Hello,
Today let's look at a couple of more preparation steps that will make creating your website less frustrating and will give you the professional-looking site you want.
While you are surfing the internet, watch for websites that are attractive to you. When you see one, take a screenshot. Make a folder for these screenshots so you can keep them together. These screenshots will help you determine what you want your site to look like.
I mentioned before that you should make rough sketches of your site's pages. The more detailed these sketches are the better. My sister-in-law designs websites for a living. She creates detailed images of the pages she is going to create. What she shows a client on paper is almost exactly what the website will look like. (No she is not making my sites. She is too busy and too expensive.) I don't think we need to go to that level of detail but the more detailed better.
I should have talked about this earlier. Think about what pages are you going to have and what they are going to contain. You can always add or delete pages later but make a list of the pages you want before you start. You will usw it to create the menu. Here is my list of pages
- Home - a static page with a short welcome followed by my favorite affiliate program with a brief description.
- Library - a page with ebooks I have found useful that can be downloaded.
- Posts - a page that contains my current posts. May have sub-pages with specific series.
- Tools - reviews of my favorite internet tools
- Programs - reviews of my favorite affiliate programs like ListNerds
- About - one of your most important pages. I will talk more about this in the future.
- 404 Page - Where they go if your site is down for maintenance
That is my list of pages. What is yours? Would you have had a 404 page?
I am going to stop here for today. I may not have time to post tomorrow. My daughter and I are supposed to take her dog to a FAST CAT event. This is an event where the dog chases a lure in a straight line for 100 yards. The location is over an hour away plus the time waiting around to run. She has been sick so I am not sure if we will get to go tomorrow or not. Just have to see.
See You At The Bank,
Bob Caine
Here are the other posts in the Create Your Website series in case you missed any of them