Beginners Overview of Website Creation Steps, Tips and Resources
Beginners and First Time Web Creators Can Get a Broad Overview of Concepts and Steps Here
Let’s Create a Standard Business Website With a Static Homepage, With or Without Sidebars, or a Blog
Steps (beginners please see the article on the 5-step site setup for details)
- Register a domain
- Sign up with a web host
- Point domain to host
- Click to install wordpress
- Login to new site
- Tour the dashboard and menus
- Choose your settings
- Set it to static homepage or blog
- Choose a theme – Check out the video screencast tutorials for Mobile Friendly Theme Twenty Twelve
- Create a header and logo
- Write some pages, and/or posts
- Add photos and videos
- Add some plugins and widgets to provide custom features
- Add ecommerce, paypal, shopping carts, digital downloads, or other customization
- Add email marketing
Mobile Friendly Site Design Tips
Clean, Uncluttered, Easy to Read, Easy to Navigate
- Simplify – clean, simple layout, easy to read and easy to navigate, avoid cluttered, busy layout
- White space – use white space instead of cluttered, busy design
- Easy Navigation – menus and buttons easy to find and use
- Mobile Friendly Themes – choose WordPress Themes that are mobile friendly, such as the new theme Twenty Twelve, designed for Mobile First, then customize to suit your business
Continue Customizing as Needed – Ideas
Custom Headers, Menus, Link Buttons and More
- Add ebook for visitors to download
- Create custom link buttons,
- Create custom menus for the horizontal menu bar
- Add slideshows, galleries, podcasts, calendars, maps, appointment schedules, and more
- Embed videos from youtube
- Use custom page templates
- Add feature images
- Use custom post formats
- Customize background
Getting Started With Search Engine Optimization and Analytics
On Page Optimization and Google Analytics
- Add SEO plugin
- Add Google Analytics plugin
- Sign up for youtube and social media
- Add Social Media plugins and widgets to sidebar
- Share posts and pages on social media – facebook, twitter, linkedin, etc.
- Add your business to the google places listings (if you work from home choose the area you serve and choose not to show your address)
- Add link to website to description area for youtube videos, share videos on social media
- Answer questions to help others on forums, bulletin boards to form online relationships
- Check your youtube channel statistics to see which videos are popular, etc.
- Create useful content that makes a positive difference for others so visitors will share it on their social media
Useful software and tools which are covered in the tutorials
Emphasis Is On Easy, Cost Effective Softwares
- Free Camstudio software for recording screencast tutorials
- Free PIcasa software for editing photos, creating headers and graphics, creating slideshows and videos.
- Youtube for uploading videos and social media
- Aweber for email marketing and newsletters
- Paypal for adding payment buttons and shopping carts
- Word for creating pdf files to upload as ebooks or reports
- Social media – facebook, twitter, linkedin, and more
- Godaddy as an example of a domain registrar
- Hostgator as an example of a web host
Specific WordPress Themes Covered in Tutorials
- Theme Twenty Eleven
- Theme Twenty Twelve
Static Business Websites Serving As Online Brochures Can Add Value By Adding Quality Content
You can add value to these sites by including rich content in addition to the promotional material. This way the site is more than an online advertisement.
Ideas for Useful Content That Makes A Positive Difference for Others – Offer Solutions for the Problems of Others
- Pages or posts with useful information
- Offer solutions for problems of a niche audience
- Steps or directions about how to do something
- News, updates, features
- Photos, videos, galleries, slideshows
- Tips and facts, advice
- Interesting or entertaining stories
- Reviews of products, books, entertainment or places
- Skill development, educational material
- Indexes to material on the web
- Listings – jobs, real estate, schools, etc.
- Recommendations of useful resources
- Calendars of events
Branding and Image Make Your Website or Blog Unique
Identify Your Niche or Micro-Niche Within the Larger General Topic
- Use a custom header
- Create a custom logo
- Identify a niche
- Aim at your niche, it’s the target
- Don’t be too broad and general, aim at a specific group
- Create content aimed at the needs of your niche audience
- Identify the characteristics of your niche audience, their needs and likes
- Create branding and image to meet needs of niche audience
Be Authentic, Be Genuine, Be Transparent, Use White Hat Techniques
Avoid Grey Hat or Black Hat Techniques and Marketers Who Promise Easy Money
- Watch out for grey hat and black hat internet marketers
- Take responsibility for providing quality content for your internet presence
- Avoid questionable sites, get rich quick schemes, phoney traffic schemes, etc.
- Avoid artificial manipulation of search engine rankings
- Seek natural “organic” search engine results through providing original quality content that visitors share and spread in a viral manner
A Few Useful Resources on the Net for You to Visit
Reliable Sources of Useful Information
- Seth Godin’s Blog – Marketing – wide variety of insights on marketing and behavior
- Warriors Forum – Marketing – bulletin boards for everything related to online business
- Hubspot’s Inbound Marketing – attraction marketing and seo
- wpmu.org WordPress Experts – wide variety of news and support
- firefox browser – a fast browser, good for quick installation of plugins and widgets to make site changes (widgets freeze up in some browsers or won’t install)
Notable WordPress users include CNN, The New York Times, and eBay.
WordPress is a useful tool for people who want to work online.
To read descriptions of dozens of online jobs Download free online jobs e-book.