Preparing for your Website

prepare for your website

Preparing for your Website

Preparing for your website is the one sure way to help the build go smoothly. It will help to give you focus and it will align your expectations for the duration of the build.

Preparing for your website is broken up into a few steps.

  • Getting a Hosting account. (takes only a few minutes once you settle on a company)
  • Installing the WordPress software on that hosting account. (again takes 5-10 minutes)
  • Customizing and personalizing your site. (obviously this takes the longest time and is an ongoing process)
  • Deciding what to put on your site. (this is the focus of this article  – read on)

Build a WordPress website

your WordPress Pyramid

Build a WordPress website

To build a WordPress website is a very popular thing to do. It’s probably the most user friendly and effective platform on the internet. With that popularity has come the need for experienced users and developers to answer this question of ” what goes into build a wordpress website”.

 

The basic things needed to build a WordPress website.

WordPress:- 

First of all you need WordPress loaded on hosting hosting provider.
Every website on the internet exists as a software package running on a server somewhere.
We need a subscription to one of these servers where we can load an instance of WordPress software.
This will be our site. 

Themes: –

WordPress has thousands of free Themes to download and install.
All of which can be fine tuned to give a unique appearance for your site.
The WordPress software makes our website live.
Themes – just like a new suit of clothes – defines its appearance.
Not all themes look like the Thumbnail pictures they show in the theme directory, when you first install them.
(some do and its called “sample data”you can enable or disable).
The thumbnail is just there to show what is possible.
This is intentional or every second website on the internet would look the same.
Some people would never change the colors, pictures etc to arrive at their own unique appearance.

Plugins (Free): –

How long to build a website?

how long to build a website

How long to build a website?

People ask me how long to build a website. Well we really need to define what that means so we are on the same page. There are various stages of the process, so we need to understand at what point ‘ how long to build a website ‘ is achieved. I use WordPress as the software platform for building websites . It is solid and very user friendly. So all the suggestions you see here relate to that platform. From there we will have a common understanding and expectation.

For purposes of our discussion lets say fully built means:-

  • a site that is live on the web,
  • has the appearance and theme we are trying to promote
  • has the important functionality working.
  • has some content to add meaning to our sites message

Remember websites are intrinsically Dynamic in their nature.

They continually have new articles , posts and content added.
A new website will continue to grow in content.
So lets keep that in perspective when we talk about how long to build a website

Let’s look at the stages of how long to build a website in depth

 

Asset CleanUp your new best Buddy

Asset-CleanUp 1

Asset CleanUp Your new best Buddy

Are you doing all the right things. Following best practice most of the time. Yet your site still seems slower than you would like. Well Asset CleanUp may be the answer.

You may have run the speedtest and looked for the culprits that are having the greatest affect on your load time.

You may have arranged all the apps and assets on your front page to help it load lighter.

But still have seconds you would like to shave off that all important first paint or interactive time?

Well here is the thing.

Not everything that is loading is necessary or visible to you.

Its easy enough to work out the visible element such as images menus and Font packages that appear in the Waterfall chart of your speedtest.
It is not so easy to know what makes up the the code such as .css, .js and html.
You just assume it is relevant to the visible assets you see on screen. WRONG!

“So whats happening that I can’t see. How much of it is unnecessary and can be stopped or removed.”

Even if you know the answers to the last two questions,…

Compressing all my beautiful Content Images

compressing-images

Compressing all my beautiful Content Images

I spoke before about the importance of managing , optimizing and compressing Images used on your website.

You need to keep them from slowing your sites performance.

  • Make sure the originals are reduced in both file size and image dimensions.
  • The maximum dimensions should be no bigger than how they will render on your site.
  • Every Theme template in WordPress has defaults for images.
  • This includes the maximum dimensions they can appear in any page template.
  • This is calculated for both Desktop and mobile device viewing.
  • Once you settle on a Theme for your site, try to find out what those sizes are.
  • Knowing the maximum widths allows you to keep your uploads to a sensible or optimum size.

By default, WordPress Core offers predetermined image sizes, that are used in places such as featured image in posts.

WordPress default image sizes are:

  • Thumbnail size (150px square);
  • Medium size (maximum 300px width and height);
  • Large size (maximum 1024px width and height);
  • Full size (full/original image size you uploaded).

So that gives us a starting point. It tells us WordPress considers 1024px to be a Large Size.
It gets us in the right headspace for using images on the web.
When running speed tests on my site, I often see a recommendation to reduce the site Header image width.
The Header image on most sites is the widest of all images. It usually spans an area wider than the actual content area below it.
Because it is alway loaded on the landing page it deserves thoughtful compressing and sizing.

My image is 1024px width yet it usually displays in a browser at 959px width. 

The speed test is telling me to save some load time by reducing the redundant image width to match the browser.
This argument indicates that even at 1024px we should be able to go smaller on

Scroll to top