By: MJ + PJ
Well, talk about getting immersed in something to learn about it fast! Both of us have some experience with computing and spreadsheets and word processing and the crazy webernet thing etc., but only MJ had previously built and maintained a website… on much more basic software.
We choose to utilize WordPress as it seemed to be popular, is thorough, is modifiable, does not require technical HTML coding, and had a great initial price. Learning about all the aspects of how WordPress works was interesting to say the least. Crash experiences occurred on many things from scratch: plug-ins to themes to widgets to categories to tags to problem-solving settings. All these to create the presentation and style that we were seeking. There will certainly be mini tweaks along the way to adjust the site, but what you see is currently what you are going to get!
There are hundreds of sites that can give you the ins and outs of how-to and why-to do certain things. Read these as we did by following your nose down different paths and options.
Our advice for building a website is as follows:
- Have a really good reason to have a website and have a clear mission.
- Be prepared to spend days* learning and setting it up to be what you want.
- Structure narrowly but think broadly for your site.
- K.I.S.S. Is always a humbling guide.
- Content or products are more important than bells and whistles.
- Borrow concepts from sites that you find easy to navigate and read.
The rest of it you will have to suffer through the same as we did… by immersion learning! Like our child found out learning spelling words: for some things you just have to sit down and grind it out until it works for you.
The feature photo here is a part of the joke… trying to format pictures.
[*That’s right: “days”! You can publish and post in 5 minutes technically, but nothing web sustainable or of substance was created in a fleeting moment.]
