I didn’t. Then we did the design, I chose colors, templates, pictures and more. The next step was the information, so I had to think about what I wanted to tell the people that are on my website. I wrote all the texts. Then we did some tests: does everything look good in all versions (desktop, phone, …), does it all look good and work?

In the end, my mom did some technical stuff.

Which parts of the website could you do yourself, and where did you need help?

I wrote all the texts, chose the designs, made the pictures, my mom did all the technical stuff.

Your products section looks interesting, how did you make that?

We used a template that I really liked and then we changed the colors and the rest as well. After that, we linked all the products to my Etsy so there is an Etsy button for every product.

How long did it take you to build the website?

I didn’t do it all at once but since we used designs and templates that already existed it didn’t take that long, maybe 1 week (in the evenings) for the basics and the foundation and then another week for all the details…

What surprised you along the way?

I thought making a website was way more difficult, I always see my mom write code and do all this technical stuff so I thought it was impossible for me to make a website. It was so much less of all these sorts of things and it was actually really fun to make the website as there are so many more possibilities than expected! I was rather overwhelmed at first (but not for long hehe).

And I was really surprised, good surprised, that the website looked so good in such a short time and it was so much better than anything I was expecting.

Did you experience anything as difficult, and if so: what? If you didn’t: why do you think that is?

Some things were rather tricky like making sure that the message box is working the way I want it to work or getting the right photo to the right link.

Have your friends seen your website? How did they respond?

I showed the website to some of my friends and they were all really impressed by it :)

What are your future plans for your website?

I am not sure yet, I want to do what I really like and the things that are fun for me to do. I think I want to write some blog articles, and I want to update it with the other things I create. So I basically just want to keep doing the fun things.

Do you think people need to be very technical to build a website in Joomla?

I think for the creative part you really don’t have to know anything, for the technical part you should at least have someone who knows what they are doing because I think it can be rather complicated…

I would have been completely lost without my mom, and as she knows exactly what to do and so I worked it out so great!

What would you advise people who have never made a website before?

If you have someone who knows what to do it is really easy, and I think if you read and educate yourself a bit before starting there is no reason why you won’t be able to make your website!

And I think starting is the best way because you won’t know if you don’t start...

Lena’s website: https://www.klenativ.at

We’re grateful to Lena’s mom, Sigrid Gramlinger-Moser, a proud Joomla volunteer, who introduced her daughter to Joomla! Find out more about her: https://www.webgras.at