Beginning
Process to Design a Website to Make Building Smoother. There are questions that need to be answered to make the process easier and less involved. Some things to ask are: What kind of website do you want? Will be a simple blog or a small or large business? Are you selling items from the site? Do you need a shopping cart? How many pages?. How many graphics? Theme Builder? Plugins?
Domain and Host
A Domain Name will have to be created if you do not have one yet. That will be the name you show the world. Use your name or brand.
The Host is where your site will reside. There are dozens of Hosts to choose from. Siteground, Go Daddy, and MochaHost is a few. You can sometimes find a good one at a smaller cost to pay for it for 2 years at a time.
Plugins
Along with WordPress and/or a Theme Builder, you will need 3rd party plug-ins such as SSL either from your Host or a plug-in like Really Simple SSL to make your site secure. Other plugins are for SEO such as Yoast and more. Many of these have a free version, but also a paid version which is the better option.
SEO
You must determine the amount that you will be willing to pay for SEO or Search Engine Optimization. SEO is not only about how much traffic you drive to your site, but how well your brand is seen. The higher you rank in the search engines the more people will find your website. This is one of the costs that are worth paying for.
Keywords
Use “Keywords” and “Keyword phrases” to make your site rank in Search Engines such as Google, Bing, etc. Find as many as you can and keep them fresh. You can research sites similar to your own to see how they handle them.
New Business
And after retiring I have started a new business designing websites. A large number of designers use theme builders and there are several good ones but I use Divi Theme Builder by elegant Themes.
Divi Theme Builder
With Divi, you can design a website using a template or build from scratch. Using a template all that is needed is to add your text and graphics. Do some tweaks and you have a website. As with all theme builders, there is a learning curve.
Responsive Web Design
The main thing that takes practice is learning how to make it responsive. Responsive web design means that the pages will adjust on all screen devices. It works seamlessly with WordPress. You can integrate CSS into your design to give it a more personal look. You can build a business website or a blog.
Find a Web Designer
There are different ways to find a web designer. You can search the internet, word of mouth, the old fashion way, and more. You can go with a larger agency which would probably include several people working on the project for graphics, SEO, keyword, etc. I know that using a larger agency could be more costly and for a small business or a single person, this may be more than you want to spend. You can also find a small web design business consisting of 1-2 or 3 person company. This may be more to your liking regarding cost. This business may charge by the hour or by the job. In addition, you can pay the designer a monthly fee to keep the site current and fresh, to make updates.
I hope that this may help you make your decision about your prospective website. Please contact me with any questions and I hope that I can be the one to create your new website. If you have any questions use the contact form and I will get with you as soon as possible.
My First Website
My father and I had an on-line mall from 1999 through 2001. We created 40 + stores from a jewelry store to a leather shop to a candle shop. The mall was designed using FrontPage (which was the builder of many designers at the time) and I did a lot of coding. Graphics and backgrounds were made using Paint Shop Pro. The process of designing the mall took awhile before we could actually start building.
We both put in a lot of hours into it and it was thoroughly enjoyable. Something my daddy and I both enjoyed doing together. Sadly, my father passed away in June 2001. I gave it up because I just didn’t have the heart to keep it up.
New Beginnings
Now with my new web site I am back to doing what I love. Designing websites is a little different from 2001 but I hope that you will take some time and look around. Feel free to check out my blog posts. If you have any ideas for posts, please let me know.
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